Archive for October, 2007

Rich College Student: Take Full Advantage of Student Discounts

By: Green Panda | Date posted: October 29, 2007 (11:27 am)


It’s Monday, which means it another installment of the Rich College Student series.

Student discounts are a wonderful to maintain certain quality of life without being charged full price for it. Make it a habit to carry it around. There may be discounts that you discover along the way.

Banks: Banks and credit unions today offer student checking accounts which have no minimum balance. That can be an advantage as you’ll likely have a more lean budget and little money ‘leftover’ (after paying your savings account first).

  • Car Insurance: by now, you probably know that if you’re a student you can get a 10% discount with many companies for having good grades. Check with your local agent to see what the grade cut off is for them.
  • Culture: Museums usually offer a discount for student. I read an article in New York City where the front row seats for Young Frankenstein is only $25 for students and $450 regular price! An extreme example, but the point is you can really have a unique and classy experience with your student budget.
  • Local Shops: Typically store around universities off discounts for students. It’s around 105, but that can add up fairly quickly if it’s a good shop or restaurant.
  • Movies: Usually movie theaters charge students the matinee price if they have their IDs with them. Some colleges have free or $1 movies on campus. You just have to bring your ID to verify your student status.
  • Tech Store: Many universities have a tech store which offers substantial discounts on software and hardware. My school offers Microsoft Office Professional 2007 for only $99! It was a fantastic deal. You might want to grab the latest edition before you graduate.

Some people may be embarrassed to use their discount, but there really is no need. Would you turn down someone if they gave you $5-10? I hope you’d say no. I’d take it because I earned it.  It’s not like it’s completely free, after all I wouldn’t get this discount if tuition wasn’t paid. Think of that next time you get nervous.

If you know of any other discounts you can get with a student ID, please let me know. I’d like to see what you do to save money.

Photo Credit: said&done

Green Panda Treehouse is in Carnival of Personal Finance!

By: Green Panda | Date posted: October 29, 2007 (10:02 am)

Photo Credit: digitaloxygen.ca

Millionaire Mommy Next Door is hosting the Carnival of Personal Finance #124. The article I submitted was Easy Ways to Get an Emergency Fund Started.

This was the first carnival I participated in. this week’s edition has a lot of wonderful articles and Millionaire Mommy is host a contest on the favorite posts in different categories. I’m in the budget section. Please check it out and vote for me. I hope everyone participates in it as the winners get a prize.

This is a wonderful carnival and I’ll participate again. Please check out Millionaire Mommy’s blog on a regular basis. I enjoy checking it out from time to time.  Have a wonderful day!

Easy Ways to Get an Emergency Fund Started

By: Blue Panda | Date posted: October 26, 2007 (11:27 am)

4 Tips to Get An Emergency Fund Started

With a few adjustments, you can build a system that allows you to build savings without counting your dollars everyday.

  1. Automate your emergency fund deposit. This is the best step you can do because it will take the money out before you miss it. I do this and it has helped me immensely
  2. Start off with 5% of your gross pay to deposit. If you’re afraid that paying yourself hurts your ability to pay bills, then start small. I’d be surprised if you noticed 5% has caused a noticeable difference.
  3. Put the money in a high interest earning savings account. Pick a reliable bank that FDIC insured. Here’s an article from Trent that highlights two top contenders: ING Direct and HSBC. There’s also Emigrant Direct and numerous others. The point is to put your savings to work. Most brick and mortar banks offer less than 1% even on their savings accounts and with some of these you’ll have 4% or higher returns.
  4. Cut on some bills and put the savings into your emergency fund account. I know some of view this as an excessive penny pinching, but what I’m saying is look at the list and pick where you can cut back. You don’t have to do all of them, just the ones that can fit in your lifestyle.

Areas in Your Budget to Find some ‘Extra’ Cash

Sometimes you have to dig around and see if you can find some hidden cash. Just trying out a few of these tips can get some some cash to just get your emergency fund started.

