My whole new "get cool shit" plan...

[ZacFields]

I implemented this today...but honestly I think I'm a genious for thinking this up on my way to best buy.

Somehow I managed to get best buy to give me $1,500 in credit today... I had 800 before and they increased me to 1500. ! go me!

Anyways, over the last year I bought quite a few things on the best buy card because they always have seriously kickass financing deals on this stuff. Like usually 12 or 18 months 0% interest which is really nice.

So slowly over time I began paying $100/month on my best buy card... and never get charged interest because everything always gets paid off before it's financing term is over.

So eventually, that $100/month became part of my budget... I don't even notice that $100 leaving every month because I have it set up online to just auto-deduct that $100 on the 3rd friday of every month.

So yesterday morning i realized that in about a month i'll be completely out of best buy debt...and Ashley and I wanted to buy a digital camcorder.

So I rationalized the $600 camcorder I bought today like this: The $100/month I pay on my best buy card every month is part of my budget now. I have even budgeted it around my savings (I put $250/week into stock market and whatever is left over goes into savings acct) so the way I see it, as long as I'm never getting charged interest , meaning i'm paying everything off in time, I'd might as well purchase all my fun gizmo's and gadgets from best buy right when I want them. Why save up for months to buy something when you can essentially get it for free because it's part of your monthly budget?

lol... sorry but I was excited. I feel like I just got a $600 digital camcorder for free. Just bought a $300 digital camera about a month ago.... a new computer (ashley's) about 2 weeks ago, and the camcorder today.... but actually I think we paid for Ash's computer in cash because that was before I got the credit limit increase.

gah credit is such a beautiful thing... as long as you stay on top of it :)

Zac

[DragonUSMC]

Zac, I'm buying a few Cannon GL-2s (about $2500) and I cant remember the other camera but its more around ($3800)

Figure out how i can get those for free... And you'll be my bestest friend forever and ever =D


Financing kiddies!!! Its nice to not have to worry about going some where and worrying if you have $$ to pay for somthing.

[ZacFields]

^ Hahaha.... you could steal them :)

nahhh!!!

Well I used to be soooo against credit. I actually pay my wells fargo credit card off everytime I get a paycheck now because I just don't like to be in debt...but the reason I don't like to be in debt is because of the interest payments... I hate interest because think about it, if you have 10% interest (I actually think my wells fargo card charges like 11%) then if you buy something for $1,000 and don't pay for a year, that item costed you $1,100!! what a rip!

But with best buy cards and a lot of other store's credit cards they have financing offers like 12, 18, or sometimes even 24 or more months free financing. That's a sweet deal...it's like replacing one giant payment simply with a bunch of smaller payments.

I've never been charged interest in my life thus far...always keep my stuff paid off. Credit is just great to have if you can handle it. If you get too excited though, you can really screw yourself over.

Zac

[DragonUSMC]

Eh I'm looking more at the expenditure write off for small business equipment. =) so with the 5 year depreciation should make it a nice little deal.

[Rollin on Dubs]

A guy i work with Puts everything on his credit card, (every monthly expense) fuel, food, phone bill. I think he even pays his house payment with his credit card. THen when he gets his monthy bill from his credit card he pays it off in full (only writes one check a month) He never gets any intrest charges or finace charges since it is always current. And he has an awsome credit score because it shows he makes on time payments to his card and all the other things that he pays with his card on. He has alot of self disapline and that is why it works well for him. But i could see how someone would get over extended if they didint know how to budget there money properly.

[Ashley]

yeah we put pretty much everything on our credit cards too.. food, gas.. the only thing we use our checking account for is just so we have somewhere our paychecks deposit to and to pay our credit cards off a couple times a month, lol. plus our insurance comes out of our checking acct.. but other than that, we dont really use it that much

[DustinsDuster]

A guy i work with Puts everything on his credit card, (every monthly expense) fuel, food, phone bill. I think he even pays his house payment with his credit card. THen when he gets his monthy bill from his credit card he pays it off in full (only writes one check a month) He never gets any intrest charges or finace charges since it is always current. And he has an awsome credit score because it shows he makes on time payments to his card and all the other things that he pays with his card on. He has alot of self disapline and that is why it works well for him. But i could see how someone would get over extended if they didint know how to budget there money properly.

that sounds like itd work awesome in theory, but i dont know if i could do it.

i hate being in debt also, so what did i do? just never got any credit cards. the bad part of that is i have pretty much no credit. thats why ive decided to get a credit card just to buy like groceries and gas with. i could easily pay that off every month. need to start building myself some credit....

