In the first section of the calculator shown above, you can enter all of your current debts, including the balance, interest rate, and minimum payment. The "custom" column to the far right allows you to determine in what order you'll pay down the debt, which comes into play with the next screen shot:

You'll see a drop-down box with a label of "Strategy." Here you can select from several debt snowball strategies (e.g., highest interest first, lowest balance first, etc.) or, using the Custom column from the first screen shot, pay off your debt in any order you want.

Plug in how much extra you'll pay, if any, and the spreadsheet calculates when each debt will be paid and how much total interest you'll pay. It's a great tool to war game your debt snowball plan.

This past week has been a great one for personal finance articles around the net. Here are a list of some of the top personal finance carnivals and articles for your reading pleasure:

Carnivals

• Carnival of Financial Planning 05-09-09 (@Intelligent Sepculator)
• Carnival of Personal Development - Final Edition (@Insight Writer)
• Carnival of Personal Finance #204 (@Earn What You Spend)

Articles

• What to do if your local car dealership is closing (@Smart Spending)
• Interview With A Dave Ramsey Certified Counselor (@ManvsDebt)
• Colbert's Credit Card gets its own Credit Card! Haha... (@Budgets Are Sexy)
• 7 Money Mistakes from Smart Money Magazine (@Gather Little By Little)
• How do you eat an elephant? (@How to Make 7 Million in 7 Years)
• 6 Job Search Tips for New College Grads (@My Dollar Plan)
• Finding Salvaged Goods To Save Money On Remodeling Your Home. (@My Two Dollars)
• The Art of Taking a Staycation (@Suburban Dollar)
• Why the Credit Card Legislation Should Pass (@Alpha Consumer)
• How To Save Money - The 1,001 List Of Money Saving Tips And Ideas (@Moolanomy)
• Ten Things Dave Ramsey Got Wrong (@Bad Money Advice)

Buy and Sell Gift Cards

There is an active secondary market for gift cards. And one place to buy, sell or trade gift cards is called Plastic Jungle. Registration, which is free, is required to buy, sell or trade gift cards. You can save money and lots of it by buying gift cards, but let's first look at generating cash from selling cards.

Selling Gift Cards with Plastic Jungle

There are two options for selling a gift card on Plastic Jungle. First, you can sell the card directly to PJ for what they call "Quick Cash." PJ's Quick Cash page has a nifty tool that will tell you how much they will pay for your card. A $50 AMC Theatre gift card, for example, will net you $32.50. A $50 Best Buy card gets you $35. From what I can tell, the highest paying gift cards sold through PJ's Quick Cash payout at 70% of the face value of the card.

Second, you can put your card up for sale to third parties on PJ's site. You set your own price, and can accept cash or trade. You can also enable a feature to allow bidders to make a counter offer.

Buy Discounted Gift Cards

If you can sell gift cards on Plastic Jungle, you can also buy gift cards, and at a great discount. I noticed, for example, that Home Depot gift cards are selling at an 8% discount off the card's face value. So why would one ever shop at Home Depot without one of these discounted cards? I guess to avoid the hassle of buying the card online. But if you plan ahead, you can save a lot of money by buying these cards and using them at the retailers you shop at regularly. Now that's smart money management at its best.

Trade Gift Cards

If you have a gift card for a store where you don't shop, another option is to trade the card. A trade can avoid the loss of 30% or more when you sell the card, and you can nab a gift card for a store where you enjoy shopping. Plastic Jungle has a section for trading gift cards. When card owners list their cards for sale, they can also list gift cards they would consider for a trade.

All in all Plastic Jungle looks like a great online tool to manage your money. I expect to start buying discounted cards for those retailers where we shop every month. If you've used Plastic Jungle, please let us know what you think.

