Car troubles seem popular right now - not for my car, actually, but the high volume of friends complaining of costly repairs has left me resorting to voodoo rituals to keep my own car running smoothly (and boy, is my cat mad at me for it!).

People come to me looking for guidance, but I don’t always have the best answer. My answer is usually just to run the numbers and see what makes sense according the math. But that isn’t always the best solution for a person’s total well-being. So maybe you guys can help me brainstorm on this one.

The Problem

The Boyfriend’s car came back from a routine check-up with the diagnosis of “rust.” Rust on the rocker panel, rust on the fuel tank, rust on the brake lines. Inspection time isn’t until March, and there’s a snowy, salty winter between now and then, so he’ll be very lucky if the rust doesn’t eat through

His mechanic says it’s probably not worth the money to repair it - he’d just end up replacing everything underneath. So what should be done?

Suggestions

Here are the ideas that were tossed around - all are viable, but of course there’s no “clear right path” among them.

• Get a “new” car (used, new to him), with a loan, in the $7,000 - $10,000 range. Pay off the loan within a year, year and a half of graduation. The con for this, besides the cost, is that he doesn’t have much of a credit history, due to getting through school loan-free. Who thought that would have a downside?
• Get the underside of the car oiled, and then drip oil everywhere for a while. Won’t stop the rust, but will slow it down some, maybe long enough to pass the inspection in March.
• Drive as little as possible. Thankfully he lives with a house full of people that are all primarily headed to the same place on a daily basis: campus! If he can keep the car off the salty roads over the winter, maybe it will last through inspection.
• Move back on campus, and avoid driving nearly altogether. However, the school is in a housing crisis, so this might not even be possible. Even if it is possible, all of the places worth living on campus are likely taken, since classes start Monday. Also, I get the sense that he’s very happy living where he is, and rightly so - it’s a great place with good friends as housemates. Once again, if he does this, maybe the car will make it to inspection time.

So, who has thoughts and opinions? He’s one year away from finishing grad school, take that into account. And if you share “what I would do” type advice, please make it what you would really do. We can all say that we would literally live in a cardboard box in the basement of a building on campus, but we don’t mean it.

My Take

It doesn’t make “numbers sense,” but a “new” car seems like the best idea to me. Because even if the car makes it to inspection, it’s slightly dangerous to drive around a car that could rust out at any moment. Also, it would be more than a little inconvenient if when it rusted out - he could get stranded somewhere, or just stuck without a car while he shops for a new one.

JFK said “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.” So, you know, buy a new car when you find out that you’ll need one - not when you’re stranded on the side of the road with a bottomed-out fuel tank.

So what do you guys think? Maybe someone with more car experience can lend some insight - I’m lucky I know where the gas pedal is!

Photo credit: freeparking

Things have, oh, hit the fan. What was supposed to be my last week of summer “vacation” has turned into “the incredibly crazy week where everything happens at once, and all the information I need in order to make decisions is still up in the air.” So while I simultaneously run around like a headless chicken and sit tight waiting for answers, I figured I ought to give you guys at least something to chew on.

So here: a bunch of links that I’ve been meaning to share, but haven’t yet been able to work into any posts. There’s some really great stuff that I’ve just been sitting on! Today’s theme is…

Credit Scores and Reports

Money Saving Tips: Credit Scores, Everything You Need to Know - Originally titled “Credit Scores: Yes, You Should Give a Damn,” this article by my good buddy Cap gives you the straight dope on what a credit score really is, and how to get yourself a good one.

How to Find One’s Credit Report and Credit Score Inexpensively and Safely - There are a lot of websites out there that offer “free” credit scores, when what they really mean is either “fake credit scores” or “take your information and sell it.” This guide will help you find your true credit report and score in the shark infested waters, without spending more that you have to.

FICO Score Estimator - Too broke or lazy to get your credit score? Me too. Well, the broke part, anyway. If you’re just looking out of curiosity, and don’t need the actual score for any reason, this estimator can help you figure out what range your score falls in.

