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Calculate your ending value from a simple compound investment, like a savings account.

Try out the CAGR Calculator!

In an effort to help financial
services organizations collect on large volumes of uncollected debt,
Experian(R), a global information solutions provider, today announced the
launch of Collection Triggers(SM). Collection Triggers is a robust and
flexible collections solution that monitors a company’s portfolio of
collections accounts. When new information on one of these accounts becomes
available, indicating the possibility of recovering the debt, the organization
is notified within 24 hours and can then resume efforts to contact the
consumer and collect the outstanding debt.

So you are now getting back on your feet and are ready to start paying off old debt? The old advice was to just call one creditor at a time and setup a payment plan with them. This would avoid the barrage of calls and mail from all your old creditors at once, and allow you to pay off the debts one at a time. But if one of those creditors subscribes to this new collection trigger service, as soon as you start making payments to one creditor, you are going to “trigger” others to start coming after you.

Read the full press release: Experian Collection Triggers

Well it’s that time again tomorrow. If you file estimated quarterly taxes, better have your check book ready. This year the payments are really hurting to send in. The reason is your estimates are based on your previous years earnings. Well this year my earnings are down quite a bit. Sending in these payments is taking a much larger chunk of income than it did last year. I know I’ll get back the difference when I file my final yearly return, but still…

I guess I wouldn’t mind taxes as much if I thought the system was more fair, but it is sorely unfair right now. There is so much government waste and fraud that I feel my money is being flushed away. I see pictures on the news of hundreds of unused FEMA trailers sitting and rotting away in a parking lot down south. I think, one of those should be MY trailer, I bought it!

Anyway…that is my tax rant for the day.

Michigan was the only state in the nation to see its home prices decline in value in 2006. The national average was a 5.87 percent increase, compared with Michigan’s -0.44 percent decline. Ouch. Michigan has been losing so many jobs especially on the east side of the state, Detroit and the surrounding areas are seeing a skyrocketing foreclosure rate. Statistics like this are even more reason to stay away from risky loans and work to pay off your home. If you are on an interest only loan you received within the last few years, you are actually losing ground. In the past you could get away with interest only as you could count on your home value increasing.

Michigan needs a big turnaround, and soon. I am still bewildered why the people of Michigan re-elected Gov Granholm, instead of a proven business leader in Dick DeVos.

Through 4/30/07 HSBC is offering a 6 % rate on savings accounts. This is only for “new money”. So it will not jump up the rate on any money you currently have on deposit (arg), but if you add new money to your account, it will receive the new rate. Here is the fine print on “new money”

New Money Period is January 29, 2007 through April 30, 2007. Starting Balance means the available balance in your account as of the close of business on January 26, 2007. New Money means funds not previously held by any member of the HSBC Group deposited during the New Money Period less any withdrawals, and it excludes your Starting Balance as calculated below. New Money must be in available funds for the promotional rate to apply.

How Bankruptcy Works

I’ve tried two higher interest saving accounts. These rates beat any local rates I could find by a long shot. The first one was ING Direct. The whole process was very simple for this bank. Their website is very friendly and easy to navigate. Transferring money into the account was also a snap.

HSBC was the other bank I’ve tried. Their rate is slightly higher than ING Direct. The application process was quite a bit more involved and transferring money was a little bit more work, but in the end everything went quite smooth.

For overall user-friendly website, I will give the nod to ING Direct, but for interest rate, the edge goes to HSBC.

Fun tool to have Google calculate your monthly loan payments.

Jgnash is a nice piece of free software. It is very simple to use, not filled with over complicated features. I also like that it runs straight from a single executable file, it does not need to be installed. This also makes it a snap to just download and take for a test run. Jgnash home page. Below are some screen shots of the Jgnash software.

• When first starting Jgnash, you are prompted to create a new file.
• Choose your currency.
• View the accounts list.
• Creating a new account.
• Viewing the bank register.
• Create a report.

I recently paid off my student loan debt. Felt great! I have been out of college since 1995. That is 11 years of debt that was hanging over me. Part of the problem was right after school everyone told me. “Don’t worry about student loan debt.” Not sure why everyone felt this was good advice, but I seemed to hear it over and over. So soon within a year of graduating I consolodated all my loans thus taking down a 400 month payment to around 200. And there it pretty much sat for about 9 years. Month after month….felt like the payment had always been there and would always be there. I didn’t see anyway of getting rid of so much student loan debt. In that long time, it had barely budged downward.

It was time to get serious, so for a few years I hammered away and saved up and worked anything extra I could do. It feels to great to get rid of that burden.

Going through school, I never thought more than a second about the loans I was getting. After all everyone does it right. Just sign on the line and move on. I didn’t even have any idea how much I really owed until I was all done with school.

Now that the debt is gone… (actually all my debt is gone except for my home but I’ll get into this later on), it feels great.