Debt, Credit Card & Consolidation Current News Digest

In personal finance, you have to make a lot of decisions with imperfect information. You contribute to a Roth IRA because you like the tax free growth and you believe that you will be taxed at a greater rate in retirement (otherwise it may be better to contribute to a Traditional IRA). You buy a house because you want to hedge against inflation by fixing your housing costs, both of which you assume will go up in the future. You take on a new job with more responsibility and more pay because, well, it’s better to have more of both, right?

At the core of many of these decisions, as sad as it may be, are taxes. It’s obvious in the case of the Roth IRA and Traditional IRA and less obvious in the housing (interest, property taxes, and such are tax deductible), but it’s present in many money decisions. Do I take that new job? Well, how much do I really get to take home? That will, in part, depend on taxes.

In the same way that it’s important for you to know the value of your time, it’s important for you to know your tax bracket.

Answering “What’s My Tax Bracket?”

You can see your federal income tax brackets here but you’ll have to go to your state’s Department of Taxation (or similarly named department) website to find your state income tax rate.

With the federal tax brackets, you have to do more than find the range your salary falls in. You need to also take into account deductions you may be taking, because that will give you a more accurate marginal tax rate, which you can use to help make decisions. For example, if John earns $35,000 a year, he appears to be in the 25% tax bracket. However, he can take the standard deduction of $5,700, putting him in the 15% tax bracket.

It’s important to know which tax bracket your in because you can use that information to help make decisions. For example, if you were planning on selling a stock you own, knowing your bracket will help you understand what you will pay on the gains. For long term capital gains, you pay 0% if you’re in the 10%/15% brackets and 15% in the higher brackets. You might want to sell a long term holding if you’re in the 15% bracket to lock in tax free gains.

I wouldn’t spend too much time calculating your exact effective tax rate, you won’t need that much detail unless you are making a very large decision and the decision hinges on knowing your exact rate. Usually a ballpark figure is good enough to help you make decisions.

What’s My Tax Bracket? from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

Note: I’m afraid this post is long and rambling and doesn’t have much of a point. So sue me. I’ve been meaning to write about this subject for a long time, and finally felt moved to do so. This article may be amateurish, but that’s kind of the point…

My father was a serial entrepreneur — he was always starting businesses. But more than that, he was a serial inventor, a master of DIY, an amateur everything.

When I was a boy, my father:

• Built a windmill to supply some of our electricity. (The windmill blew over during a freak windstorm, and lay on the ground behind our property for many years.)
• Built his own boat. I can’t remember what kind of boat it was, but I think it was a small sailboat. (I was very young at the time, but I remember the library books he used to teach himself how to build the craft. I couldn’t help but remember them; he checked them out in 1972, and we still had them at home during the early 1980s!)
• Built his own telescope — or tried to. Again, I can’t remember if he ever finished the project, but I know that for years, he had a huge (12 inch? 15 inch?) and heavy hunk of polished glass the top drawer in his dresser.
• Wrote his own accounting software to manage his businesses. Dad bought an Apple II when I was in fourth grade (so late 1978?). Using the built-in Integer BASIC language (and, to some extent, the machine’s assembly language), my father taught himself how to program whatever he needed.

• Later wrote an entire suite of applications to run the box factory. When my father founded the box factory in 1985, he bought a new Atari 1040 ST computer and wrote all of the programs he needed in BASIC. He wrote programs for box layout, accounting, and more.

• Designed an electronic, timed sprinkler system to run the irrigation in his failed nursery business.
• Designed, built, and marketed a line of wheat grinders and food dryers. Doing so, he built his first successful business, Harvest Mills. After five stressful years (and many gained pounds), he sold the business in the late 1970s.
• Created a second successful business, Custom Box Service, which he started in 1985. As I mentioned, he wrote all the computer software for the company, but he also built all of the manufacturing equipment by hand. Today, 25 years later, that equipment still powers the family business.

