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News & Opinion

Kiplinger

CNN Money

  • Living on a freelancer's budget - Chris and Janie Peterson have an enviable life. They own a lovely 3½-bedroom ranch house just outside Minneapolis and have work schedules flexible enough to allow them lots of time with their children, Reece, 10, Cecily, 9, and Georgio, 7.
  • Financial advice: The yes-man problem - Experts have long counseled against using financial planners who charge commissions, given their incentive to simply sell products that pad their paychecks.
  • 12 ways to cut your taxes - The bright spot of the dreary 2009 economy: savings for everyone.
  • Hunkering down for rising interest rates - Question: I'm 65, retired and have about 50% of my portfolio in a bond index fund. I'm thinking of switching to a short-term bond fund. Do you think that's a good idea? --Judy, Flowery Branch, Georgia
  • Money's new More Money blog -
  • The wrong way to pick funds - Photographer friends tell me that if you're picking out a point-and-shoot camera you shouldn't focus much on the megapixels. That measure of a camera's resolution is hyped by manufacturers, but most cameras on the market give you all the pixels you'll need.
  • 43% say they have less than $10k for retirement - The percentage of American workers with virtually no retirement savings grew for the third straight year, according to a survey released Tuesday.
  • How Uncle Sam wants to boost your retirement - Usually I cringe when our leaders in Washington try to help improve our finances. I'm afraid their efforts may do more harm than good. But two new ideas being discussed inside the Beltway could actually make it easier to prepare for retirement. Both center on the income you'll generate from your 401(k).
  • 3 ways to save money this spring - 1. Book a sweet getaway
  • Ford shares: Buy or sell? - Ford is back. The automaker recently reported its first annual profit in four years; sales are improving; and investors have pushed up its stock 550% in the past year.
  • Citigroup shares: No longer toxic? - Yes, Citigroup lost billions in the financial crisis. And yes, it's still swimming in toxic assets. But Bruce Berkowitz argues the worst is over.
  • Mr. Distress is ready to buy - Whether it's steel, textiles, or auto manufacturing, Wilbur Ross has built a lucrative career finding gold in industries left for dead.
  • How to save on a classic watch - With proper care, a good watch lasts virtually forever. But you don't need to spend a bundle to own one.
  • How to retire early, save for a home - Like many households, Wener and Tieun Vieux have suffered a few financial jolts of late.
  • 50 Best Jobs in America - Money looked for careers with great pay, superior growth prospects, intellectual challenge, flexibility and more.

NCNBlog.com

  • Working On My Taxes - I’ve just spent the last couple of hours working on my taxes.  Because my wife and I recently made our first new home purchase, we will be receiving the first-time homebuyer tax credit.  Instead of e-filing our return as we have for the past several years, the credit necessitates that we print out and mail [...]

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    Working On My Taxes

  • Family Pays Off $90,000 Of Debt In Two Years! - The following article is a guest post from Ben at Trees Full of Money. Ben has written a great series on his website sharing the personal details of how his family paid off over $90,000 of debt in less than two years. When I started blogging about personal finance matters over two years ago, I [...]

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    Family Pays Off $90,000 Of Debt In Two Years!

  • What Will It Take To Pay Off Our Mortgage Early? - In a few weeks, we will make our first mortgage payment.  Our mortgage is a fixed-rate 15 year mortgage.  Obviously, I’m not a fan of debt – and I’m going to work very, very hard to pay our mortgage off early.  Using a mortgage calculator I calculated the following the scenarios for paying the mortgage [...]

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    What Will It Take To Pay Off Our Mortgage Early?

  • Quick Reminder And This Week’s Carnivals - I want to thank all of you for visiting No Credit Needed.  Once in a while, I like to encourage folks to subscribe to the site, via RSS or Email.  Once you do, you’ll have the very latest NCN content, delivered directly to your feed reader or email inbox, absolutely FREE.  Also, if you use [...]

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    Quick Reminder And This Week’s Carnivals

  • The New House And New Goals For 2010 - It’s been a full week and we are loving our new home.  We are still waiting for the new furniture for our living room to arrive, along with some bar stools for the kitchen, but other than those items, we are all settled.  (If you ever want to find out just how much stuff you [...]

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    The New House And New Goals For 2010

  • We Are Buying A House! - I cannot tell you how excited my wife and I are.  This afternoon, we are closing on the purchase of our new house! For the past several years, we have lived in a house provided by my employer.  Recently, we decided that the time was right to buy a house of our own.  (Honestly, we have [...]

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    We Are Buying A House!

  • Space - It’s interesting how time and a little perspective can teach us things. When I started this site, I had just one goal – I wanted to get out of debt. With that singular goal, managing my finances became pretty simple.  Not easy, but simple. An emergency fund was funded. A debt reduction plan was created. Payments and extra-payments were made. Debt [...]

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    Space

  • Lawn Mower Maintenance - After two weeks of very cold weather (for us), the temperatures have returned to “normal”.  It’s in the mid-50’s and perfect weather for doing a little yard work. Back in April, I purchased a lawn mower.  I really, really like my lawn mower, and since it has mulching blades, I use it to mulch pine straw [...]