LifeLock is an identity theft prevention service available online. You may have heard radio advertisements in which its CEO, Todd Davis, confidently reveals his social security number. It's 457-55-5462, by the way. He explains that "identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in America, victimizing over 10 million people a year and costing billions of dollars. So why publish my social security number? Because I’m absolutely confident LifeLock is protecting my good name and personal information, just like it will yours. And we guarantee our service up to $1 million dollars."

Now I'd never give out my social security number, with LifeLock or not. But given the rise in identity theft crimes over the past ten years, I thought a review of LifeLock was in order. First we'll cover some facts about identity theft, then we'll look at how LifeLock works and what it costs.

Facts About Identity Theft

According to the Identity Theft Resource Center, identity theft affects over 15 million individuals each year:

• According to the Gartner study the 2006 victim population was at 15 million victims. That means every minute about 28 ½ people become a new victim of this crime, or a new victim in just over 2 seconds.
• The incidence of victimization increased 11-20% between 2001 and 2002 and 80% between 2002 and 2003 (Harris Interactive). This same study found that 91% of respondents do not see an “end to the tunnel” and expect a heavy increase in victimization. 49% also stated that they do not feel they know how to adequately protect themselves from this crime.
• In a bulletin published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, an estimated 3.6 million households were affected by identity theft during a 6-month period in 2004. If an entire year was considered, that could mean that 7.2 million households were affected in a 12 month period.

Perhaps the most startling statistic is that the United States Department of Justice reports that identity theft crimes are now passing drug trafficking as the number one crime in the United States.

Phishing scams play a significant role in identity theft crimes. A common phishing scam involves sending the victim an email purportedly from their financial institution. The email includes a link and asks the victim to update his or her confidential information. What makes these scams so effective is that the link takes the victim to a website that looks very similar their actual bank's website. Believing that they are at a legitimate website, they then enter confidential information.

As of July 2006, there were over 23,000 phishing websites compared to just 4,500 a year earlier. One report found that 14% of phishing scams are successful. And the cost in money and time for the victims is significant:

• Losses from phishing attacks: in 2004 was $137 million, in 2006 it was $2.8 billion
• Number of US adults who received a phishing email: the number doubled from 57 million in 2004 to 109 million in 2006
• The per victim loss increased almost five-fold from $257 in 2004 to $1,244 in 2006
• The money recovered by consumers dropped from 80% in 2004 to 54% in 2006

LifeLock--How does it work?

In a nutshell, LifeLock protects its customers' identity by placing a fraud alert on the individual's credit files with the major credit bureaus. With a fraud alert, credit card companies and other credit issuers are then required to take additional steps to confirm your identity before issuing you credit. As a result, they are more likely to catch an individual trying to use your social security number or other identifying information to obtain credit with your name.

In addition, LifeLock performs several other steps:

1. About, every 90 days LifeLock again places a fraud alert on your credit file with the major credit bureaus.
2. LifeLock requests that your name be removed from pre-approved credit card and junk mail lists. In addition to reducing your mail, statistics show that thieves often hijack pre-approved offers in the mail and use them to apply for credit under the victim's name.
3. LifeLock also orders your free credit reports from the major credit bureaus every year.
4. LifeLock offers what it calls WalletLock™. If you lose your wallet or purse, or if they are stolen, LifeLock will help you contact each credit card, bank or document issuing company, cancel your affected accounts and complete the paperwork and steps necessary to replace your lost documents*, including your credit/debit cards, driver's license, social security card, insurance cards, and checkbook.
5. LifeLock monitors certain websites and databases to detect any illegal selling or trading of your personal information or any new address information associated with your name.

Is LifeLock fool-proof?

No. Nothing is fool-proof. But here is what LifeLock says they will do should you be the victim of identity theft:

If your Identity is stolen while you are a member of LifeLock, we're going to do whatever it takes to recover your good name. If you need lawyers, we're going to hire the best we can find. If you need investigators, accountants, case managers, whatever, they're yours. If you lose money as a result of the theft, we're going to give it back to you.