When Kris and I decided in 1993 that we wanted to start our own vegetable garden from seed, my father helped me build a small greenhouse. We didn’t use any blueprints; he was the blueprints. One long Saturday, we bought lumber and nails and plastic sheeting, and he stood around watching me, telling me what lengths to trim the two-by-fours and at what angles. He didn’t sketch anything out on paper — he just told me what to do and I did it. That greenhouse is still standing.

But all of these things barely scratch the surface. These are just the things I remember, and mainly his successes. My father did more: He wrote poetry (mostly bad poetry), played guitar, drew funny pictures, spent a couple of summers raising 40+ acres of wheat, flew airplanes, sailed boats, and more. When he contracted the cancer that eventually killed him, he bought a microscope so that he could draw his own blood and look at his dwindling supply of white blood cells.

Made by hand
So what? What does all of this have to do with personal finance? I’ve already written a lot about how my parents — especially my father — were poor at handling money. (In fact, all of Dad’s extensive and expensive hobbies surely played a role in our family’s poor financial standing.)

Well, I just finished reading an uncorrected proof of Mark Frauenfelder’s Made by Hand, which is due to be published in late May. In the book, Frauenfelder — who is perhaps best known as the co-founder of Boing Boing and editor of Make magazine — chronicles his experience dabbling in the world of do-it-yourself (or DIY). The book includes chapters describing how Frauenfelder (intentionally) kills his lawn, grows food, raises chickens and keeps bees, brews tea and coffee, builds musical instruments, carves kitchen utensils, and, most of all, learns how to learn.

The book isn’t a practical guide to anything. You won’t learn how to keep your own bees or carve your own kitchen utensils in Made by Hand; instead, you’ll get the pleasure of watching over Frauenfelder’s shoulder as he does these things. And, if you’re like me, you’ll be reminded of how much we, as a culture, used to do ourself.

For good or ill, the United States has become a service economy. We pay people to do all sorts of things we used to do ourselves. In some cases, this makes sense; “outsourcing” can free us from work we find drudgery, allowing us to pursue our passions. But sometimes this reliance on professionals and experts makes us more detached from the things we ought to know about. (As a hypothetical example: If you pay a financial adviser, you may think there’s no need to know about asset allocation and diversification and all that boring stuff — but there is.)

Frauenfelder believes — as do I — that the DIY ethic is only partly about the things you produce. It’s also about learning how to learn, about connecting with others who share your interests, and about taking pride in your accomplishments. (Look! I built a personal-finance blog read by millions of people every year!) There’s a reason Get Rich Slowly has a DIY category, even if it’s seldom used: Doing things yourself is a great way to save money and increase happiness.

In praise of the amateur
After reading Made by Hand, it occurred to me that much of my own personal philosophy is about finding ways to do things myself. I don’t (and can’t) do everything myself, but I get the most pleasure in life when I’m producing instead of consuming. I also thought of other folks I know who do stuff. My father was one of these, but I know (or know of) many others, such as:

• My wife, who cooks and cans and bakes like crazy. (One reason I struggle with my weight is that Kris is always making terrific food.) But she does other creative stuff, too. Sitting next to me at the moment is a little stuffed animal that she made by hand.
• Bloggers of all stripes. I love seeing others write about cars and flowers and painting and chemistry and more. I think it’s great that blogs have served to level the playing field, allowing non-professional voices to be heard. (My favorite shelf in my library contains books by bloggers.)
• Chris Guillebeau and others who produce top-notch e-books on a variety of topics, earning good money while bypassing the traditional publishing industry.
• Courtney Woolsey, who started out singing for a few hundred folks on YouTube and now has a recording contract.
• My friends who play musical instruments. I love that Rhonda took up piano in her late thirties. Over the past two years, I’ve watched her move from rank beginner to competent learner. And I hope to see her progress even further.
• My friend Craig, who is a DIY master (though he probably wouldn’t call himself that). He’s remodeled his house (slowly), built raised garden beds and a chicken coop, constructed his own vineyard, built a mud oven, and is one of the best DIY cooks I know. (He and I and another friend were going to make our own bacon together for my upcoming birthday, but it’s too late now…)
• And, most of all, our friends’ children. Craig’s son, Albert, for example, loves electronics. His parents have fostered this, giving him all sorts of stuff to build and take apart. Other kids we know love to write, draw, do science, and more. It’s great to see children innately drawn to DIY before they grow older and more complacent.

