American Debt Project HomepageAmerican Debt Project

Pay off debt and live your life. Don't compare, contrast.

Fear and Money

by

Fear and Money – I wish the two never crossed paths. Unfortunately for many when they think of money it comes packaged with fear. I still remember when I moved out on my own for the first time and 3 months later being down to my last hundred dollars. I think the shock, disappointment and torturous thoughts of being humiliated when others found out left me in a state of not thinking straight. I withdrew my last hundred dollars and only 100 yards down the street could no longer find it. To this day I have no clue where it went. What I do remember vividly are all the swirling emotions of fear bombarding me at once.

I ended up having to borrow from my dad – which every guy can tell you is the last thing any man wants to do.

What’s one to do? Men aren’t alone in this. Women fear debt and running out of cash just as much. In my life I’ve learned that this saying runs very true for all – “Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.” – Otto von Bismarck

One way to learn from the mistakes of others is to be proactive and become financially literate. Since starting Fearless Men with my good friend Todd we’ve been introduced to many financial bloggers. Our own financial literacy has increased incredibly. Yet this is still a small amount compared to where we want to be. So we decided to start a site for men and women to engage in financial discussions and learn together. We called it Fearless Dollar – Take Your Money Further. Our goal is to jump in the pool of personal finance and learn alongside writers and readers. As we progress we hope to share our lessons learned and insight.

Here are some ways we can be Financially Literate and Fearless with our Dollar

Learn How To Budget

You can’t build a house without a foundation. Nor can you build a nest egg, emergency fund, retirement fund, stay out of debt and stand on your two feet without a monthly budget. Every personal finance expert out there will tell you that you must have a budget. There are different kinds of budgets. As long as it helps you keep track of where your money is going then you’re in better hands. Own your money before debt owns you.

Stand on Your Own Two Feet

Catherine from Plunged In Debt wrote for us, “My mother taught me at a very young age that if I was unable to stand on my own two feet, then no one would be able to sweep me off my feet. What she meant was that if I was unable to take care of myself, in all aspects, then how could I expect to be prepared enough to be in a relationship with anyone else?”

And this doesn’t only apply to the romanticists. You can’t take care of yourself if you can’t stand on your own to feet.

Stay Out of Debt

This is a big one. Some good loans like mortgages, student loans, car loans, business loans can be wise financial investments. But they can also be horribly bad decisions. Where is the wisdom? It lies with how much your budget can afford to take on. So you see; must have a budget first. Don’t buy too much house or too much car. Don’t get student loans for a $100,000 degree that will only get you a $30k a year job. Be rational, be financially literate.

Prepare For Your Golden Years

Saving is the key to wealth. With Compounding Interest and a steady savings plan you’ll be set. Let it do the work for you.

In 2009 many close or in retirement sold their investments because the stock market crashed. They sold out of fear.They should have held tight because those that did got all their losses back within a couple years. How did they know to do this? They probably did some research and studying of their own.

Does Too Much Consumerism Kills American Vacationism*?

by

Big Yosemite TripI just got back from a quick jaunt in Yosemite. If you’ve never been, and especially if you live within driving distance, it is worth the excruciating drive and lottery-style camping reservation system (we booked our September trip back in April, with reservations opening at 7 am and selling out by 7:10 am). Even so, Yosemite is a fairly affordable trip for spectacular sights, hikes and wilderness camping. Depending on how many people you go with, and how rugged you like to camp, $100-$150 per person for a three-day camping trip is totally doable. Go on a holiday weekend and you don’t even have to take a day off!

As we camped, hiked, and hung out in Curry Village, I was amazed by the number of European vacationers we encountered. I’m not being xenophobic, it’s just an observation: there were more French, German and Eastern European vacationers than visitors who could drive or take a short flight to visit Yosemite. In my nerdy head, I was coming up with all kinds of witty lines like “Well, this is the European Union’s economic policy at work.” and “More proof that French people really do enjoy life more than Americans.”

