Only a personal finance blogger would react the way I did today when I opened the payment booklet from my mortgage company and saw that our mortgage payment had gone down to $508.85 from $534.02.  I whooped and said, “Finally!  I'm catching a break!  This extra is going straight to the principal!”  It seems like all around me our bills are going up, as they tend to do, and this made me very happy. I usually receive a notification letter… Read the rest

Back in February 2008, I helped Mr. A apply for a bank secured credit card so he could start building credit since he had dealt in cash for most of his life.  About one year later the card was graduated to an unsecured card and the spending limit raised from $600 to $1100.  The annual percentage rate was lowered from 24.99% to 16.99%.   We decided to use the card to buy gasoline, but somewhere along the way I decided to… Read the rest