The thing is, these folks are all amateurs (and so am I). They’re not trained pros. They do these things because they love to, and this passion aids their performance. When they fail (as they inevitably do), they try again. (I think Craig has built his mud oven at least three times because it keeps falling apart.) These amateurs find ways to succeed, even if it’s not a success in the eyes of the world.

There are a lot of people who dislike amateur work because they think it’s poorer quality than that put out by the pros. That’s fine. I get that perspective. But for myself, I get much more value for my money when I pay five or ten bucks to see a community theater perform than when I pay fifty or one hundred to see a Broadway show.

I’m not saying that you have to choose one or the other; I’m saying there’s room for both. But for some reason, we’ve abandoned the stuff of talent shows and living-room concerts. I’d like to see more of that. I want to be awed by the stuff my friends make and do.

Action is everything
As always when I dwell on this subject, I’m reminded of Sarah Dyer’s manifesto, “Action Girl’s Guide to Living”. I’ve linked to this many times before, and nobody seems to like it as much as I do, but that’s okay. I think it’s great, especially this abbreviated bit (which I think I pulled from an actual Action Girl comic book):

ACTION IS EVERYTHING! Our society, even when it’s trying to be “alternative” usually just promotes a consumerist mentality. Buying things isn’t evil, but if that’s all you do, your life is pretty pointless. Be an ACTION GIRL! (Or boy!) It’s great to read / listen to / watch other people’s creative output, but it’s even cooler to do it yourself. Don’t think you could play in a band? Try anyway! Or maybe think about putting on shows or starting a label. Don’t have time/energy to do a website yourself? Contribute to someone else’s website. Not everyone is suited to doing projects on their own, but everyone has something to contribute. So do something with all that positive energy!

I love that. And I think it has everything to do with personal finance and happiness. (When I say, “Nobody cares more about your money than you do“, I’m thinking of Action Girl and the DIY ethic.)

What I value most
My father died in 1995, ten days shy of his 50th birthday. I wasn’t very close to him at the time; our relationship had grown strained over the last few years of his life. But in recent years, I’ve become more and more sentimental about all the stuff he knew and did.

A few years ago, I realized that nobody in our family actually owned a food grinder or a wheat grinder from the old Harvest Mills days thirty years ago. How was that even possible? I managed to track down a food dryer via Craigslist, but the wheat grinder was more elusive.

One of my father’s first food dryers, made by hand.

Then one day, we were scouring our favorite annual garage sale. And there, sitting on a table, was a Harvest Mills wheat grinder. I knew it instantly from its shape, even though I hadn’t seen one since the 1970s. It was marked at $100. Being a frugal fellow, I tried to bargain with the owner. No go. He wanted $100. That was fine, though. I gladly paid the man the money. I would have paid $1000, if that’s what it would have taken.

Like most Americans, Kris and I own a lot of Stuff. Some of it, like the computer I’m using to write this post, is actually worth a fair bit of money. But you know what? None of it is worth as much to me as my father’s food dryer or the painting of Kermit the Frog that Jolie just made for me. This computer (and most of the other stuff in my life) is impersonal and mass produced, but these other things were created by people I know.

So, please: Make stuff. Don’t just consume the things produced by others. If you don’t already, try to find something that you enjoy doing, something that you can make by hand. Don’t be afraid to fail. When you make things, you make the world a better place.

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Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:

• links for 2007-05-18
• Daily Links: Homemade Cars and Urban Farming
• Cheap Clothing Jackpot
• The Frugal Photographer
• Ask the Readers: How to Live Debt-Free?

I keep intending to retain “ask the readers” as a regular Friday feature — and I keep failing. You folks send me tons of great questions, and I’d love to share more of them. This week, for example, Lisa wrote with the following.

“Having kids has made spending choices much more emotional and complex,” she says. “You can’t always calculate a return on investment.” Here’s her predicament:

My husband and I are looking to purchase a home in our new city, but we’re having trouble deciding where our values, finances, and priorities intersect.

We have young children, one who will start public school this year. We’re considering buying a home in a modest neighborhood so we could have a house/car replacement fund available, rather than taking all of the down payment money and putting it in a “better” house. The schools in the neighborhood are solid, but not the best in the district. If we buy in this smaller, less fancy area, we can choose a 15-year mortgage, minimize our overall house expenses, and have more money for all of life’s priorities. But, it feels like we’re “cheaping out” on the kids.

To compound our “analysis paralysis”, we lost a fair amount of equity when we had to sell our house to transfer out of state, so we’re feeling less than enamored with the idea of putting money that is currently liquid into a building that isn’t guaranteed to hold its value, much less appreciate. (We have no car/consumer debt, and we have a comfortable emergency fund.)

I think our family might feel more comfortable in a more modest neighborhood with more coupon-clipping parents and kids who don’t have the latest and greatest, but I also want my children to have a great education. Have other parents faced this battle, doing what’s best for the overall budget vs. doing what’s expected for our kids? We’d love to hear how it worked out for you.

I love questions like this. They’re a clear demonstration that personal finance isn’t only about the numbers; it involves a complex calculus of math, emotions, and dreams.

Most of the time, I can offer suggestions when people ask these sorts of questions. But when it comes to kids, I’m at a loss. Kris and I have chosen to remain childless, and as a result, I’ve never had to wrestle with these sorts of sticky issues.

From a non-parent perspective, I admit that the obsession over which school a kid will attend seems…well, I don’t know how to put it in words that won’t make people angry. But I’ve watched friends and family go through mental and financial gyrations to get their kids into the right pre-schools, which boggles my mind. I’m a firm believer that education is more about the child than it is about the school. If a kid has been taught to love and value learning, she can thrive almost anywhere.

In other words, I’d urge Lisa to make her decision based on finances and not the school district. This may mean she needs to take a more active role in fostering her children’s intellectual curiosity, but that’s a good thing all the way around. But what do I know? As I say, I don’t have kids, and I don’t know what it’s like to actually face this decision. It’s one thing to say it and another to live it.

So, what do you parents say? How do you judge the trade-off between expenses and education? Is it worth paying more to live in a good school district? How does one make this sort of decision?

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Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:

• Workshop for Kids
• links for 2007-04-06
• links for 2007-03-26
• links for 2007-03-31
• How Do You Teach Kids the Value of Money?

For us residents in California, we’re used to seeing budget cuts applied to a lot of things. The financial crisis in California is particularly apparent when you see its effects on the public school system. Well, this article from my local paper just made me wince, because as you can see, the story describes just another example of how our government (this time, at the state level) has been handling its finances.

Well, here’s the latest expose and more fodder on the California budget crisis — apparently, government employees have made off with pretty huge paychecks here in California, simply by NOT taking vacation time. Their unused vacation time translates into big six figure payouts, with the top 25 checks reportedly ranging from $203,921 all the way to a dazzling $815,736. Wow. Imagine this — those state government positions can be a gold mine, with overtime paying off for a whole lot of people. Here is an image that portrays this predicament (Click this link or the image below for a larger picture.):

And here’s a breakdown of vacation pay amounts across California agencies:

Small wonder California is broke.

Want to Attend A Suze Orman Event?

On another note, I’d like to inform you about a personal finance event that’s coming to Club Nokia in downtown L.A. this Sunday, March 14. Suze Orman is slated to speak at this club at an event called “Waves of Inspiration: Women and Money”. The seminar will feature Suze and other ladies and personalities who will talk about personal finance, self-growth and empowerment. For the curious, TD Ameritrade is the sponsor for this event. If you end up attending, you’ll also receive a free annual all-access pass to Suze Orman’s “Save Yourself Retirement Program” (reg cost: $40). There’s also a planned Q & A at the end of the seminar.

You can purchase tickets from Ticketmaster.com, or if you’re interested in picking up a complimentary ticket, let me know (contact me here) — I may have a couple to give away (while it lasts). Here are the event details:

WHAT: Waves of Inspiration: Women and Money with Suze Orman
WHEN: March 14th, 2010 at 2PM
WHERE: Club Nokia, 800 West Olympic Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90015

Have fun!

Great Personal Finance Articles

• Wise Bread: Worried About Debt? Tips On Managing Your Loans
• Studenomics: Why Parent’s Shouldn’t Pay For Their Kids’ College Education
• Free Money Finance: Top Personal Finance Experts
• Lazy Man And Money: Build Your Financial Home Brick By Boring Brick
• Frugal Dad: Implementing PAYGO Rules For Personal Finances
• Million Dollar Journey: Canadian Income Tax Deadline
• Mighty Bargain Hunter: Would you out a friend’s spending patterns on Facebook?
• Miss Thrifty: The Festival of Frugality
• Simply Forties: Carnival of Personal Finance
• Don’t Mess With Taxes: Carnival of Taxes
• FIRE Finance: The Festival of Frugality

Vacation Pay for Unused Vacation Time? Plus A Suze Orman Event

My friend Flexo at Consumerism Commentary has created the Plutus Awards, to celebrate the best in personal finance. The awards are broken up into two categories. The first goes to personal finance products and services while the second focuses solely on the best the personal finance blogging world has to offer. The nominees were submitted by the “community” and now voting is open until March 16th.

I’m honored and happy to share that Bargaineering was included in several categories and is up against very stiff competition. Many thanks to those of you who may have nominated Bargaineering but know that this site is as much a product of your contributions as it is my own. Without your comments, this place would be nothing more than my ramblings and would not be a place I’ve come to treasure. This recognition is as much a tribute to you as it is to me, so thank you.

If you have a few moments, please cast your vote for your favorites.

Thank you!

2010 Plutus Awards from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

I did it! After months of struggling and hours upon hours of typing, I’ve finally reached that mythical state of Inbox Zero. My inbox is empty — or nearly so. (I still have a handful of messages about stuff I’m actually working on at this moment, such as publicity for the book.)

I do have a stack of 74 guest-post submissions (including many reader stories), but I’m not including those in this tally. I’ll process those gradually, sending replies as quickly as I can. (If you’ve submitted a guest post, please be patient. I have dozens of them to get through, and can’t answer you all at once.)

While sorting through the last 200 e-mail messages today, I found lots of great stuff you folks had submitted. Here are some of the best bits sent to me over the past few months:

Carmen sent me this article from CNN/Money about living on a cash-only diet. The piece profiles five families that have given up their credit cards and are only using cash. Each family has a different motive and a different story. (Some of this covers ground we explored last month in our discussion about saying “no” to credit cards.)

Jill forwarded an article from (never home)maker in which the author shares five critical reasons you must read your bills. Her mortgage company made a $4,070 mistake. If she hadn’t been paying attention, she would have paid way way too much. Yet another example of how nobody cares more about your money than you do, so stay on top of things!

The folks at Your Money Bus wanted me to mention their work. The “buck-mobile” (my name, not theirs) is traveling around the country, providing a place where financial planners can meet with people and offer free advice. Here’s a list of scheduled stops.

Sam over at Getting Finances Done has begun his 12 weeks to fiscal fitness program. If you’re getting started with personal finance, check this out.

Meanwhile, the people at What Would John Templeton Say? are having a contest for bloggers: Write about some of Templeton’s advice, and you might win $500. (Templeton was a famous investor, and is the Templeton in Franklin Templeton mutual funds.)

Finally, Chris asked me if I could tell you about his project, Be Debt Free America. Apparently this is a tool that helps you create a “debt snowball payoff report”, although the site isn’t transparent enough for my tastes. I’d like to see more screenshots and know more about how this works. Why would I choose this over a free spreadsheet?

