I've noticed an interesting phenomenon when talking to people in real life about debt. Generally they have more debt than we do, and the comments always similar, “That's nothing. I wish I only had $10,000 in debt. Try having $35,000 in debt.” The implication seems to be that I'm fussing about nothing. As if we have no right to work at paying down my debt, since it's so much less than the other person's debt. I haven't talked about debt… Read the rest

In addition to being sick, my online time has been seriously limited since March 3rd, as we have once again been invaded by some alien software which is hogging our bandwidth. We live out in the country and the only high speed internet is satellite. The least expensive option through our ISP is $49.95 a month. We're limited to 7500MB worth of downloads. That's roughly 250MB per day. My son and I are the only ones that use this internet… Read the rest

Mr. Debtbeater recently blogged about an “exciting month” wherein his debt reduction plan didn't go quite as he'd planned. I find myself in the same boat sometimes, so I was thinking this morning how I might go about encouraging more participation. Here are some thoughts I came up with: Ask my other half to post. It seems like the PF blogs I read (and I don't read all that many) are one person or if married, just the one spouse.… Read the rest

I ran across the 1040 Tax Calculator site when googling how many deductions to take on one's W4. I've always heard the more you take, the bigger your refund will be, but Mr. Debtbeater says his experience indicates taking more will result in a smaller refund. As he states, this is due mainly because of the child tax credit (and that he has six children). I have received a refund (child tax credit and earned income credit) from the IRS… Read the rest