We will do whatever it takes to help you recover your good name and we will spend up to $1,000,000 to do it.

We don't think you will see a guarantee like this anywhere else from any other company. If you do, let us know because we'd like to do business with them. There isn't much fine print in our Guarantee.

How much does LifeLock cost and is it worth it?

Here's the big question. LifeLock costs $10 per month or $110 per year, although in a minute I'll tell how you can get LifeLock for 10% less. I first heard of LifeLock on the radio, and my reaction was that I could place fraud alerts on my credit files for free. One thing I find refreshing about LifeLock is that it readily admits that you can take the steps it would take on your behalf for free. What they are selling is convenience and the assurance that it gets done. Of course, they are also offering their assistance and $1 million guarantee.

So is LifeLock worth the cost? I think so. I've paid for credit monitoring in the past, and have been happy with the service. LifeLock takes credit monitor one giant step forward, and for the same price.

And now for that 10% discount. It's simple--you can click here to get a 10% discount., bringing the cost down to $9 or a month or $99 per year.

Uncluterer is a site devoted to home and office organization. The cite features tips, organization strategies, product reviews, and reader questions to help keep your life a tad more orderly. Here's how Unclutterer describes itself:

Unclutterer is the website for home and office organization. It’s not just for the helplessly disorganized who would lose their head if it wasn’t attached to them, and pack rats looking to put their stashes on a diet, but also for obsessive compulsive neat freaks looking to squeeze even more order into their lives. We hope we can make getting and staying organized fun and informative.

Jott is just plain cool. Jott converts your voice into emails, text messages, reminders, lists and appointments. With Jott, you call its toll-free number and leave a voice message that is converted into text and sent to you or others as an email or a text message. You can, for example, have Jott send you an email and text message at a certain day and time to reminder you of whatever you need reminding. You can call in an email to yourself if you have something you don't want to forget. You can even maintain lists on Jott.com, and add to the list via a voice mail message.

Do you need to be hassled? For example, how about receiving an email every other day reminding you that you need to go to the gym? Or how about an email three times a day reminding you to eat fruit or drink 8 glasses of water? If so, then HassleMe is for you. You set the subject of the email and how often you want hassled, and HassleMe does the rest.

Do you suffer from famnesia? Famnesia is a condition that causes well-meaning moms and dads to completely forget about family events that have been planned for months. If so, Cozi may be for you. With Cozi, you can keep an online family journal, calender and lists. You can also quickly and easily send messages to any family member. Each family member is associated with his or her own color on the calendar, so that you can quickly know who an event is for. Sign up takes about 43 seconds, and the interface looks inviting. Cozi also has a PC version. Hey Cozi, what about Macs?

The problem is that keeping track of time, especially leisure time, seems like a tedious activity that would itself take away from the hours that we can spend doing what we want. (Budgeting, for all that the average person hates it, at least doesn’t cost money!) The good news is that Firefox has some useful extensions that can help you painlessly track the time that you spend, both online and off.

Photo Credit: firefoxrockfestival

Track Your Cell Phone Minutes

Did you forget that your mother called your cell and talked for five hours on the first day of your billing cycle? Never quite sure how many minutes you have left? Firefox has extensions for all of the major US cell service providers, showing you exactly how much time you have left on your cell phone for the month.

T-Mobile (USA) Minutes Used version 1.4

Looks like it doesn’t have SMS support, but according to the comments, the latest version seems to be working well.

Verizon Minutes Used version 1.4

From the same man who wrote the T-Mobile extension. Apparently, it’s tricky to track one phone if you have a family plan, but other than that, those who’ve commented seem satisfied.

Cingular Minute Minder 1.0

Can be downloaded using the Cingular Minute Minder 1.0 link under “Revisions” on the right-hand sidebar of the developer’s blog.

The same developer is also working on a version for AT&T users. It looks like it’s working for some people, and the developer is working on upgrading it as well.