It’s something we’ve all talked about before- I’m sure anyone who studied abroad in Europe or took an extended trip through Europe or South America has made the comment that almost anyone who is not American seems to “live more”. They eat better food, take more vacations, acquire less stuff. These are huge generalizations but they come up often when we discuss the differences between our cultures. A European friend I mentioned all this to said it is pretty simple to see why: Americans can’t afford to take the same kinds of vacations because of our deeply consumerist culture. The house and the car and acquisition of stuff becomes our life, and three-week vacations become less and less frequent. Meanwhile, many of our European counterparts live in smaller homes or rent their entire lives, but they also take the entire month of August off and have been all over the world.

Again, this is dangerous territory (generalizing and assuming based on nationality) and bloggers in this space are the exception- many of them have discarded the conventions of American living and instead are doing the things that allow them to travel, have fewer burdensome financial obligations and don’t have to fill a 40 hour work week (but if they want to, they do).

In my own life, I’ve been lucky to take months off to travel, and in my working life, have always taken all my vacation days. But these past couple years of transition meant that vacationing took a hit: our last trip out of the country was two weeks in Costa Rica in December 2011. My last vacation longer than 5 days was 10 days in New Jersey over a year ago. I am lucky and consider it a privilege to be an American citizen (I’m naturalized and wasn’t born here) but this is one American norm I don’t want to embrace: I don’t want to have my head buried in work for so long that suddenly it’s been 5 years since I left the country (Tijuana trips excluded).

So even though I’ve paid off my debt and we’re working towards buying real estate, there are bigger goals at play: it’s still my number one priority to have time with family and friends, to have the freedom to try new things and visit new place and meet new people, and keep exploring.

So now it’s your turn: tell me about your latest adventure and where you went! If you haven’t been anywhere lately, tell my why :).

*Vacationism is not a real word.

PayAnywhere.com Credit Card Reader App Review

by

payanywhere.com review

Do you remember the days of bulky credit card sliders that stamped paper copies of transactions for vendors and buyers? I hated just writing that cumbersome sentence, on top of using the things. Fortunately, those things are almost completely long gone (at least in North America). We’re moving forward; past even the big, stationary credit cards readers that are bolted onto countertops.

If you are a business owner looking to not have to invest in expensive countertop credit card readers, what PayAnywhere.com offers just might be for you. If you’re seeking a nimble and quick way to process credit and debit cards, you’ll want to take a look at mobile readers and apps that more than one company are making.

payanywhere.com review
Oh, the pain of old credit card swipers.

With the advent of these light-weight, easy-to-access readers, new companies are popping up that offer hard- and software to making processing customer transactions much easier. Today, we want to break down the soft and hardware that Payanywhere.com delivers.

PayAnywhere.com Credit Card Reader “Executive” Overview

What’s the upside of PayAnywhere credit card readers?

  • The hardware and app are free
  • Per transaction “swipe” cost start at 2.69%
  • No need for installation of hardwired credit card reader “box”
  • Easy learning curve
  • User friendly
  • 24/7 Support
  • The reader can take Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express
  • The reader fits into the headphone jack and is compatible with iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, most Android smartphones or tablets, and BlackBerry smartphones

What’s the downside of PayAnywhere credit card readers?

There’s no start-up fee for the PayAnywhere reader. The hardware and app are free. Although that does assume you have a “smart” device to plug the hardware into and use the application on (such as an iPhone, Android or compatible tablet).

If you’re the sole person processing these payments, and you have a “smart” phone or tablet, then it makes sense that you would be doing it on a device you already own. If employees are taking the transactions, it’s best to buy them a device to do it on. Which means the investment for compatible hardware is going to likely be a few hundred dollars. Fortunately, that abdicates you of responsibility of your employee breaking their own phone on the job, and that tablet or phone can be used for multiple purposes as well.

PayAnywhere’s cost to you is simply charging you per swipe—at 2.69% per.

PayAnywhere.com Credit Card Reader “Extended” Review

So how does PayAnywhere.com stack against the market it’s entering?

