Brian writes in: I was at a local car dealership looking for a replacement for my truck. I only have about $8000 in savings so I knew I would have to take on some debt to buy. The dealer offered to sell me a new F150 for a good price and a 0% loan for

Kelli writes in: My husband and I are sitting on a thirty year mortgage (with twenty six years left to go). We still owe $330,000 on our home. A week ago, a very similar home to ours two blocks away sold for $220,000, so we’re under water by at least $100,000. We are thinking of

Archie writes in: In our marriage, my wife and I have agreed not to open financial statements addressed to each other. We supposedly did this so that we would be able to hide things like gift purchases from each other. Whenever we talked about our finances, we just talked about balances on accounts and didn’t

Yesterday, I heard a very interesting story on NPR that focused on Dave Ramsey looking at Greece’s debt situation through a personal finance lens. Without going into the politics of it, Dave made the astute observation that if a person behaved in the same way that Greece (or any other nation verging on default) behaved,

Most of the time, when I talk about the implications of various debt repayment options on The Simple Dollar, I utterly ignore tax deductions. This is not an oversight. Usually, it just makes a situation needlessly more complicated and takes the “simple” out of The Simple Dollar. As is often the case, astute readers email

One of the most common questions I get is whether or not a person should cosign on someone else’s loan – a car loan, a student loan, or so on. I have a single response that I always give to this type of question: You should only co-sign a loan that you’re perfectly happy paying

Today, Seth Godin (one of my favorite bloggers who usually talks about marketing) posted a great piece about consumer debt. Two great excerpts: Here’s a simple MBA lesson: borrow money to buy things that go up in value. Borrow money if it improves your productivity and makes you more money. Leverage multiplies the power of

One frequent question I’m often asked is whether or not paying half of a mortgage payment twice a month versus paying a full mortgage payment once a month is actually worthwhile. Let’s say, for example, you’re in the situation that Paul, one of my readers who wrote in recently, finds himself in. He just took

Mary writes in: My husband and I have been debt free for seven years. Hooray! We cancelled all of our credit cards in 2001 and paid off our home mortgage in 2002. A few weeks ago, our homeowners insurance premium went up substantially. I called our agent to ask why and he told me that

Iris writes in: I was wondering if you could comment on the debt reduction/elimination ads I keep seeing on tv. Are these companies reputable? Are they doing anything that I can’t do myself? I would hate to pay a huge fee for something I could do myself. I would really like to reduce our debt

A while back (has it been almost eighteen months already?), I wrote a very detailed article about coming up with a debt repayment plan. This plan works – it’s what I did when I realized that I was in serious financial trouble and needed to overcome it. Yet it’s not the first step in the

Over the past few months, our finances have been in something of a “reset” mode. In the process of taking more control of the advertisements on The Simple Dollar’s website (which is my primary source of income), I had to change billing systems. With my previous primary advertising representative – Google – I would get

For my birthday a few weeks ago, my wife gave me the board game Agricola. I opened up the box, looked at the abundance of pieces, read through the instruction book, and was immediately worried that the game would be too complicated for us to enjoy. The first game we tried was pretty miserable. Sarah

In April and May, National Public Radio featured a series on inexpensive gourmet dishes entitled “How Low Can You Go?” Although many of the dishes looked quite tasty, most of the dishes weren’t actually all that inexpensive, often narrowly getting below $10 to feed a family of four, and many involved arduous cooking processes. I

This is the tenth of twelve parts of a “book club” reading and discussion of Dave Ramsey’s The Total Money Makeover, where this book on debt reduction is teased apart and looked at in detail. This entry covers the eleventh chapter, finishing on page 202. The next entry, covering the twelfth chapter, will appear on

This is the seventh of twelve parts of a “book club” reading and discussion of Dave Ramsey’s The Total Money Makeover, where this book on debt reduction is teased apart and looked at in detail. This entry covers the eighth chapter, finishing on page 150. The next entry, covering the ninth chapter, will appear on

You’ve finally paid off that credit card. It’s sitting there with no balance on it and you regret ever owning it. It’s got a high interest rate and no rewards program and you will never use it again. But should you close it? This is an interesting debate that often comes up in personal finance

This is the sixth of twelve parts of a “book club” reading and discussion of Dave Ramsey’s The Total Money Makeover, where this book on debt reduction is teased apart and looked at in detail. This entry covers the seventh chapter, finishing on page 132. The next entry, covering the eighth chapter, will appear on

This is the fifth of twelve parts of a “book club” reading and discussion of Dave Ramsey’s The Total Money Makeover, where this book on debt reduction is teased apart and looked at in detail. This entry covers the sixth chapter, finishing on page 108. The next entry, covering the seventh chapter, will appear on