digging out of a stinky pile of debt after realizing we are well past fucked

We have a lot of student loan debt. If you look at the sidebar you will see that I am not joking. While there are a few private student loans in that mix, the majority of the loans are the super low interest rate ones. Currently the highest rate on the private loans is 8.00%. And our lowest student loan rate is 2.65%.

I was doing some thinking recently about all of these student loans and their interest rates. And then I was thinking about how you can get 8% or better return on some mutual funds. With that in mind, it seems to me that any extra money that could be applied to paying down student loan debt would be better served in a mutual fund with a good track record. I would think that as long as you are earning more than the interest rate on the student loans that you are coming out ahead of the game.

Is my logic flawed on this? I mean, sure, you could have a bad year with the mutual funds and not only make less than the 8% but even lose money. But still….it seems logical to me.

Many thanks to Money Under 30 for including us in the Carnival of Twenty Something Finances for April 21, 2008 yesterday.

And thanks to Can I Get Rich On A Salary for putting up in the Carnival of Money Stories #56—Once Upon A Time.

A big shout out to Credit Card Lowdown for including us in the Carnival of Money, Growth and Happiness #41. Not only did they include our article How much is your time worth? It is a cost that needs considered. but they also did not censor our good name.

From this carnival I enjoyed the following articles:

• the cheeky “Up Yours Mother Teresa” at Hennie Grove
• Barcelona on 10 Euro Per Day For Two People at Me, My Kid and Life
• Which is Better Roth or Traditional IRA? at David Makes Cents (I just added this blog to my reader)
• Debt and Depression at Debt Prison
• Are You Happy? If Not, Here are 25 Ways to Get There at Slow Down Fast

The Carnival of Personal Finance is up today at The Happy Rock. They did not love our submission apparently, but there are still some article worth reading from that carnival…

• How much interest do you earn on one million dollars?
• Should you Pay off your student Loans?
• How To Create An Alternative Source Of Income Part 7
• The 9 Or So Paths To Getting Rich—And My Purported Analysis Of Them(Part 2 of 2)

We eat a lot of salads in the Bumblefucked household. I am more of an iceberg person and Riley is more of a fancy pants lettuce person. So, she prefers to buy the triple washed lettuce packs that have fancy pants lettuce in them. I see why she prefers it - there is nothing worse than having a salad where all of your lettuce is holding water. So, I get it, I do.

Yesterday I was at Kroger and they had some of those triple washed lettuce packs marked down to $0.99 to move them out. We both needed lettuce and the iceberg looked horrible, and was more than $0.99, so I grabbed a couple of the triple washed lettuce packs.

When I got home I made a salad. The first piece of lettuce I pulled out had a nice dead spider in the fold. Yuck. I told Riley. She then told me how she never washes that lettuce because it is supposed to be triple washed.  Triple washed? I don’t think so. There is no way a spider of this size could have made it through three washings. It wasn’t huge, but it was about the size of a thumbtack.

I chalk it up to a fluke. Maybe it made it’s way inside after the washing? I expect a bug or two from iceberg, but not this.

So, today I get out the same lettuce pack. I take out a piece of the lettuce. Guess what? Two bugs! They were small gnats, but gnats none the less.

Next time I’ll stick to iceberg.

Many thanks to Be Thrifty Like Us for including Bumblefucked “Bumble” in the latest Money Hacks Carnival. Our “How much is your time worth?” article was included in this week’s carnival.

Check out the The 8th Edition of the Money Hacks Carnival! There are some good reads in it. I mean, besides our little entry.

Like Kick the vices, save the dinero - we’re all about blogs that write in Spanglish.

In the name of saving money or being frugal, I do a lot of silly things. These things could be considered only one of three things:

• frugal
• cheap
• stupid

So, which is it? You be the judge.

Baggies

I always try to re-use sandwich baggies. Of course, there are some that can’t be saved. For instance, a baggie that has had a PB&J in it usually has some residue that makes it not usable again. I’ve even been known to wash out baggies in the past. I think I remember Riley recoiling in horror at that.