Pricing:

You’ll see a helpful pricing table below I pulled from PayAnywhere’s website. It is not listed who they are comparing their pricing against, but I found it to be Square which is a leader in market share. PayAnywhere’s fee per swipe isn’t much lower (2.69% vs. 2.75%), but they beat Square greatly when it comes to significantly higher entrance fees. Square charges to get the hardware compared to PayAnywhere’s free headphone slot plug-in.

PayAnywhere charges 3.49% + plus 19 cents for keyed-in / typed transactions, by-the-way. So, swiping is better!

 payanywhere.com review

Minimums?

No sir. There are no monthly fees or minimums. You can expect to receive funds within 2 business days of processing.

Support

PayAnywhere.com doesn’t bury their Support number under layers and layers of knowledge base articles. The number is right there on top of their website. Whereas with other company’s customer service departments, you might have to dig around to find a number or enter a trouble ticket first before you can connect with a homosapien

The App

Viewing transaction details is a piece of cake, such as the sale amount, tax, discount, and even tip. You can also see graphs of your top sales days, produce a variety of custom reports, and set it up to send reports to you via email automatically.

Should you try the PayAnwhere.com reader and app?

Do you own a business? Then absolutely. It’s free, and it’s quality. Why not give it a shot? No one can complain about free, and you might find something that saves you a lot of money while making transactions for you and your customers much more convenient.

If you don’t like them, there’s no cancellation fee. All you have to do is apply at PayAnywhere.com and they’ll mail you the reader for free with no obligation.

Todd is our native gun for hire that curates four websites spanning multiples genres. Check out how he’s helping men become better men at Fearless Men and the insight he has to make your money grow at AllThingsFinance.net.

It’s Over: Moving On From an Indebted Lifestyle (How I Paid Off $40,000 in Debt in Two Years)

by

debt

Just like two minutes ago, I scheduled the last $410.50 payment towards my Discover balance. I have no more consumer debt. From May 2011 to just over two years later, I paid off a car ($6K), a grad school loan for a program I didn’t finish ($8K), Lasik surgery ($2.6K) and most of all, a ridiculous amount of credit card debt ($25K). I was in debt for most of my twenties, from about 2005 to four minutes ago :). At my worst, I had about $46,500 in debt, in June 2010.

At this moment, I don’t feel any euphoria as anticipated, but just a calmness and sense of relief. Phew, that’s over, now what the hell am I going to do next? But first I want to talk about why I wanted to get out of debt and why, even though it took over two years to do it, it was worth it and I am excited about living a life with no consumer debt, by which I mean interest-bearing loans for expenses and consumer goods. I had so much debt I felt stuck. I lived every month calculating and re-calculating the hopeless numbers. I had way too many bills. I stressed out Ryan and delayed our future plans because I didn’t want to get married in debt. It was so crappy and even though I never missed a payment and tried to pay extra on my bills, I was getting nowhere.

As I’ve said before, the blogs saved me. I started reading and couldn’t stop. I am lucky (or cursed) to have tunnel vision (some call it being “results-oriented”) and nothing was going to stop me from paying off all this debt and managing my money responsibly. I wrote down my goals, started blogging about it, and made progress each month towards paying off all my debt by 30.

Tenets of Basic Personal Finance

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably also read approximately 13,456 other personal finance posts and ALL have at some point addressed some ideas about what you should do when you’re in debt. Let me tackle those issues right now.

  • Emergency Fund: For most of this debt payoff journey, I had almost no emergency fund (less than $1,000). At one point, it got to be more than that, and I decided to use all of that money to pay off my car loan. I felt pretty comfortable that I was going to employed and could expect a regular paycheck, so I took the risk of having no backup funds and I was fine.
  • Pay the Smallest Balance or the Highest Interest: Duh, no brainer, pay the highest interest rate accounts first. I did this for all but my first account, the Lasik surgery. It was my smallest balance but had a big monthly payment, and would have had a balloon interest payment if not paid off in 24 months. So I took care of that lady first to avoid the interest, then began paying the rest of the high-interest accounts, from 10% credit cards to a 3.9% car loan.
  • Make More Money: I increased my income significantly over the past two years: changed jobs twice, grew an eBay business, and did consulting and other side projects whenever I had time. At first, it felt like finding new sources of income was impossible. Eventually, many new avenues opened up as I kept going, kept researching and kept trying different approaches.
  • Don’t Keep Up With the Joneses: I finally got this through my tiny little head! This was my main problem. I lived aspirationally because many, many people I know live aspirationally. This is Southern California, you lease an import whether you can afford it or not. But even though I always laughed at that idea of trying to impress other people with material possessions, in many ways I was trying to impress others with my lifestyle and cool shit I did. When I finally stopped doing that, my expenses fell in line and I was able to start paying off my debt. Not to say I don’t still do some cool shit.

