How An Excellent Credit Score Has Helped Us Save Money

Home Savings

Having excellent credit scores has helped my wife and I save in many ways over the years. We didn’t always have great credit scores.  Both my wife and I had our periods of credit card debt.  Along with that came the occasional late payment and the regular stealing from Peter to pay Paul lifestyle.  But we both wised up and, over time, eliminated our credit card debts.  With that came better and better credit scores.  We’ve discovered that having a good, or great, credit score has its benefits.
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What is a Certificate of Deposit (CD)?

Stack of Change

In today’s difficult economy, it is more important than ever to pay attention to the little details of personal finances.

Money kept in a typical savings accounts will earn very little interest, with many banks today paying as little as one tenth of one percent.

A certificate of deposit (CD) is one alternative that pays a better interest rate than a passbook savings account.

What is a Certificate of Deposit or CD?

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A Way To Save And Raise Money For A Short Film (Or Anything Else)

Movie Camera

David is striving to be a director and is straight out of film school.  He has been learning the ropes, techniques and has completed several short films, even winning an award in college for best short film.  His favorite director is Quentin Tarantino and tries to base his shooting style off of his.  He is working on his first full feature independent movie and wrote this great script and has nailed the casting for the leads.  He has put just about all of his savings into the production of the movie and maxed out his credit cards, but still is coming up short with raising enough money to shoot the full film.  He is looking to have the whole movie ready to be distributed in less than a six months so he can send it off to film festivals to hopefully get picked.  He just needs to raise a little bit more money so he can get all the shots done he wants because film is very expensive to buy.  How can David raise the extra money needed for him to finish his film?
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A Little Investigation And Elbow Grease Saved Us Over $150

Vacuum Cleaner Belts

My wife was vacuuming the house. She notices that the vacuum isn’t picking up as well as it should (this has happened before and we had discovered that the hose was backed up).  No big deal.  Then we smell a real nasty smell of rubber burning.  And the vacuum stopped picking up dirt.  Oh no.  “Great, we have to buy a new vacuum,” I say to my wife.  “What did this one cost us?  Around $150-$200?  Maybe we can get a good deal with it being the holidays and stores are trying to get rid of their inventory,” I say, trying to find the silver lining.  Just what we need though, another expense.
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Need A Last Minute Gift? Amazon To The Rescue!

It happens all the time.  You think you covered gifts for everyone and without fail you find you need one more at the last minute. Or a person you didn’t expect got you something and you want to return the gesture.  What to do?  Do you try to run out to a store last minute, fighting traffic, in the hopes that the store is still open and has a gift to get?

Enter Amazon to the rescue!

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Saving At The Supermarket Is FUN!

Winn Dixie Receipt

My Money Blog posted an article a few months ago talking about the theory of “price targeting”, where companies try to sell the same product to different people at different prices, hoping to come as close to an individuals’ target price as possible.  In the use of price targeting, shoppers are generally broken down into three categories.
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Another Case For Emergency Savings – Credit Score

Emergency Savings Bank

You know you need emergency savings right?

Should something come up where you need money quick you want to have emergency savings handy to help take care of the situation.  Well here’s another aspect to think about:

You need emergency savings to protect your credit score!
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