[ZacFields]

^ Dustin, a good way to build credit is to get a credit card and just set up all your monthly bills to be deducted from your credit. Like all the stuff that you have to pay anyways, y'know?

I pay for everything in some sort of credit except for stuff that I can't pay with credit for some reason...but then again I don't have the kinds of bills that a lot of you have so I make a lot more money than I would ever dream of spending in a month at this point in time. About 75% of my weekly paycheck goes to stocks!!! hah!

Zac

[warchild145]

no credit cards here and never will, and i have plenty of credit. I figure if i dont have the cash then i can wait and get it when i do. Worked so far except for the obvious things like a house.

Also wish i could use 75% of my paycheck to do something with but i think i have about 10% i get to play with.

[69gt4speed]

Talking about credit cards, they are handy at shows or such. They are almost a must since renting a car etc. etc. wants them. Then it counts on your credit score when you want a big loan. If you deal with ebay and that stuff sometimes in a bad deal a credit card can be helpful on getting your money back.

[ZacFields]

no credit cards here and never will, and i have plenty of credit. I figure if i dont have the cash then i can wait and get it when i do. Worked so far except for the obvious things like a house.

Also wish i could use 75% of my paycheck to do something with but i think i have about 10% i get to play with.

Well I really don't ever buy anything I couldn't afford to pay cash with. I've got a fairly large savings built up which is a nice cushion for any "oopsies" I would ever run into. Back when I was working at QT there were some times when I had a little trouble paying off all my credit by the end of the month but I still always made it. Now that i'm working full time I don't have to worry about that at all really.

And as far as the 75% thing, I think that makes it fairly obvious that I still live at home. hehe... haven't had a reason to leave yet since I go to school straight-shot roughly maybe 2 miles from my house. But most of that money I put into the stock market will eventually be pulled out to buy a house. I have a few investments that I'm planning to keep in the markets even after I buy a house but a lot of what i've been putting my money into is basically some major growth companies trading at or above $25-$30 per share.

Been buying a bunch of a certain stock that I have a feeling is going to make me a lot of money if I keep buying up all the shares I can get my hands on and holding it for about 5 years or so.

For those of you thinking of getting in the stock market... there are a few dark corners here and there where you can find a gem for under 50 cents or even under 20 cents a share that is just priming itself to shoot through the stars.

I have a penny stock (about 5 cents a share) that I know won't go bankrupt. Competed with over 50 companies for government permission to fill orders for any branch of the military (and got the clearance they needed) and also have been filling a ton of orders for retail businesses, contractors, and also provide a product totally ideal for potential hurricane victims. All this stuff has been happening for over 6 months and the stock price has actually been declining slightly but mostly stays at the same spot. Perfect spot to snag a few thousand shares here and there until the stock gets discovered and starts to rise.

Whoah talk about a ramble... I'm tired.

Zac

[Rollin on Dubs]

Haveing good credit at a young age is extremly hard, and good credit will effect you alot more than just if you get a loan on something or not. Most people dont know that if you have good credit it will actually decrease your car insurance rates, and get you a better intrest rate if you buy a home. I know that for most people credit cards can get you in trouble. I admit that i even have put stuff on my card that i cant pay off in 1month. But if you have good disapline and dont have much of a month to month fluxuation in expenses. Putting all your monthly expeses on your card and paying it off usually helps you alot. But zac i do have to give you some credit for saving to buy a house. I only had about 9K saved up to buy my house and was able to put 6% down. But if you are able to put 20% down it will save you thousands of dollars a year on your mortgage, since you wont have to have PMI insurace.

[ZacFields]

Thanks dubs... and that is exactly why I'm waiting so long to move out. I would like to stay away from that PMI insurance if it is humanly possible.

Unlike a lot of people I know, I decided not to move out into an apartment or dorm right after high school. The way I see it, if you live in an apartment for 5 years at $500/month (which is actually on the cheap side) after that 5 years you will have paid $30,000 to the owner of that apartment complex. Now lets say you want to move out and buy a house... you're going to leave that apartment and probably (hopefully) get your deposit back of maybe $500, so you've essentially just flushed $29,500 down the drain....that's money you will never get back. I've thought about it for a long time and I just can't justify that...it just doesn't make sense inside my head. I had the option to stay at home and sack some money away so I didn't see any reason to leave right away.