The Flower City! The Kodak City! The World’s Image Center! Rachacha! I’m a fiercely loyal Rochester, New York native and I adore this city, despite its flaws *cough*lack of public transportation*cough*. But if you can get around Rochester, I highly suggest you do. As a part of WiseBread’s group writing project, here’s a list of things you can do in Rochester, for five dollars or less:

Free!

Mendon Ponds Park: trails, water activities, and sledding in the winter! Also a great place for Geocaching (see below).

Urban Exploration: check out all the weird and wonderful parts of the city - I highly suggest a trip to the Legal Wall if you’ve never been (but wear good shoes, because there tends to be a lot of broken glass).

Geocaching: “The High Tech Easter Egg Hunt” is a ton of fun! A hiking GPS is most useful, but you can get by with one of those talking car ones, if you’ve got it. Don’t have either? Do what we did when I was a broke freshman - look at the satellite image of where the cache is on Google Maps, and use that as your best guess of the location. Harder, but fun, and free!

Festivals: Rochester is a festival town, so there seems to be one every weekend. Each festival is different, so don’t knock them all if you visit one and don’t like it. Might I suggest Park Ave Fest for college students? (It tends to be a bit more, uh, inebriated.)

Rochester Public Art: A guide to all the public art in and around Rochester. If you’re looking for more of a tour-like experience, check out ARTWalk.

Mount Hope Cemetery: Free historic walking tours on weekends from May - October. Twilight tours and other interesting tours are only $4/person.

Self-Guided Walking Tour of High Falls: Print this out and head down to the historic High Falls district! There are even more online walking tours in Rochester.

Bike Ride Along the Canal: Assuming you have a bike, that is. You could also walk!

$5 or Less

Ice Skating at the Ritter Ice Arena at RIT: $5 for most public skate times, but only $3 for noon-time weekday sessions. Skate rentals are $3, if you need them.

Cell Phone Tours: $4.95 gets you one day access to an audio tour of Rochester landmarks, right on your cell phone!

The “Dollar Theater” - Second run movies at cheap prices. Called the “Dollar Theater” because all movies on Tuesdays are only $1. The highest price you’ll pay is only $2.25, so it’s still a steal, and a great way to catch films you thought you missed in the theater!

Abbott’s Frozen Custard: As much a Rochester staple as Wegmans and Kodak!

Buffalo Wild Wings (BDubs): Discount Wings on Tuesday, Legs on Wednesday, and Boneless Wings on Thursday!

Bowl-A-Roll: Lots of specials, including College Night (Sunday & Monday after 9pm, $1 bowling and $1 shoe rental) and FREE bowling if you visit one of a long list of merchants!

$5 or Less with a Student ID

Sonnenberg Gardens & Mansion: Pretty much the coolest gardens I’ve ever been to. Trust me, they used to take us there as a field trip every year when I was in elementary school,  and I still never tire of going!

The Little Theater: Art house films for only $5 for students, children, and seniors.

George Eastman House: One of those “must see” things in Rochester.

Susan B. Anthony House: Women’s suffrage for the win! $3 admission for students.

Just over $5

Seneca Park Zoo: The prices drop closer to $5 during the winter!

Red Wings Baseball: Reserved seating is just $6!

Find More

This is by no means an exhaustive list, just some suggestions! This list was originally posted in August of 2008 - I’ll try to keep it updated, but I can’t guarantee the long-lasting-ness of this list. Some more places to check for cheap or free things to do in Rochester:

City of Rochester list of Festivals, Parades, Concerts and More
RochesterDowntown.com Entertainment Guide

Photo by _yoshi_

Brevity style!

Giveaway - you entered yet?

Back to School posts from the College Money Network:

This Writer’s Wallet: Get an Internship & Make It Count
Broke Grad Student: Broke Student’s Guide to Free Software and Online Resources
MFA of Bust: Off-campus fun on the cheap
Here at PTY: Beginners Guide to Staying on Top of Student Loans
Green Panda Treehouse: Find Cheap Transportation for School and Work

All good articles! Read them!

Blog carnivals featuring PTY last week:

No Debt Plan: Carnival of Personal Finance #165: College Football Edition
Broke Grad Student: Carnival of Money Stories #72: Back to School Edition

It’s back to school time – do you know what your student loans are?

