Feedmittens

Tag: Personal Finance

  • How To Reduce Your Student Loan Interest Rate

    I’m sure this is common knowledge but just in case, here’s some useful info:  You can reduce the interest rate on your Direct Loan from the US Department Of Education by .25% if you just sign up for them to auto-draft your checking or savings account every month for the payment!  It sounds like a small amount but a quarter point over time adds up, and this blog is partially about watching every penny.

    I just did the sign-up and it’s really easy.  I’m sure you can do it over the phone, but I did it by logging onto the Direct Loan website and going through the screen to add my checking account info.  They said to continue paying normally (I use BoA’s BillPay service online) until I recieve a notice in the mail.

    Easy to do, and a quick way to save some money.

    p.s.  Don’t do this if you carry such a low balance on your checking or savings account that you’ll risk overdrafting if you forget about this auto-pay!

  • Goodbye, PS2

    In an effort to put more $ toward the new home theater fund, I sold off the PS2 yesterday.  I managed to get $75 for the system with two games and one controller.  It was in relatively good condition, and the only thing we used it for was to watch DVD’s.  I can count on one hand the amount of times it was used to play games with.

    I figured it was a good thing to let go of because we can always buy a new (used) one for cheap if the need to PS2 game arises, and it was only going to lose value while sitting around the apartment.  It was taking up space, and as you will see by further banal posts, I’m trying to get rid of some of the various unused and unnecessary junk around the house.

    Goodbye, PS2.  You got us through four seasons of Six Feet Under, two seasons of Carnivale, three seasons of Deadwood, and countless other random shows and movies

    Postscript: Anyone want to buy an Atari 2600 system?  I’m selling mine – complete with games!

  • Yay Me!

    As of today, I’m 100% credit card debt free.  It feels good.

    On the subject of credit cards, I currently have four of them.  They’re all fee based horrible cards.  I need to get rid of them.  There is one problem with just getting rid of them though: the potential to damage my credit score.

    Still, yaay for me!  I’ll write an extended post in the otherblog over the weekend regarding the challenges that lay ahead for my credit building adventure.  (Ugh, adventure…)

  • Say Goodbye To Old Macs…

    Sold off my old Macs finally.  I had a Mac SE, a Mac Classic, and a Mac 512, as well as an Imagewriter I and Stylewriter printer.  They were just taking up space and I had no time to make one into a MacQuarium or anything like that.  I got $20 cash for ‘em.  Hell, it’s better than nothing.