Back in April I set a goal to do many different things to generate extra cash so I could increase my payments on my credit card debt. I guess I was just really busy, because I didn’t get as many done as I wanted, so I’m still trying to do it little by little.
I was inspired to do this by the article titled “102 Ways To Generate Extra Cash” from SavingAdvice.com and last week I decided to do #69 on their list
“69. Cash in any savings bonds you have lying around. You’d be surprised how many people have them gathering dust in a drawer or safe deposit box.”
I’ve had four $50 U.S. Savings Bonds stashed away for several years. Two were from 1998, one from 1999 and one from 2001.
I finally decided it didn’t make sense to have them sitting around earning 2% interest for years, while I have been paying credit card companies 14.99% - 24.99% interest the entire time!
I finally cashed them in and got $145.04 to put toward my Extra Cash Fund.
I also took the change that we put in a jar in the laundry room to the bank and poured it into their coin counter. I had $31.40 that I was able to deposit.
This isn’t exactly “generating” cash as it was money I had in the house, but it’ll do more good sitting in my bank account that it did in a jar and desk drawer.
ABC Television will air a special titled UN-BROKE: What You Need to Know About Money. They bill it as “an unconventional look at the fundamentals of everyday finance with all the facts about credit cards, mortgages, stocks and bonds, investing and 401(k)’s, in a fresh new format combining information and humor.”
The one-hour special airs FRIDAY, MAY 29 (9:00-10:00 p.m., ET) on the ABC Television Network.
Hosted by “Good Morning America’ contributor and President of Ariel Investments Mellody Hobson, the special features Will Smith, Samuel L. Jackson, the Jonas Brothers, Christian Slater, Cedric the Entertainer, Seth Green, Sesame Workshop’s Oscar the Grouch, Rosario Dawson and the E*Trade Babies, among others.
Will Smith and Samuel L. Jackson will probably be funny and know what they are talking about. Learning about the stock market from the Jonas Brothers isn’t something I’m looking forward too though!
That Dave Ramsey guy I like to watch on TV often tells people they have to have “gazelle intensity” to get out of debt. Well since November, I think I have been as focused as a gazelle running from a cheetah. I schedule my online payments very early (usually) and I keep a spreadsheet showing what bills are due, when they are due, what amount I intend to pay and when I intend to pay it.
I went online last week to pay a credit payment only to see that it was due the day before! I have not been late on a payment since I got focused on debt elimination in November. One of the reasons I started blogging is to keep myself focused by writing about my journey.
It took me a week to decide to share this with those that read this blog, because I was more than a little embarrassed- actually angry is a better explanation. I am very angry with myself!
This is an account that is almost paid off. The minimum payment is only $20.00 a month and now I have to pay a $39.00 late fee. I was also signed up for a program that required me to stay current with my payments for eight consecutive months and the reward would be a refund of 20% of the interest I paid during that eight month period. I was real close to achieving that.
What makes me mad is that I had looked at the spreadsheet two or three days before. I also have a spreadsheet where I track how much interest I pay on that account so I’ll know if they refund the correct amount to me. I had just gone to their site a couple days before to look up some data to put in that spreadsheet. Did I think I had already scheduled the payment? Did I forget what the date was? I have no idea! I guess I have to plead temporary insanity. It wasn’t like I didn’t have $20 to pay the bill!
I am almost as angry as I was in November when I decided I had to change my financial life, so maybe this will help me regain my focus. I feel like a gazelle that just got a little flesh taken off his rear end by a cheetah’s claw, but it didn’t make me fall. I’m still running and weaving. I will get away!
I’m filing this under the category “Setbacks”. That’s the only way I can describe it…
My local telephone service is provided by AT&T and I have signed up to recieve my statements online. I also have signed up to have my payment made automatically each month. Each month I get an email telling me that my bill is ready to view and the amount of the bill. It’s always about $37.00 and I rarely go to the site to look at it.
This month the email said the total was $60.54, which caught my eye. My first thought was that my automatic payment the previous month was not credited for some reason, so I clicked the link to go to their site.
Upon reading my bill I saw that I was being charged $14.95 and the explanation said it was for “MYIPRODUCTS IMAIL VOICEMAIL MTHLY FEE”.
I also had an $8.43 charge for “YOURBILLINGSOLUTIONS,INC-1X SETUP FEE”.
There was also mentions of a company called OAN Service, Inc. I’m not sure who they are or what they offer, but I know I did not sign up for any new phone services. When I called AT&T, the representative on the phone told me I probably signed up for something online that said in the fine print that I was signing up for this. I can’t think of anything I signed up for lately so I have no idea how this happened.
The representative on the phone removed all the charges from my bill, but it still makes me mad. How many people are also getting charged and not noticing it on their bills? I bet some people will pay for months and not realize it.
I googled the name “OAN Services” and quickly noticed that most of the results returned included the words “ripoff”, “fraud”, and “scam”.
I’m just glad I noticed it when I did.
I went several months without getting an offer from a credit card company before I got the offer I wrote about in February. I didn’t see another one until a few days ago. Now I have received four in the last week. Two are from the same account, so I guess I should consider that three offers.
One is offering 5.99% for the life of the balance. That offer comes from US Bank.
Chase is offering 0% for 9 billing cycles or 3.99% for 24 billing cycles with one offer. They sent me another offer for a different account that offers 0% until May 2010 or 2.99% until May 2011.
I may move the balances that are on the bottom of my debt snowball to one of these accounts. I have to pay a 3% transaction fee, but since I will be paying these debts last on my snowball, the savings on interest will be more than the fee in just the first few months.
There are a two debts that are higher on the debt snowball list and will be paid off within a year. I think I will move them to the 0% for one year offer. The interest savings on these will save more than the transaction fee within two billing cycles. That means I’ll be saving money
During my April challenge to generate extra cash, I tried # 100 of the “102 Ways To Generate Extra Cash” from SavingAdvice.com.
“#100. Sign up with Mechanical Turk (Mturk.com) from Amazon.com and take on tasks that interest you.”
I had signed up late last year and did enough tasks to earn $10.00 and posted about it, but I quickly gave up on this site. As part of my April money generating project, I decided to revisit the site to see if I could earn another $10.00 or more. You must get to the $10.00 point before you can get paid, so I set that as my goal.
I didn’t keep track of the time spent on the site, but I know it was way too much time for the $13.91 that I was able to earn. The taks that I did to earn the money didn’t take a lot of time to complete, but I think I spent the majority of the time reading hundreds of tasks I did not want to do trying to find the few I did want to try.
I really don’t think I have it in me to try these tasks any longer, so I’m giving up on the site again. If you’ve never tried it, maybe you’ll like it more than I do. If you already have an Amazon.com account then the same account name and password work on Mturk.com