In all seriousness, this is my pet peeve: I have yet to come across a fellow college student who knew much about their student loans. How much have you borrowed? From who? At what interest rate? And the big Kahuna: how much will you owe when all is said and done at graduation?

It doesn’t have to be this way. Ignorance may seem like bliss, but you’re better off learning from my mistakes. Trust me: instead of bliss, ignorance means you get bit in the ass later. Staying on top of things is your real ticket to freedom.

Keep Papers In One Place

I know, I know – it seems like my solution for everything is a manila folder and an electronic folder. But it works! Hang onto all the papers relating to your loans. It may seem like a lot now, but you can weed it down and figure out what’s really important when you actually start repaying.

Keep a text document on your computer with all the information you can get about your loans. Who’s issuing the loan? Do you have a co-signer? How much are you borrowing per term? What’s the interest rate? Most importantly, most loans nowadays come with an online account you can log into – especially the federal loans. Keep all the information you need in order to log into that account. (Figure out how to encrypt this file – this is sensitive info!)

Run the Calculator

Now, and at the beginning of every semester/quarter/term from now on, you should run the Loan Calculator. Use the total loan balance you estimate you’ll have at graduation. There’s two big reasons for this:

1) Make sure you’re on track. The loan calculator tells you how much money you’ll need to make to pay off the loans you’re getting. If the number seems too high, you need to figure out a way to reduce your loans, stat.

2) A wake-up call. You’re in school. You’re paying to be there, whether you like it or not. You’ll have to pay this money back - not even bankruptcy can erase student loans! Not to scare you or anything. It’s just a way to keep the big picture in mind.

If You Don’t Know, Look It Up

Loan stuff all seems like gibberish. Subsidized? Unsubsidized? Perkins? Stafford? Graduated repayment? They don’t really lay it all out plainly for you, do they? Thankfully, you’re going to school in the information age. Don’t wallow in ignorance – put Google to work!

So what if you really don’t know what loans you have, and can’t find the info? You might be able to get a snapshot from the National Student Loan Data System. You’ll need to know your federal PIN, which is the number you use when you fill out the FAFSA every year. Also, check your college billing statements. If you still feel like you’re not getting the full picture, make an appointment with your school’s financial aid office.

This seems all pretty simple, doesn’t it? Keep track of your papers, know how to check your balances, and run the calculator once a term. But if you actually bother to do it, you’ll be ahead of just about everyone else with student loans. Because from what I’ve seen, most people just aren’t on top of the game. Peace of mind: If you’re on top of your loans, that means your loans aren’t on top of you!

The Back to School group writing project at the College Money Network is in full swing! You’ve entered the giveaway already, right? Well, good! Make sure you check out the great posts that have been written by the group so far:

Broke Grad Student kicked things off with 6 Cool Ways to Track Your Expenses Online
Green Panda Treehouse wants to help with Maximizing Your Financial Aid
This Writer’s Wallet offers up 5 Things Every College Freshman Needs to Know
Spilling Buckets tells you How To Save a Bunch of Money Buying College Textbooks
and here at Poorer Than You, you got the tools to Make This the Year for Scholarships.

Stay tuned! We’ve got another week of back to school posts for you!

Blog Carnivals that featured PTY this past week:
Festival of Frugality #137 at Frugal Homemaker Plus
Carnival of Personal Finance: City Slickers Edition at Squawkfox

Welcome to a new year of classes! Whether you’re a newbie freshman, on your last year of the Van Wilder plan, or even if you’re still in high school, it’s time to saddle up and make this year count. And by “count” I mean “profitable!”

Scholarships are one of the easiest ways to make a lot of money in life. People are always looking for the next big “get rich quick” scheme - but in truth, the easiest way to get your hands on $10,000 is to fill out a form, attach your transcript, and send it away.

But we all know it doesn’t exactly work like that. You’ve got to get your scholarship application to the top of the pile. So, uh, how do you do that?