Sprint Minutes Ticker

I use Sprint, and have my username and password saved on the (recently upgraded) Sprint site. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the Sprint extension not only worked as soon as I installed it, but also gave me my phone number (erased from the screenshot below), info on text message usage, the end of my next billing cycle, and the last date that it had pulled my minutes used.

Track Your Packages

Do you shop online? Sell online? Splurge on the extra few cents that it takes to get a tracking number put on your post? While I wish it had the ability to make packages reach people faster, this Firefox extension will at least make it easy for you to tell where your packages are stuck, and how long they’ve taken to get as far as they have.

Track Package extension

At its most basic, this extension allows you to highlight a tracking number and then right-click to be taken to the tracking page of whichever shipping company you used. It supports UPS, FedEx, DHL, USPS, Canada Post, and Purolator, with the option to add other carriers yourself.

For the more visually inclined among us, Track Package also includes an option to link to PackageMapping.com, where you can see your package’s path on Google Maps. For those sending or receiving lots of post, it includes a history of packages tracked using the extension, and a toolbar add-on that allows you to automatically make links out of un-linked tracking numbers. All the functionality is outlined with nice screenshots on the instructions section of the developer’s website.

Track Yourself

Not to imply that time spent online is time wasted (reading this blog, for example, is a brilliant idea; you should do it more often) but sometimes the internet can suck up far more of our waking hours—or far more of the hours that we should have been sleeping—than we mean it to.

TimeTracker 1.2.3

A very simple timer that sits on the bottom of your browser window and tells you how long you’ve spent on Firefox. It’s not intrusive, it pauses when your browser isn’t an active window (or when you click it to pause), and it gives you the option to list certain sites as “work sites” that don’t count in your total browsing time. I’ve been using this timer for a while now, and I really like it.

PageAddict

Allows you to group sites into categories like “procrastination” and “work”. It then tracks how much time you’ve spent in each category, and gives you a colorful graphical breakdown when you visit PageAddict.com.

MeeTimer

The most complex of the time trackers, MeeTimer also allows you to categorize sites. It then tells you what percentage of your browsing time has been spent on each category. You can also set it to include “deterrents” which pop up when you visit a page in your procrastination category, informing you of how much time you’ve wasted during the week so far. Excellent screenshots of the MeeTimer can be found here.

Unlike money, time has to be spent. While the above extensions can’t be used to give you a detailed budget of your time, they can at least give you a little bit more information about how you’re using it.

Who wants a $25 bonus? ING Direct is offering a $25 bonus for anybody who opens an online Orange Savings Account with an initial deposit of at least $250. To qualify, all you have to do is use one of the links below to open the account. I would ask that you only use the links if you intend to open the account with an initial $250 deposit or more. (If you don't want to start out with a $250 initial deposit, but still want to open an account, you can quickly and easily open an ING Direct Orange Savings Account by clicking here.)

In addition to the $25 bonus you'll receive for opening an account, I'll receive a $10 referral bonus, half of which I donate to charity.

If you click on a link it may say something like this:

We're sorry, but the referral link within the email you received has expired and is no longer valid. We recommend that you contact the sender and ask them to re-send the referral email. Or click "Continue" to proceed with the application process without the account opening bonus.

If it does , please choose another link instead. As links are used, I will cross them out, but sometimes there's a bit of delay, particularly on days when a couple thousands folks decide to pay The Dough Roller a visit. And remember, when the links are gone, they're gone.

So without further ado, here are the ING Direct Referral Links:

1. ING Direct Savings Account $25 Referral
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And by the way, if you really like saving some dough, check out these 0% balance transfer credit card offers.

And for you folks in Australia, check out Savings Accounts from ING Direct Australia.