Moldy cheese

I am a cheese snob. It is just one of those things where I have tried to go generic and just can’t. I have to have Sargento cheese. I even tried Target brand cheese. And Target brand everything is always good in my experiences. Well - not their cheese. It is Kraft. So if you like Kraft cheese then buy Target brand. Anyways, so, I spend a lot of money on cheese which means that I do not like it to go to waste. Just this week I was trimming mold off of some Sargento cheese cubes. I looked it up online and it is perfectly safe for hard and semi-hard cheese to do this. I just can’t bear the thought of wasting some lovely Sargento cheese.

Heat and A/C and unnecessary electricity

I hate high electric bills. For the past two months our electric bill has been around $100 and that is just unacceptable for a tiny 2BR apartment. That means that I am always looking for ways to cut electricity. I do things like plug all electronics in a room into a power strip that I turn off when the stuff is not in use. I unplug toasters and coffee makers too. And if it is cold outside I will bundle up and even use candles that I have been given for free. All to avoid using the heat. Sometimes I will let it get below 60 degrees before turning on the heat. But it is hard to type when my fingers are frozen. The same applies for the A/C, only in reverse of course. I will try to endure up to 80-something degrees inside before turning on the A/C - until Riley says to freaking turn it on! But I can make it with shorts, a tank top and some ice water!

Buying ugly

Today I had to go to Big Lots to get a gift bag for a birthday present for Riley’s brother. I went to Big Lots because they usually have great prices on solid color gift bags. When I finally found the aisle with gift bags I was met with two viable options. They had a solid purple bag for $1.00 or the hideous bag below for $0.80. Yup, I chose the ugly one to save $0.20. And before you say that it is not that ugly - remember, it is for a grown man. (I think Riley would have preferred the solid color bag - but his gift is blue, so I think it will be okay)

Office klepto

I have been known to come home from work with staples or scotch tape. However, if I need a lot then I will buy it myself. For instance, around Christmas I will go to Big Lots and buy tape instead of swiping it from work.

Shop at discount stores

I *love* going to Big Lots. They always have the best prices on stuff. And if you have not signed up for their email Buzz Club then do it - NOW! Every so often they email out 20% off coupons to Buzz Club members. I used one of those on a mattress once - it was awesome. Then I ended up selling the mattress for more than I paid for it. That was really sweet.

Free samples

I love free stuff. So I am always filling out things online for free samples of this or that. And that just means that I end up with a cabinet full of random shampoo samples in my bathroom. Well, in my experience, those samples are not enough for two hair washings but way too much for one. In the past I have been known to pour them all together in an empty bottle. Just give it a good shake when you’re done and you’re good to go. Of course, the actual shampoo might be an ugly brown color, but don’t let that deter you.

Free condiments and napkins

We do not dine out often. And we go to fast food restaurants even less. But when we do end up at a greasy fast food place I take a little extra ketchup, napkins and such to bring on home. Sure, it can be tedious opening up several packets of ketchup to refill your bottle, but you could always leave them as individual packets.

Going “college clean”

Typically I will wear my pants more than one time before washing them. That is assuming that I do not spill anything on them. Not only does this save money on detergent, water and such but it also extends the life of the clothes. Most things I wash after one wearing, but pants almost always get worn more than once.

Library card supa-star

I heart the library and all of their books and movies. I have not been in a while, but I love being able to get the latest books and movies for free from the library. The important thing is to be mindful of those due dates so that you do not end up paying late fees. And sometimes you have to wait on a list to get something popular, but instant gratification is for the Joneses!

Buy used movies and re-sell

I think we have gone to the movies three times in the past year - and one of those times we used free passes! We hate paying movie prices and movie food prices. And rental prices are not cheap either (unless you have a RedBox near you). If we watched movies regularly then I suspect Netflix would be a good deal for us. Instead, we watch for Blockbuster to do their “4 for $20″ sale on used DVDs and make a shopping trip. We look for not only things that we want to see but things that we think we will be able to re-sell. Indie movies are awesome for this as their retail price is pretty high. We typically end up making money on the indie movies that we have scored for $5 used from Blockbuster. Of course, with some of the movies we buy we either can’t sell for a profit or just plain can’t sell at all. In the end though I think we come out ahead.

Foil

I admit it - I re-use aluminum foil. Often.

Target bags as trash bags

I never buy trash bags for our small trash cans. Why? Because Target bags and other similarly sized bags make perfect trash bags. I must have inherited this one from my dad - except he has a serious bag problem. No joke. The cabinet under the kitchen sink in his house is packed full of bags. My mom tries to toss them at times - his feelings get hurt. It’s almost too comedic to be true, yet it is. (Riley says everyone uses bags like Target bags as trash bags. Well, everyone - do you?)

