Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University Week 5

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This week is called “Credit Sharks in Suits” and is about dealing with creditors. If you missed the previous week’s reviews you can catch them here; Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, and Week 4. The Class I had a complaint that in the first week that Dave uses extreme language and examples to make his point. He follows that up again in this lesson. He went on a long rant about how debt collectors are evil scum. Which I don’t disagree with the fact that the debt collection industry is out of control and basically unregulated. I mean, there […] Read more »

2 Sure-Fire Ways to Lose Your Money…Guaranteed

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A few years ago, I bought my daughters a fun, entertaining, and great inspirational book. The title is, How to Be Totally Miserable: A Self-Hinder Book by John Bytheway (Clearly a pen name). I highly recommend it! Inspired by this book, I am writing a short book focused on money. Thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of books have been written on making money. Few, if any, help you find fun, innovative, creative and entertaining ways to lose money. Soon, at least one book will address this very needed niche for those who have grown tired of the constant battle to […] Read more »

Are Your Actions Setting Up Your Children for a Lifetime of Debt?

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avoid giving in to a child be a positive role model

When my oldest son was little I was a frequent customer at places like Target, the mall, and Bed Bath & Beyond. Shopping for me meant a lot of things. It was therapeutic, especially when I was feeling depressed (oddly enough, depressed about my lack of money was often the case). It was in search of bargains, which in hindsight ended up not being much of a bargain by the time I left. And it was a social activity. My then-husband and I would go shopping whenever we were bored. We said it was just to look around but we […] Read more »

Love Drop October — The Triplets

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Hey guys! The Love Drop team is at it again! They just came back from the Boston area where they dropped $5,000 worth of appliances and gifts to a woman who recently got hit by a car and is recovering in a wheelchair, and THIS month they’re trying to round up the love for precious newborn triplets! We want to help Jeff and Becca (the parents) prepare to bring them home from the hospital, as all three were born very underweight and are currently in the Neonatal ICU (they’re doing great though! And will be coming home soon). With four […] Read more »

UPDATE: Expect to See Some Changes Over the Weekend

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Hello everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful week and I hope your weekend is even better. I just want to let you know I’ll be working on the layout of Enemy of Debt over the weekend starting today. If you come to the site and notice something seems a little off, it probably is but it won’t stay that way for long — hopefully — unless I break something. 🙂 For the kind of changes I want to make there’s no way around it short of throwing the entire site into maintenance mode. That’s just ugly and not […] Read more »

Is Blood Thicker than Inheritance Money?

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According to study by the AARP roughly 2/3 of baby boomers are expecting some sort of an inheritance and are spending it before they even have it. They dig deep holes of debt with inheritance money in the back of their mind; failing to understand using inheritance money to pay off debt is not a sound financial plan. In fact inheritances often don’t turn out the way those expecting them think they should. A Family Torn I have a friend who recently had a grandmother pass away. Her frugal lifestyle and previously deceased husband’s good business sense left her with […] Read more »

Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University Week 4

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This week's lesson was "Dumping Debt". Which everyone says is the best lesson. Maybe it had been built up too much but I was actually a little disappointed and bored. (Don't shoot!) I was expecting more of a motivational speech about getting rid of your debt, but instead it was "myth busting" of debt myths. Which maybe was boring for me because I'm already fully on board with debt free living. I don't need my myths busted. There was some powerful stuff at the end with clips of people sharing how they are living debt free and how amazing it is. At the end Dave yells at the top of his lungs "I'M DEBT FREE!!!!" which pretty much made you want to leap out of your chair and yell "YEAH!". Read more »

Should you “Occupy Wall Street”?

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You may be aware of a growing social protest movement that began on Wall Street a few weeks ago. According to their website: “Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.” And now this protest is metastasizing and spreading to 25 […] Read more »

Pay Day Loans are for Lazy People…Do This Instead!

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Recently, I had a conversation at the Financial Blogger Conference and Pay Day Loans came up. First off, I was kind of surprised to hear a financial blogger say that these loans had their place because most bloggers agree that these types of loans are dangerous and avoidable. At the time my mind was spinning a hundred miles a minute but I said nothing because not only had I just arrived at the conference, but I know that debates like this are rarely productive (especially with a financial blogger). So I bit my tongue but I do have an opinion […] Read more »

It Adds Up – Financial Adages Help Us Learn from Others

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I have a friend who likes to say, "It adds up." He says this when he's referring to saving a little money here and there. Well, of course it adds up, and when we're saving money, it seems to take forever to amount to anything appreciable. But, that's not the case when it comes to spending money, especially when we're buying things with a credit card. Read more »

Personal Accountability – Placing Blame Where It Belongs

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A few weeks ago, I was playing around with a blog post in my head. I like to have full conversations with myself in there and often times I’ve got most of a blog post outlined in my head before I’ve even sat down at a computer. Working titles for this post were flowing around more easily than the actual text itself. Some of them were “Ode to Capital One: A Tragedy” and “Capital One has Ruined the Nation.” My favorite, however was the ever so poignant title “Eff You Capital One!” I spent more time thinking of catchy ways […] Read more »

EOD POLL: The Challenges of Becoming Debt Free (Pick Top 5)

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On Monday I asked for you to respond in the comments section detailing your biggest challenges to becoming debt free. I received some really great responses and really appreciate the time you took to share your thoughts and struggles. I decided to create a reader poll to list some of these challenges but also add a few more things I thought others might experience in their debt free journey. This time I want you to pick the TOP 5 CHALLENGES you face. Read more »

Eliminating Debt is Like Fixing a Car – Persistence Pays Off!

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I hate cars. Let me be more specific: I hate the fact that I know very little about cars. So little in fact that someone could completely make something up, I’d believe it was a real problem, and pay through the nose to fix it.  So, when the check engine light began to blink on and off in my car while it felt like it was about to stall, I knew that I was the one that was in for a ride. I wrote a previous post in the CareOne community about the problems we’ve been having with the car, […] Read more »

Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University Week 3

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Week 3 of the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University is "Cash Flow Planning". Which is basically advanced budgeting. We made "quickie budgets" in the first week of class but this week we dove deeper in to budgeting. I actually missed the live version of this class because I was getting my party on at the Financial Bloggers Conference. I have the audio version of this lesson in my kit but Brad was kind enough to lend me the video version that he had, so in the end I did get to watch the presentation. There are lots of forms and worksheets that go along with this class so it was nice to be able to follow along with the video. Read more »