Bad Credit Personal Finance News Blog

Is it possible to have a lot of money and still be frugal? Yes it is. Take Matt Bonner, the Toronto Raptor’s power forward. Unlike other NBA players, Bonner doesn’t spend his money on Bentleys, Mercedes Benzes, or BMWs. He doesn’t have a 32 room mansion that has a elevator or a shark tank. He lives his live frugally.

Instead of buying things that depreciate after they’ve been bought, he prefers to invest on things that appreciate. He doesn’t own a car and treks the one mile journey from his modest one bedroom apartment to the Air Canada Centre. He used some of the $4 million he’ll receive over the next four years to move his parents from a two bedroom condo into a three bedroom house.

This is how frugal Bonner lives:” “Just the other day I was at Subway and wanted to double the chicken in my sub,” he recalls. “But it was $2 more. I was like, What a rip-off!”

Living Not So Large; Frugal Forward.

Did you notice that sometimes you aren’t required to sign for your credit card purchase? Don’t be alarmed or worried. This is a new push by Visa. Until recently, all credit card purchases had to be signed, whether the purchase amount was $5 or $23. Now, merchants could go ahead and not request your signature for purchases under $25.

CVS, Chipolte, Walgreens, and many other merchants are no longer asking for a signature when making purchases under $25. The benefit of eliminating the signature on small purchases is quite simple for the consumer, speed. Now you won’t have to waste another seconds signing a receipt. For Visa, this means more usage and more payouts.

For those who are worried about ID theft, don’t worry. Visa still protects you from fraudulent charges. The next time you aren’t asked to sign, don’t take it the wrong way, it’s the new thing.

Even millionaires need to budget

Those are the words of Phillip Simon, the financial advisor of Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison. According to e-mails that were recently made public, the financial advisor seriously worried of his clients spending. This guy was frivolously squandering his money. $20m a year for lifestyle, $75m a year on accrued interest. $25m for a villa in Japan, $194m over 3 years for a new yacht, and the list goes on.

A personal budget is among the most important concepts of personal finance. In a personal or family budget all sources of income (inflows) are identified and expenses (outflows) are planned with the intent of matching outflows to inflows. There are a wide variety of personal budgeting methods and tools that can be employed to help individuals and families with the budgeting process.

This only reiterates the importance of budgeting. By creating a budget you will allow yourself to keep more of your money and know exactly where your money goes. A lot of people have this misconception that budgeting is only for the middle class, the ones who have to struggle to make life a little comfortable. Wrong. Budgeting isn’t only for people who are tight on cash, it’s for everybody. Whether you are wealthy or not, you need to learn how to budget.

Visit the budgeting archives at creditlovers.com and start your budgeting plans.

The personal finance message board is finally up and working. You can visit the boards by pointing your browser to talk.creditlovers.com. The main purpose of the forum is to educate. I set it up so that we can all ask questions, give answers, and share personal finance tips and information.

Right now the message boards are separated into 5 separate topics:

Credit Cards and Loans – Discuss mortgages, credit cards, and debt, loans, etc.
Real Estate – Anything related to buying, selling, renting and leasing real estate, etc.
Investing – Discuss the stock market, mutual funds, hedges, equities, retirement, etc
Income and Earnings – Discuss general money making ideas, small business tips and information
Finance Watch - Discuss recent financial news, economic events, and the politics of finance.

So far the there aren’t many users, only 2 to be exact. It would be great to have 500 users by January 2007, we’ll see. I urge you all to register and contribute. Without user participation, no one will gain anything. So go ahead and register now.

Guess what, you might be doing some things that increase your chances of becoming a victim of identity theft. The thieves are getting creative each and every day. You need to know about the obvious and more sophisticated ways that your identity can become stolen.

Read Ways to Protect Yourself From Identity Theft now.

I don’t know about you, but it seems as if every time I get off the phone with the credit card company, they always try to sell me their insurance plan. I always refuse, and they always try to reassure me two or three more times. There are many types of credit card insurance plans. Make sure that you know which ones you need and how much they cost.

You can read this short article if you want more information on credit card insurance.

Sometimes when people get credit cards, they simply think that the money they’ve just received is free. Wrong. The money you’ve just received isn’t free; it’s a loan, a loan with high interest if not used carefully. Getting a credit card and using it responsibly are two different things. Almost anyone can get a credit card, but how many use their credit card responsibly?

To answer the conundrum, I’ve posted an article that will explain just that. Read Guidelines For Using Credit Responsibly. 

A lot of people would like to take some of the money that they earn and start investing. The problem is, there are so many different online brokers and many people are overwhelmed by the choices. I’ve written a small guide that will aid you in choosing the right broker.

In order to choose the right broker, you have to consider things like fees, investment type, and investment amount.  Read How to Choose an Online Broker and start investing.

I’m pretty sure that a lot of us would like to become rich one day or another. But the problem lies in which steps we should take to become rich. If you’re just an average middle class worker, you can become rich by the time you retire. You simply have to know which steps to take in order to become rich. You simply have to do a few things like cut expenses, save, and invest. That is the way the working class becomes rich, unless of course you find a million dollars or inherit a million dollars.

Today I posted Five Little Tricks to Becoming Rich on the creditlovers.com article section. I hope you enjoy these 5 little tricks, and most of all, that you start practicing them.

Read Five Little Tricks to Becoming Rich.