I hate junk mail. So does Green Dimes, a paid service ($20) that claims to stop up to 90% of the junk mail for its members. And as an interesting twist, Green Dimes plants 5 trees for each person who signs up for the service. Here's how it works (and a DIY alternative):

Once you sign up and pay the annual $20 fee, Green Dimes takes you off dozens of junk mail lists. It also plants five trees. Then you choose which catalogs you are currently receiving that you no longer want. Green Dimes takes you off each catalog you pick. It also plants one tree for each catalog you choose. If you move, there is a $10 charge to provide the same service for your new address.

So is it worth it? For the convenience, perhaps. If you'd like a DIY alternative, however, check out this article from Smart Money, Stopping Junk Mail Is Easy, and Good for the Environment. I think I'll start with the DIY approach and see how well it works.

NotchUp was built with one specific purpose: to disrupt the frustrating, costly, and time consuming process of identifying talented prospects. Professionals on NotchUp set an asking price, the price at which they'll talk to prospective employers. Companies use NotchUp to find professionals with the skills and experience they need, and pay those professionals their asking price to interview. NotchUp brokers the transaction and protects both parties to ensure that companies and prospects are free to explore new opportunities.

I guess the trick is having a good enough resume to attract employers willing to pay for an interview. If you would like an estimate of how much you can charge for an interview, you can use NotchUp's tool to calculate your interview price. Maybe interviewing could become a part-time job.

The Internet offers a wealth of information about personal finance and investing. Whether its a news item, a new online tool you want to try out, or information to help make you a better investor, all this information can be overwhelming. I've tried everything from e-mailing a link to myself to using bookmarks, but somehow the information gets lost or I just never return to it. A company called The Idea Shower may have a solution. It's called Read it Later.

Read it Later is very simple to use. First download the Read it Later Firefox extension. Then when you come across something on the internet that interests you, simply click the "Read Later" button on your Firefox tool bar and the page is stored. If it's a link you're interested in, you can even right click the link and add it to the read later folder. When you have more time for reading, you can go back through the list of saved pages either randomly or by choosing each item in a drop down list. If you find something you want to bookmark, the Read Later button gives you a massive list of just about every online bookmarking site available, so bookmarking is a snap.

You can download the Read it Later Firefox extension at Idea Shower.

Source: Killer Startups.

Quicken Online from my iMac

Quicken Online from my iMac looked pretty sharp. Both Gina at Lifehacker and JD at Get Rich Slowly have put together very nice visual reviews of Quicken Online. You can check these reviews out. The nice desktop screen shots, including pie charts and graphs, set my expectations for what I would see through my iPhone. After all, the iPhone runs the Safari browser, so there's no reason why the graphics shouldn't measure up to a desktop.

The Quicken Online splash screen gave me false hope

When I first went to Quicken Online from my iPhone, the site looked great:

The graphics and layout of this sign-up screen look identical to what you'd find on a desktop. So I signed up, gave Quicken my user id and password for my checking account, and navigated to Quicken Online on my iPhone.

Quicken Online for the iPhone is functional but uninspired

When I got to Quicken Online for the iPhone, I thought something was wrong. I kept looking for all the spiffy graphics and charts. Nothing. It's functional, to be sure, but nothing more. Here is a screen shot of My Accounts:

I literally spent 10 minutes hunting for buttons or links that would take me to all the great graphics Quicken Online offers on the desktop. The "Home" tab on the desktop version is no where to be found on the iPhone version, and neither is the "Track Spending" tab. Both of these features on the desktop version offer descent graphical representations of how you're spending your money. It was a real disappointment not to find these same features on the iPhone version of Quicken Online. I could show you screenshots of the "My Bills" and "Add Transaction" tabs, but they are just as uninspired as the "My Accounts" tab.

Eventually, though, I did find a way to bring up some smart looking money management graphics and tools for iPhone users. From the Quicken Online screen, scroll up to the top of the page and enter the following URL: www.mint.com. What you'll find is not perfect, but it's light years better than Quicken Online, as the following iPhone screenshots demonstrate: