debt

Saturday Night at the Movies: Declaring War on Bad Debt (Braveheart)

February 11, 2012

Saturday Night at the Movies uses great films to explore some aspect of personal finance. Published Saturdays at 7 PM, get your front row seat by subscribing to The Dough Roller. Sir William Wallace was born in the 1270s (the exact date is disputed). Barely reaching the age of 30 before his death, he led [...]

Read the full article →

How a Debt Snowball Can Reduce and Then Eliminate Your Debt

January 25, 2012

Welcome to our week-long series on crushing your credit card debt. In this third of five articles, we look at how to supercharge your get out of debt program with the Debt Snowball. Let’s cut right to the chase. Using the debt snowball method can save you thousands of dollars in interest payments and significantly [...]

Read the full article →

Stop Saving and Start Paying Off Debt NOW!

April 21, 2011

Have you looked at interest rates recently?  I mean, local brick and mortar banks are offering less than half a percent and if you check out banks like Citi, Bank of America and Chase, you’d be lucky to earn 10 cents on 100 bucks.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for saving money and keeping [...]

Read the full article →

How to Build an Emergency Fund

April 17, 2011

Last week I wrote about how my wife and I paid off a lot of debt in less than five years. An important part of getting out of debt for us was an emergency fund. A lot has been written about the importance of saving for a rainy day. But most of what you’ll read [...]

Read the full article →

How We Paid Off $237,428.13 in Debt in 5 Years

April 5, 2011

I’m not a huge Dave Ramsey fan. I’ve listened to his show from time to time and read his books. He can be entertaining, and he has helped a lot of people. But his dogmatic–“I’m right and you’re wrong”—approach to personal finance rubs me the wrong way. But he can be inspiring about getting out [...]

Read the full article →

Wicked Cool Debt Reduction Calculator (and it’s free!)

May 16, 2009
Thumbnail image for Wicked Cool Debt Reduction Calculator (and it’s free!)

This week I stumbled upon a really useful (and free) debt reduction calculator. It’s built using Excel, and it can be used with either Excel or Open Office (a free suite of office software). I’ve been using it all week, trying to figure out when we’ll be debt free. I can personally vouch for the [...]

Read the full article →