At least if you were to buy a $50,000 one-bedroom condo (which is about the normal price for just a small one-bedroom) you could easily set up your monthly payments to be $500 or even less than that (I bet you could sneak it down to $300 or less if you got a longer loan) And yeah you're going to lose a bunch of money on interest. If you were paying $500 (just solely for the mortgage) after a year you're still probably putting at least $5,000 or more towards the principle (this is money you can get back when you sell the condo) and less than $1,000 is thrown away to interest. BUT! That is a far-cry from throwing away a straight $6,000/yr ($500 times 12 months) to the owner of an apartment complex.

Yeah there's other stuff to pay for too, though. PMI insurance if you're required, taxes, association fee's etc. But in the end, no matter what, when u sell the condo you're going to get a good chunk of your money back as long as you stuck around for at least a few years.

(This is all "ceterus paribus" type stuff... I think some loans actually have you pay all interest for the duration of the loan first before you start paying principle but for description sake I say keep it simple)

Another rant :) But my point is if you're AT LEAST working on trying to own a home of some kind then you're doing the right thing. Renting forever is a death trap. Get yourself in a nice big $200,000 house while you're young (30's-40's-50's) and then when you retire you can cash in on the equity and move to a condo in florida with that equity.

Zac

[melhoneybee]

I actually put 10 G down on my condo. Plus I make bi-weekly payment instead of once a month. So that means I get an extra payment in every year!

And actually the condo I have might be one of those 50 K ones... but it's bigger then some houses I looked at for 75 K.


Credit is an awesome thing if you use it right. Like what you guys are saying. It can also get people in alot of trouble. Like you were saying Zac those department store cards are awesome most of the time. I was able to buy my living room funiture (2000) on one of those with same as cash for 18 months. EXTREMELY easy to pay that off in that amount of time!

People say they won't ever have credit cards. I use mine all the time.. ask me sometime I'll show you the amount in my purse... it's kinda excessive! Put a credit score of 720 at 22 is awesome also!

[DustinsDuster]

Zac, just gotta say, your new camera is pretty BA. that means BAD ASS!

[ZacFields]

^ Heck yeah. Thanks dustin...

And if you guys haven't checked out my video from the BBQ, check it out

http://crunderground.com/dload.php?acti ... y&cat_id=1 (http://crunderground.com/dload.php?action=category&cat_id=1)

The quality on the video is awesome.... and I actually have that compressed down to about 20% of the file size that it's supposed to be (was originally about 130mb I think) so you can imagine how great the quality is with a full size/quality video.

Zac

[Nicolaskl]

At least if you were to buy a $50,000 one-bedroom condo (which is about the normal price for just a small one-bedroom) you could easily set up your monthly payments to be $500 or even less than that (I bet you could sneak it down to $300 or less if you got a longer loan) And yeah you're going to lose a bunch of money on interest. If you were paying $500 (just solely for the mortgage) after a year you're still probably putting at least $5,000 or more towards the principle (this is money you can get back when you sell the condo) and less than $1,000 is thrown away to interest. BUT! That is a far-cry from throwing away a straight $6,000/yr ($500 times 12 months) to the owner of an apartment complex.


Lol, have you ever actually looked at the numbers on a mortgage? The only way 5/6ths of your money is going towards principle is if you got a 5 year mortgage or something. A 15 year mortgage financing 50,000 dollars your payments will be 419 and after 5 years you'll have paid about 25 grand total but only 12 towards the principle. Add in insurance, property tax, repairs, etc, etc, etc.

[ZacFields]

^ Yeah that's my fault, not sure what I was thinking there, but even so, it's really not quite the point of the post.

You're right.

$50,000 loan, call it 7% interest for simplicity sake.

1yr interest is $3,500 not including what you pay back over the year.

1yr of $500 payments is $6,000 so in that case, in your first year you're probably contributing about $2,500 towards principle.

It gets a lot easier as the years go by. That $500 goes a little bit farther against interest every year obviously. But if you were to put, say $15k down, reducing your mortgage to $35k, now you're talking a little bit better situation for yourself.

1yr payments are still $6,000 @ $500/month
but now, 1yr interest is now only $2,400 so keeping it simple now, you're paying about 60% to mortgage.

I'm not sure what I was thinking with that post anyways. I think I wasn't really paying too much attention to what I was saying about the mortgage and more attention to the true topic at hand, which was that it's better to buy than rent...always. You'll never be in a better renting situation than buying unless somehow you get a renter that just offers to give all your money back to u when you're done renting.


Zac

oh PS also i'm not even referring to taxes or insurance or any of that. Those are just expenses that you have to deal with when buying a home whether you like it or not.