How can I make my last dollar grow?
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MSN have a little feature today called
There are a couple of good tips, though it eventually drills to down savings and investments linked to various third parties.
Do take note of the earlier steps, before it goes ‘commercial’.
I found this article on the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper website. It’s obviously UK-centred, but still has plenty of ideas to increase your disposable income, if not actually increase your income!
No, this isn’t another tale of corporate greed, we’re talking about real food (and real profits). According to this article in the UK Daily Telegraph, baking is booming. So here’s my thought: at a pinch you can purchase cake ingredients for less than a dollar. Bake a cake (or persuade a family member or friend to help you!). Your next stop is ebay. There you can sell your creation for upwards of 5/10 dollars (if you don’t believe me, check this out). Be sure to put your profit back into more ingredients and that dollar really begins to grow.
And chef, be sure to let me know how you get on!
The Guardian is one of the UK’s leading national newspapers (bear with me on this one…). I wasn’t a big fan of the print version, but the online version is great (and apparently one of the ‘most read’ newspaper sites in the WORLD). For the purposes of making that last dollar grow I strongly suggest becoming a regular reader of their daily personal finance section - money. Everything is set out in the type of ‘ABC’ language that even I can understand. They have a regular column called ‘cash clinic’ which gives e.g. debt and mortgage advice.
The average American has around eight credit cards. I have ‘only’ three, but paying them off regularly certainly does not come naturally, either to me or to millions of others and I am worried. I’m not too bothered about the credit card companies getting their money back. What worries me is that I know they don’t really want the money back; they want to keep charging me for it. And paying for the debt wastes a significant proportion of my income.
In order to reduce the debt, I’ve decided that we only need one credit card. Now I know that might sound like someone with an alcohol problem saying they need to keep one bottle of whiskey a day and they’ll be fine, but hear me out.
The credit card will be for real emergencies and necessary big-ticket items only e.g., a member of my family is in hospital and I need to pay now; a flight cancellation forces me to rent a car, and so on. For everyday expenditure, I will only use my debit card. It comes straight out of my checking account, and my bank doesn’t charge me for using it. If I don’t use it, they actually give me interest!
To end up with one credit card, I’ll need to pay off all three and then ditch two. But paying off those three cards seems such a mountain to climb that I usually end up staying at the bottom and doing nothing except flinch as the minimum payment leaves my paycheck each month.
After conducting a thorough investigation to find the simplest and quickest way out, I found an interesting article by Andrew LaPointe that makes it all seem much more manageable. He suggests seeing the mountain as a pyramid, starting at the top and working downwards. His 4-step plan looks workable to me. By breaking the problem up into pieces, and starting with the smallest one, it becomes approachable.
I can feel the stress easing already! I’m going to stick to this plan and each time I finish paying off a card I’ll cut it up and show you the pieces here.
P.S. If you want to do the same, send me a picture of a piece of your cards (the top left hand corner - not the important bit!) and I’ll post it here too - we can beat the debt together!