Thoughts? Tips? Suggestions? Profanity? Throw ‘em in the comments.

Here at Bumblefucked we have been fortunate enough to make it into a few carnivals. Thus far two of those carnivals have felt it necessary to censor the blog name. One made us known as “Bumble****ed” or something silly like that while the other simply called us “Bumble.”

I find the censorship more offensive than any profanity. (Never mind the fact that I would never call a site “bumble”, wtf?)

It is also quite absurd.

Profanity in a word does not make that work profanity by association. For instance, the word “embarrass” is never thought of as profanity, even though it clearly has the word “ass” in it.

In fact, choosing to clearly censor the word makes it more profanity than not as it makes it seem taboo or something.

And now, back to the regularly scheduled programming here at “Bumble”

I love getting free stuff in the mail. And if you check out this Wal-Mart free samples page, there are all kinds of goodies that you can get for free!

I signed up for the Fiber One cereal sample and the Icy Hot patch sample. There are a few other goods ones too!

When I did mine it said it would take 4 weeks for the samples to arrive.

It seems to me that in the quest to pay off debt and spend less than you earn, something important gets forgotten by a lot of people. In fact, it is something that I overlooked until a few months ago.

How much is your time worth?

This is something that is important to consider.  And it directly relates to paying down debt, being frugal and so on. You see, in the not too distant past we decided against renting a washer and dryer for our apartment. The cost when I had check on it was 30-something dollars plus tax each month. Then there was also the cost of using more water. After discussing it we decided that it would be cheaper to go every so often to the ‘wash and wait’ or try to do our laundry at family member’s homes for free. So, for the entire duration of that apartment lease that is exactly what we did.

We forgot to consider the cost of that decision. Sure, it saved $30-plus dollars a month on the rental fee as well as the higher water bill. Most months we did laundry only once a month and typically at the home of a family member that we were visiting. The months that we did not do our laundry for free, we spent an average of $15.00. There is no denying that we saved money on paper.

But what we saved on paper we lost in time. You see, those trips to the ‘wash and wait’ ended up being an average of about three hours each time.  That was three hours that could only be spent waiting in a dingy chair. Sure, it allowed us to catch up on some reading; but that was only when it was not incredibly loud in there or when someone did not try to engage you in conversation. And those times that we did laundry at the home of a family member - well, that meant less time spent with them and more time doing laundry.

When we moved into our new apartment a while back, we were presented with the option of renting a washer and dryer again. Like an idiot, I hesitated at first. Then I had the epiphany above and realized our time was definitely worth $30-something a month.

Riley has a Capital One account that had a balance on it only because it was at a promotional 5.99%. It was a balance transfer that we did a while back. We had just been paying the minimum on it as the interest rate was so low and we wanted to focus our efforts on the higher interest rate cards.

On the most recent statement I noticed a $39 membership fee. Clearly we do not want to be paying any of those! According to the statement, the only way out of the fee was to cancel the card and pay off the balance. So, even though I wanted the money to go towards a higher interest card, I did not want to pay the $39 and called to cancel the card today.

Mario at Capital One tried to convince me that $39 was a small price to pay for keeping the card history on my credit report. While I do agree that I hated having to cancel the card and the effect it will have on the credit score, it is not worth paying Capital One $39 for nothing. And I hate that we have clearly done so in the past and not realized it. If this was a rewards card that we used a lot, it might be worth it!

I managed to convince Mario that I still wanted to cancel the card. That is when I learned about Capital One’s “closing status” and their “closed account status.” See, apparently when you call to cancel your credit card with Capital One it is not closed for 30 days.

According to Mario, Capital One places your credit card account in “closing status” when you call to close the account. The account remains in this “closing status” for 30 days or until the balance reaches zero, whichever is longer.

While your account is in the “closing status” charges can still go through to it. So, if a charge is made against the account, the account automatically re-opens. That means if you had canceled to avoid a membership fee like me, you are automatically charged the membership when the account re-opens and you cannot get out of it at that point.

So, if you are closing a Capital One account - make sure that you do not have any recurring charges set up for the account, or you just might end up with an open account and all those extra fees after all.

image from Guru Jeff’s page of truth