Okay, back to work. I have to be sure that nobody has tried to send me e-mail in the past fifteen minutes. Must defend Inbox Zero!

—
Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:

• Backlog of Reader Submissions
• Return of the Daily Links
• Daily Links: A Fool and His Money Edition
• Daily Links: Compound Interest, Web Income, and Happiness
• Daily Roundup: Bringing Home the Bacon Edition

Daily Mail

The Paw Print: Credit Cards? Good? Bad? Solutions? my.hsj.org Have you ever been told to stay away from credit cards? This year, I am taking personal finance. I have learned how big of a problem credit cards can be. … Use Credit Cards Wisely to Land your Dream JobLoans and Credit Lower interest rates? Not in the (credit) cardsThe Associated Press Apply for Instant Bad Credit Credit Cards – Online Applications in MarchSubprime Blogger (blog) The Express Times - LehighValleyLive.com -PRLog.Org (press release) -Daily Mail all 213 news articles »

Last week, I held a giveaway for those who were interested in trying out a new debt management program online. This service is called DebtGoal, which looked to me like a cousin (or variant) of the more popular money management software tools that are available online, which help you manage your budget. After all, if we have online programs like Mint.com that can help us control our budget, then why not use sites like DebtGoal.com to help us control our debt? The difference though, is that DebtGoal charges a monthly subscription fee for the use of their service.

But our giveaway last week would have remedied this matter for 5 people, since we were offering free subscriptions (with no expiration date) for the use of this tool. Although I would have liked to see more people join the giveaway, we still snared enough entries to be able to give away all 5 free subs. Here’s the winners’ list: Kimberley, Anthony, Libby of As You Wish, Ann and last but not least, Ken of Money Making Sense. Congratulations to all!

In other news, I’m hoping to meet up with a few personal finance bloggers this weekend. We have a “guest of honor” who’s visiting the SF Bay Area — none other than J Money of Budgets Are Sexy. Here’s looking forward to meeting the man behind one of the most fun and quirky personal finance blogs around!

For more on the PF blogosphere, check out these articles!

Personal Finance Articles

• Bargain Babe: Dealing With Banks? Read The Fine Print First
• Lazy Man and Money: The Key To Living Frugally
• One Mint: HSBC Brazil Equity Fund
• Christian PF: My Strategy for Giving Away Millions
• Million Dollar Journey: 5 Ways To Reduce Financial Clutter
• Trees Full Of Money: Lessons from Our Debt Free Success Story!
• Gen X Finance: Birthday Freebies Worth Checking Out
• Monevator: Are you wasting your money on memories?
• My Dollar Plan: 5 More Ways to Earn Some Cash
• Online Investing AI: Would You Pay A Million Bucks To Eat Steak With Warren Buffett
• The Sun’s Financial Diary: Know Thy (Financial) Self
• PT Money: International Personal Finance Carnival (woot! new carnival!)
• Taking Charge: Carnival of Personal Finance
• Miss Thrifty: Festival of Frugality
• CoDR: Carnival of Debt Reduction

Debt Management Tool Free Trial & DebtGoal Giveaway Winners Announced!

Greetings, friends. I am back from a relaxing week-long vacation in the jungles of Belize (with a one-day trip across the border to Guatemala to visit Mayan ruins — or the rebel base on Yavin IV, if you’re a Star Wars geek like me). I had a blast. I slept a lot, thought a lot about my future plans, and basically forgot about the world.

As always, coming home was overwhelming. It’s a shock to come back into the U.S. and be instantly bombarded by the constant flood of commercialism and, especially, the mass media. Plus, there’s so much junk food! For an entire week, Kris and I ate healthfully (well, except for the beer), and then the first thing I ate in the Houston airport? A pretzel dog. My stomach rebelled! Don’t get me wrong — I love this country — but it’s far from perfect, and very very insular. I wish we, as a culture, were more willing to look at what other countries get right.