  • Look at your package deal for cable, phone, and Internet. Sometimes the deal they advertise on TV isn’t the best deal. Call your cable provider to see if they can give you a better rate. We had been able to ave some money by calling Time Warner Cable. It works sometimes, but if they don’t, consider cutting back on the cable package for a month or two, just to get your emergency fund started. You may not notice a big difference and keep the change. Either way you can save $30-50/month for this and that’ll help with your fund.
  • Examine your cell phone plan. Can you change your plan? With Alltel you can change it without getting an extension on your contract. I’m sure about the other plans.
  • Look at your land line plan. It didn’t make sense for my husband and I to have a land line AND our cell phone plans. So far, so good. If you must have a land line and a cell phone, you may want to take off long distance with your land line.
  • Compare insurance companies for auto insurance rates. I saved $50 a month on car insurance for the same amount of coverage. Shopping does pay off. Just make sure you’re given a policy that can comfortably cover you and your situation.
  • Go during happy hours when you decide to eat out. I know that many college students hang out as a part of the cultural, so it would be impractical to tell you stop going out, but at least save money while you’re there. There a great place down the street that offer 50% drinks and has 50 cent tacos. So we plan our eat outs around that time (4pm-7pm). It’s still just as fun, but a lot cheaper.

Embrace Frugality

These aren’t radical ideas that only the extremely frugal people can do. (By the way,‘ Frugality’ isn’t a bad word.) This is simple but effective ways to get you started on building a cushion. Bad things happen to good people, so prepare while you can. If you have anymore suggestions, please leave a comment.

Photo Credit: elle_rigby

Avoid Ruining Your Life

By: Green Panda | Date posted: October 25, 2007 (12:06 pm)

No one sane wants to ruin their future. Often we make choices either consciously or not that can harm our future. There is no magical solution that will instantly solve your problems. Here are some things to avoid that will be toxic to your future.

Ignore what you spend: Have you ever got money from the ATM machine and threw away the receipt without looking at it? Do you not open bills because you’re afraid to see what the balance is? You can’t help yourself by ignoring the problem. Try keeping all the receipts you have from one week. Even for small purchases under $5. At the end of the week, see want you spend on everything. I’d put it on a Excel spread sheet and make a pie chart and a bar chart. What’s your biggest expense? How much does it cost you? If you’re not into that, use a free service like Mint to help you track your spending.

Don’t bother with a budget: Many people don’t make budget because they think they’re boring, unhelpful, or restraining. The purpose of budgets is to give you freedom to spend money without feeling guilty. The restarint from budgets is coming from restarining you from more debt. You don’t have the money, you can’t do something, but you’re also not going  into debt.

Only make minimal payments: The only way I can explain this in words is that you’ve basically decided to sign an agreement with the credit card to make them rich with your money while keeeping your self poor. Check out Bankrate.com’s minimum payment calculator to get proof of what I’m saying.

Paying late or missing payments: So you may have needed some money to go out and eat and use you the money that was set aside for the credit card or you may have skipped it, not a big deal, right? Credit card companies make a killing when this happens, you’re even a day late, most cards will charge you $39 and it’s gets bigger when interest is calculated. By having a poor payment record, you’re also descresing your FICO score which determines your artes for car loans and mortgages. It’s a huge loss for you and a big gain for them.

Use your credit card as an emergency fund: One great thing about credit cards is that you can use when your car breaks down on the highway and you need a tow and there’s not enough cash in your wallet.  If you have that cash in savings, you’d immediately pay your card and you’ll have no interst to pay.

An unwise way of spending your credit card is piling every ‘emergency’ on it.  You add interest on top of all those bills and you can be crippled for a very long time. Start an emergency fund. A first goal is to save enough to cover monthly bills, then youre next goal might be 2-3 months.

These aren’t magic bullets, but they are a great starting point on getting out of debt, building your savings, and protecting your credit.  Do you have more common mistakes people make that can ruin their future? Leave a comment because we can always learn something.

Photo Credit: stanrandom

How to Fix your Credit Card Problems in 5 Steps

By: Green Panda | Date posted: October 24, 2007 (7:22 am)

Credit Card

It can be hard to know where to start with paying on your credit cards. With tuition, rent, and food on your mind, you may have skip on paying your card. That will hurt you now and in the future. Here’s five steps on paying off your credit card debt.