You’ve Just Paid Off All Your Debt! What Are You Going to Do Next?

Disney World is too far and I’ve already been to Disneyland. So what am I going to do now? I don’t know, I’m excited, let’s talk about it!

  • I don’t have a net worth goal. It just doesn’t interest me and I don’t think it ever will. Achieving any number (besides zero debt so I could move on with my life) just won’t do anything for me. Yes, I want to make a lot of money. Yes, I know Napoleon Hill says I have to pick a number. But I just can’t bring myself to do it. My life is not a number, it already has a lot of numbers in it, and I’ll just keep upping the number so what’s point? For now, I have an annual income goal for each year, and I am going to make it a reach, just like paying off $40,000 in a little over two years was a reach.
  • I want to own real estate. But I realized something as I’ve been getting the daily MLS emails. I’m going to have to invest my money elsewhere. Owning real estate in Orange County is an expensive proposition and most places do not make sense as investments, unless you just have boatloads of cash and want to park it somewhere. So first things first, we’ll both be saving for a down payment for a place that we want to live in, not just a rund0wn place that could possibly be cash-flow positive as a rental. We still want it to be rundown so Ryan can renovate it, but in one of the OC beach cities, that will still be pretty pricey.
  • We won’t take on any debt for the wedding. After two long years of paying off debt, we’ll also be saving and hustling hard to have plenty of funds for the wedding. Open bar, dude.
  • I want to put my money where my mouth is. I’m going to look at investments now that I won’t be doing any real estate investing. I still run a decent eBay business, but have slowed down my consulting business since starting my new job. I’m fine with that. I don’t want to earn an hourly rate any more, even though it was a good one. I’m going to clean up my stock holdings, dust off my investment account and get back into researching local small businesses for sale. There’s always opportunity out there, it’s just a matter of being willing to do the work.
  • Get back to reading. I’m in the middle of Griftopia (Matt Taibbi is this generation’s HST but with more facts and less drugs) and in my new job, I’m surrounded by people who read a ton. I’ve got stacks of books waiting to be read and I still need to get around to The Intelligent Investor…
  • Live Free or Die. I never want to feel as shackled as I did by my debt. I have a job but it’s a job I’ve always wanted. I have so much to learn and so much to do and a huge market to tap. This stuff makes me happy. As long as I have the ability to do the things I want to do, live where I want to live and always be open to new discoveries in life, I’ll enjoy doing the work. If the work becomes meaningless, redundant or evil, I’m ready to walk away. And knowing I have no consumer debt and enough side business to cover my barebones monthly expenses makes it that much easier.

Advice for Paying Off Debt When It Seems Impossible

I didn’t come all this way to start saying weird things about debt or turning my nose up at people who have a ton of debt or who write about it and say, “Ewwww, debt/debt bloggers, they have cooties.” Nawwww. It’s better to come from a place of no judgement. It’s not easy, I still judge things everyday, but when people open up or tell you something about themselves, just listen. Don’t judge them, good or bad. Remember that we all have problems. Just because I’ve paid off my debt doesn’t mean 100 brand new issues, situations and ideas have not popped into my head to take over the space vacated by my debt worries.  Now I have to pay off my credit card in full every month. Now I need to pay the full car insurance premium so I don’t get hit with pesky $10 fees. Now I need to increase my 401(k) contributions to lower my taxable income. Now I need to finesse the details of a wedding, try not to hurt anyone’s feelings and make something fun, affordable, memorable and personal. Now I need to get better at keeping in touch and make some new friends in my new town. Now I need to study the next 18-24 months of economic policy to see when it will be best to lock in a mortgage rate. See what I mean? Lots of things going on, and that’s just the surface. It’s easy to turn these into worries, and I used to do that, but instead I just let them exist. I’ll think about them but I’m going to lose any sleep over them (yet).