Speaking of rebellion, it looks like there was a fuss over certain posts I picked for my absence. The life insurance post on Friday especially took some heat, some of which was deserved, and some of which was not. When I requested that post, I hadn’t yet written the chapter in Your Money: The Missing Manual about insurance (including life insurance), so I felt I needed an expert to respond. If I were to do it again, I’d field the question myself, and would write (as I did in the book)

The bottom line: For most people, the best choice is guaranteed renewable term life insurance.

But term life isn’t always the best answer. Cash-value policies make sense for some people, especially those with high incomes, large net worths, or small businesses. These folks should consider whole life coverage. But one point is correct: Seek advice from an independent adviser, not from somebody who has a vested interest in selling you an expensive policy.

By the way, Your Money: The Missing Manual went to the printer yesterday. It’s now available for pre-order from Amazon, and should be hitting shelves in your local bookstores in the next couple of weeks. Meanwhile, I’m already starting to think about Book #2, which would be much more of a “J.D. book”, I hope — more about my personal journey and how the lessons I’ve learned can be used by other folks, too. (Your Money: The Missing Manual has some of this, but it’s much more focused on the nuts and bolts of personal finance.)

So, the book is done, I’m back from vacation, and I’m ready to blog!

—
Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:

• A Little Bit of Blog Housekeeping
• Happy New Year! My One Goal for 2010
• The Basic Law of Frugality
• Planning a (Debt-Free) Dream Vacation
• The 63-Page Credit Card Agreement

The other week, I discussed some interesting DIY debt reduction programs and strategies that you can try out for low cost. There are some things you can do to reduce your debt for free and permanently, but it will take some work and a change in your habits. The most effective debt solution to help you break out of the debt cycle involves using sheer will power to control your spending and some discipline to develop and implement your budget plan, say with the use of a free online budget planner such as Mint.com. Or alternatively, you may want to invest in a home budget software program for your desktop.

But what about a program that actually focuses primarily on debt elimination and reduction, by offering various tools that help you keep a close eye on your debt? I’ve come across some innovative programs for eliminating debt online, using “do it yourself” methods. One such site that focuses squarely on debt reduction is DebtGoal.

Get Credit Card Debt Relief: Create A DebtGoal Debt Management Plan

The good news is that today, I’m holding a giveaway. I am excited about offering FIVE free subscriptions to DebtGoal. And the even better news is that these subscriptions have NO expiration date. So if you win and you accept a subscription, then it’s good until you decide to cancel! The regular price for Debt Goal is $14.95 per month (I’ve been told).

Join Our Giveaway For Free DebtGoal Subscriptions

So here’s how you can participate. I only have a few simple requirements for those of you who want to participate:

1. Subscribe to my feed. If you’re new to this site, I would encourage you to subscribe to my feed, either via RSS or through email. I would love to have you on as a subscriber! The benefits? Then you’ll get to keep track of these freebies I offer from time to time, along with information, discussions and coverage of diverse topics on personal finance and money.

2. Give DebtGoal a try. Why not try out the program to see if it’s for you? There’s a 7 day free trial for the program, so there’s no risk to you if you sign up to check it out first. Please visit this link to get started on the trial. I’d like to offer the free subscriptions to those folks who were already somewhat familiar with this program or who were serious about fighting debt this way.

3. Leave us a comment.
You can opt to do one or more of these activities:

a) Give us feedback about DebtGoal. Once you’ve test driven DebtGoal, it would be great if you can share with us what you think of the program. Tell us your thoughts in our comment section!

b) Tell us how you plan to beat debt. Share with us your own debt story. You can offer something inspiring or maybe you’d just like to vent about your situation. Either way, please leave us a comment and I’ll count it as an entry for this giveaway.

4. Who wins?
Again, each comment entered will be counted as one entry. Only one comment/entry per participant please. Winners will be announced within a week or earlier, depending on interest. I will then contact the winners to give them next steps and instructions on how they can claim their free subscriptions.

Sounds good? Then let’s get a move on debt!

Get Credit Card Debt Relief! I’m Giving Away Free DebtGoal Subscriptions

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