To Mortgage Payoff and Beyond!

Archive for January, 2013

To Mortgage Payoff and Beyond!

By AJTrenkle on Wednesday, January 30th, 2013 | 1 Comment

TweetIt goes without saying that the biggest expense for most folks is housing, and in particular their sometimes giant mortgage. While generally a blessing, 30 year loans at relatively low interest rates with qualification standards broadly open to most are a great thing, mortgages nonetheless chew up a lot of cash available for consumption and [...]

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Introducing Our Total Value Concept

By AJTrenkle on Sunday, January 27th, 2013 | No Comments

TweetGoing back a few months now I have been thinking about trying to show statistically a more nuanced way to evaluate our purchases, particularly for large items that are relatively expensive and big portions of our budget. The idea basically struck me that people will spend a fairly large amount of money on what economists [...]

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The Credit Cards in My Wallet

By AJTrenkle on Thursday, January 24th, 2013 | No Comments

TweetAs a part of my yearly financial review (the one that saved me a lot of money on auto insurance which I discussed a week ago), I reevaluated all of the credit cards in my wallet. In general, you should never cancel a no-fee card as having it increases your length of credit/average account age [...]

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News You Can Use, Inauguration Day 2013

By AJTrenkle on Monday, January 21st, 2013 | No Comments

TweetToday is a day for a lot of retrospectives on the first term of Barack Obama. Since much of the first term dealt with economics and personal finance in some way or another (and I would obviously include health care reform as a key part of that), many of these retrospectives have interesting insight on [...]

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Value of Frequent Flyer Miles Reconsidered

By AJTrenkle on Saturday, January 19th, 2013 | No Comments

TweetOne of the reasons I even write this blog is because of the inspiration I received, beginning in 2011, from reading various travel blogs. Over the past year or so I have accumulated a somewhat large cache of frequent flyer miles which I have detailed here. This weekend I began thinking in particular about my [...]

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Debt Ceiling Consequences

By AJTrenkle on Tuesday, January 15th, 2013 | No Comments

TweetIf the fiscal cliff crisis wasn’t enough fun for everyone, in the next 6-8 weeks a much higher stakes game of riverboat Russian roulette will play out with the debt ceiling debate. To sum matters up quickly, Congress must authorize an increase in the amount of debt legally permissible and thereby enables the Treasury to [...]

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Articles I Like for 1.13.12

By AJTrenkle on Sunday, January 13th, 2013 | No Comments

TweetThe Wall Street Journal has a highly interesting table showing the unemployment rate for various professions. Actors beware! Forbes has an interesting article about GM and how it got its groove back. Frugal Traveler says to save money in 2013 you should go retro. Share and Enjoy:

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Small Home Repairs Pay Big Dividends

By AJTrenkle on Sunday, January 13th, 2013 | No Comments

TweetThis weekend I did a number of small little repairs around the house that are almost entirely uninteresting, but which I think may be instructive on broader principles on how to save money. 1. I fixed the flap on our toilet. This had been annoying me for some time and I noticed on our last [...]

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How to Cut Your Insurance Bill

By AJTrenkle on Friday, January 11th, 2013 | No Comments

TweetA couple of days back I wrote about an amazing quote I had received from Geico after running through their self serve quote generator at Geico.com. In that post, I mentioned how the quote was so good, I actually thought it was too good to be true, so I wanted to wait to post more [...]

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What Laptop Should I Buy?

By AJTrenkle on Tuesday, January 8th, 2013 | No Comments

TweetSometime in the next 6 months I plan on getting a new laptop. I am hereby calling for proposals of what exactly I should get. Portability is key to me, but also power as this will be my "work horse" computer. I am intrigued by the Mac Air, but realize playing games with an external [...]

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Archive for January, 2013