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    Lawn Mower Maintenance

  • Reader Feedback Request – Alternative To New Couches - I have a few questions for you guys, my awesome readers.  First, a little information. My wife and I have a couple of couches.  Structurally, they’re both in great shape.  However, one of them has some damaged fabric on its arms, and the other has been faded by the sunshine.  We’d love to keep the couches [...]

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    Reader Feedback Request – Alternative To New Couches

  • Principles Reinforced By Favorite Television Show – Holmes On Homes - I love Holmes on Homes.  If you haven’t seen the show, you really should check it out.  Originally produced for Canadian television, episodes now air on HGTV.  The show stars general contractor and renovation specialist Mike Holmes and his crew of workers. Holmes on Homes features families who have had unsatisfactory work done to their homes.  [...]

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    Principles Reinforced By Favorite Television Show – Holmes On Homes

Wereindebt.com

  • The Benefits of Responsible Portion Control - Stick a plate of food in front of you, and you’ll get the feeling that you need to eat all of it. Be the one dishing out the plate of food, and you may put a little too much on it. This is where portion control comes into play. Portion control has been something that I [...]
  • Day 711: How We Plan on Paying For the Bathroom - Yesterday, we said that we were going through with the bathroom remodel. This means that we needed to figure out just how we were going to come up with the $15,000 that it’s going to cost us. We have a few options. We can take out a personal loan, which we are against in general. We [...]
  • Day 710: Deciding to Remodel - You ever get the feeling that things just aren’t going your way? Well, the bathroom here in the condo sue is making me feel like that lately. After getting multiple estimates and thinking about it, we’ve decided just to go whole hog and have the bathroom remodeled. This whole process will cost us about $15,000. We spent [...]
  • Day 709: Site Updates - We have some news to report here at We’re In Debt. For starters, I have started to write for Qvisory, a nonprofit organization that strives to help people address money challenges better. This has been in the works for a little while and it feels good to be able to finally announce it. Be sure to [...]
  • Day 708: A Couple of Important Financial Deadlines - There are a couple of financial deadlines that you should meet if you fall into the right category. Those are that your taxes are due tomorrow by 11:59pm and that the Debeers diamond class action settlement is due May 19th. The IRS is going to be looking for your tax return tomorrow. If by chance, you [...]
  • Day 707: What a Beautiful Day! - Springtime has come to Boston, finally! This doesn’t mean that we’re out of the woods just yet. You never know when an April or May snowstorm is going to show up. What it does mean though, is that it is time for a spring cleaning. Today the Queen of Debt, went crazy on the cleaning, while [...]
  • Day 706: Well, It Could Have Been Worse - The taxes are done. Finally. You can definitely tell that I am somewhat of a procrastinator, especially when it comes to sending money to the tax man. The total that we ended up paying was more than we were thinking that we were going to pay. Our calculations were off. The good news is that what [...]
  • Day 705: It’s Tax Weekend - It’s tax time here at the We’re In Debt household. That means that our posts will be fairly short for these next couple of days. We’ll let you know how it goes.
  • Day 704: Downsize Your Life - In this time of contraction, we have started to downsize our lives. This basically means that we are selling some items and replacing them with less costly items that do the same job. For example, I sold my more expensive laptop and purchased a cheaper laptop with the same amount of power. All told, we netted [...]
  • Day 703: A Letter to Whole Foods - Time to go.Dear Whole Foods, We have been avid shoppers of your stores for the longest time. Even while we were paying off our debts, we made a point to shop at your stores. The Whole Food’s experience just made us feel better about what we were putting into our bodies. Times are a changing though. With [...]
  • Day 702: The Queen Is Proud Of Our Budgeting (So am I) - Tonight the Queen of Debt was telling me how much better she felt, because she was able to see how well we were doing with our budgets. This is because of our new chalkboard budget. Of course, I am proud of both of us as well. But I am more proud of her and the progress [...]
  • Day 702: How to Save 15% On (Some of) Your Amazon Purchases - We buy a lot of “staples” from Amazon. We have found it to be cheaper and more convenient than going to a Costco, Sam’s Club or BJ’s. Recently though, Amazon launched a new Subscribe & Save feature. The best part about the Amazon Subscribe & Save feature is that they give a 15% savings simply for [...]
  • Day 701: Bathroom Update - Our bathroom isn’t getting any better. We’ve had quite a few contractors out to give us estimates, and we are just waiting to get all of the estimates in so that we can make a decision. The choices seem to be: Fix the glitch. Just fix the problems, which will take quite a bit of effort [...]
  • Day 700: Our 2 Year Blogging Anniversary - Two years ago we started writing about debt. Over that time we have paid off our credit cards, lowered our monthly expenses and are actively working hard at paying off our student loans and car loans. Years 1 & 2 have been great. We have learned a lot from other personal finance bloggers and through the [...]
  • Day 699: Learning to Spend 100% of Our Budget - The Queen of Debt does a great job of keeping us on budget. By on budget, I mean that if we have budgeted $375 for the month for our groceries she’ll spend $374.99 that month. This is great because it means that we didn’t spend more than we agreed that we would spend. I have a [...]

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