1. Get your current balance on all your credit cards. If you’ve been tucking away the bills as they come in, you may be in for a huge surprise. Many credit cards charge $39 for late fees and another$39 for being over the limit.

2. Write down the balance the due date, and the interest rate of all the credit cards. Write the highest interest rates first and continue in descending order.

3. Go ahead and call all your credit cards and ask for a lower rate. See if you can get a lower rate, even if it’s only 1%. The goal is to reduce your debt and make your payments go further.

4. Examine if you can switch the balance over to a 0% interest card for a few months. Sometimes you can do a balance transfer. Dump as much as you can into the credit card bill to lower the balance. Watch out, though, for balance transfer fees or any other switching costs. This may actually turn out to be worse than stay at your old card.

5. Pay as much as you can on the highest interest card. Part of the debt snowball method is to pay the most on the highest interest card and pay the minimum on the others. When you pay off the first card, put all the debt payments from it into the second card and pay minimum on the others. Continue until you pay off the cards.

JD from Get Rich Slowly has more articles explaining debt snowballs. His approach is to pay your lowest balance first as a way to build mental momentum towards your goals.Trent from The Simple Dollar has a variation called the scared straight debt snowball. He also compares Suze Orman and David Ramsey’s methods of eliminating debt.

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The Consumerist

CLEP Can Reduce Your Student Loans

By: Green Panda | Date posted: October 22, 2007 (11:43 am)

College can be an expensive investment. With many students graduating with larger student loan balances, finding ways to reduce the cost is valuable to many people. One option for some students is CLEP exams.

Attending college can be affordable if you test out of some classes.

What are CLEP exams?

These exams test your knowledge in several subjects ranging from accounting, English, History, and even foreign languages. These nationally recognized exams are overseen by College Board and administered at local colleges.

If you feel comfortable in a subject, you can take the exam, get credit for the classes, and pay only a fraction of the costs of taking the class on campus. A CLEP exam at my university is $80.

The College Board gives great tips on taking advantage of these exams:

  • Find out if your college accepts CLEP. Use theCLEP college search and talk to your admissions office, test center, or academic advisor.
  • Read descriptions of all 34 exams and decide which to take.
  • Register to take your exam(s) by contacting aCLEP test center and making an appointment.
  • Start studying. Get a college textbook and review sample questions.
  • Take your test!

    • How much can you save with CLEP Exams?

    To show how much can be saved; I used the tuition prices of my university and compared it to ‘clepping’ 5 elementary courses (3 credits each).

    The totals don’t include room and board, which would increase savings even more.

    CLEP In-State Out-State
    $400.00 $ 3,264.00 $ 8,874.00

    Here’s the amount of savings:

    CLEP v In-State $2,864.00
    CLEP v Out of State $8,474.00

    I think this is a wonderful option for some people. I’ve taken exams through CLEP and it does save money. The only drawback is that you have to send a transcript of your scores if you decide to transfer schools. If you’re trying to reduce your college expenses and possibly student loans, then this might be a viable option.

    Photo Credit: neuroticcamel

    Hello world! (Again)

    By: admin | Date posted: October 20, 2007 (1:17 pm)

    Yeah, the site has imported! I’m still working on my domain name. I switched it from GoDaddy to Nearly Free Speech . Net.

    Banks and Credit Unions Are Not Doing You a Favor By Giving Back Your Money

    By: GreenPanda | Date posted: October 19, 2007 (11:44 am)

    piggy1.jpg

    Photo credit: NessieNoodle

    I got my statement the other night on my car loan. I got the car loan through a local credit union. To get this loan, I had to open a savings account with a small amount of money. A couple of months ago I notice I had a negative balance on my savings account. Concerned, I called them and they said it was a mistake and they fixed the account.

    It happened again, so I called them today. After being put on hold, the customer service representative told me ‘what they would do for me’. They’ll credit my account and then they’ll protect my account from having it withdrawn from with a stoppage.

    Oh, goodie. I’m glad that my money will be returned to me for no fee. What a deal. :P Then again, I’m sure Bank of America can figure a way to make a fee out of that.

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