I think you can pay off your debt. If you want to. If you’re willing to make some changes, spend some time thinking about money, what it means to you, and what your big goals are. This makes paying off debt easier. The other basics are:

  1. Cut your expenses (fees, cable, fast-casual meals with huge markups)
  2. Track your daily spending.
  3. Pay your highest interest debts first.
  4. Set monthly goals for your money.
  5. Give yourself room to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes. I slipped once or twice.
  6. Be excited for what comes next.
  7. Read as much as possible (this is my general life advice).

I still have a lot to write about, so American Debt Project will stick around. I thought I’d have some snazzy quotes for you all when I finally paid off all my debt, but I’ve been debt-free for almost two hours now which means I just need to get some sleep.

Have an awesome weekend and live big my friends!

 

Stop Hanging on to Old Perceptions of Yourself

by

revel hotel
It’s an old perception when I think I might blow my budget by going to Revel in Atlantic City just because it has an indoor/outdoor pool.

We think we know ourselves. We think we can look in the mirror and say, “Yup, that’s me. I’m like this, a little bit like that, and sometimes I’m totally this.” But our perceptions of ourselves are often from the past; outdated and they don’t exactly fit right anymore. You have changed and you may not even realize it. But when you talk about yourself using your old perceptions, you are limiting yourself. 

I used to be quite shy and quiet. I was a nerd (I still am, I know). It would kill me just to make eye contact and say hello to strangers, or introduce myself in a crowd when I felt all eyes were on me. I preferred to be the observer than to join in a conversation. But I’ve grown up. I say hello if I pass by you in the hallway or on the street. I introduce myself when I walk into a room. One of my favorite activities is just getting to know someone, sharing stories back and forth and spending hours talking. But if you asked me right now to describe myself, I would tell you, “Yeah, I’m really shy and reserved.”  That is a barefaced lie my friends, I am not shy at all and I freaking love to share ideas and talk to people! But in my head I am still stuck on this idea that new people make me nervous, I’m shy and scared to speak up when I should.

Are you hanging on to old ideas about yourself? Here are a few examples of this phenomenon:

  • You used to be overweight. You got serious about being healthy, started exercising and eating right and are now in the best shape of your life. But you still think of yourself as a “fat person”. You don’t trust yourself to stay in good shape, even though it has become an ingrained habit in your life. You like your new look, but you don’t embrace it as you. You’re not sure if the old, fat you or the new, fit you is the real you. 
  • You used to be in debt or wildly irresponsible with your money. Then you wised up. Paid off those credit cards, started saving more than you spent on junk and needless expenses. You’re getting better at investing and saving to buy a home. But you don’t believe in yourself. Going back into debt is only one night-in-Atlantic-City away, you scold yourself. And while that could be true, you don’t really plan on blowing a bunch of money at Tropicana and dabbling in illegal activity, so why are you forcing yourself to live in fear?
  • You had a temper. Anger rules over all of us if we allow it. You may have grown up in a home where getting angry was the only way to get anything accomplished. Even though that may have been how you survived in your childhood, you also knew how to grow out of that and can let anger go as you grow up and move on. You don’t get angry anymore and that’s awesome. But it’s easy to still think of yourself as angry and temperamental if you spent years in that “mode”.

You’re not doing yourself any favors by thinking of yourself in the least favorable terms. I’m not saying you should sit around all day thinking about yourself or how you perceive yourself (even I know that’s kind of vain), but we are called on to talk about ourselves regularly, especially as we meet new people. Remember who you are and how you got here, but realize just how far you’ve come and what an incredible feat that is.