Grades

I’m only gonna touch on this for a tiny moment, because you already know it. The higher your Grade Point Average, the more scholarships you qualify for. So even raising your GPA by a tenth of a point can open doors. End of story.

Scholarship Attack Gear

Get a manila folder and a cheap flash drive. Yep, cheap - it doesn’t have to hold very much, just a few Word documents and some PDFs. Every time you fill out a scholarship application, keep a copy of it in one of these places - preferably both!

Why? Because scholarship applications and essays, well… they get a bit repetitive. And for most of them, you can use previously written essays! So you can just grab something you’ve already written, edit it a bit, and send it on its way. I mean, how many times do you want to write the “I see my ideal career as…” essay? Once.

Get a calendar. It’s better if you use a calendar that you use for other things too, or else you’ll forget to look at it! Write down deadlines. But not real deadlines, use fake ones. Make up a deadline at least a week or two before the scholarship is due.

Why fake deadlines? Because if a scholarship has a lot of qualified applicants, the committee will have to start looking for any little thing to whittle down the pile. “Submitted too close to the deadline” could be the reason your application gets tossed out.

If a scholarship application has lots of parts, break it up into mini deadlines. I once had a scholarship that asked me for everything under the sun: a ton of financial information, two letters of recommendation, four essays… there’s no way you can leave that stuff till the last minute. Start with the letters of recommendation. First of all, you want to make sure you get anything that relies on other people done first - you can’t count on other people to be slaves to your deadline. Secondly, once people have written those letters for you, you’ll feel more pressure to actually finish the application.

Make It a Class Act

Take your weekly class schedule. Find some time in it, maybe a break between classes, that’s at least two hours long. Write in a new class: Scholarship Class. Go to the same place in the library every week, with your manila folder and your flash drive, and spend two hours researching, writing essays, and gathering other stuff you need.

Try not to use your own computer for this if you have a laptop. Using a library computer or one in a lab will limit distractions, and it will make you want to get stuff done so that you can get back to your own stuff.

Some weeks, there will be so many scholarships coming up, that you’ll have to give yourself homework for this class. (March tends to be the time of year when that happens.) So give yourself homework (essays, asking for letters of recommendation, getting transcripts) and give yourself a consequence for not doing the homework on time.

If you have trouble being your own professor of Scholarship Class, find a friend who can take the class with you, without being distracting. Then play professor to each other - ask for updates, assign homework, keep track of each other’s deadlines as well as your own. But again, find someone committed who won’t distract you or skip class!

Letters of Recommendation

Treat every interaction with professors, bosses, and advisors (even club advisors!) as a building block toward a letter of recommendation. I’m not advocating sucking up. And sure, there’s always going to be a few professors/bosses/advisors that you don’t get along with, and are never going to give you a letter of recommendation. But things can change over time, and you should do your best to sparkle when you can. Treat everyone with respect, and make deadlines. If you can’t make a deadline, let them know days ahead of time. It all counts.

Don’t Use the Shotgun Approach… Yet

The Shotgun Approach: Applying for every scholarship under the sun, regardless of your qualifications. If you start out this way, you’ll burn out pretty quickly, and you probably won’t get any of them. Start slow. Pick a few that really match you, that you have a really good shot at getting. Carefully craft the applications and send them off early.

When your manila folder is bursting at the seams and your flash drive is filling up, when you can finish an application in 10 minutes flat, when the registrar knows to have transcripts ready for you before you even show up… start shotgunning it!

If I had to come up with one nice thing to say about credit card debt, it would be this: at least it gave me focus. Paying off that high-interest debt as quickly as possible was a clear-cut Priority #1 goal. Now, I’m a little lost.

I can see right here why people my age have trouble with finances. What’s important? What should I do first? What do I need to focus on? Where do I go from here? It’s easy to shove it all aside and think “I’ll just deal with it later.”

But that’s the worst thing I could do. Even if I don’t pick the exact right thing(s) to focus on, pushing toward any financial goal is better than cooling my heels and blowing all of my extra cash. Even just “saving” without purpose is better than nothing.

If just “saving” is a flashlight in the darkness, then saving with a goal is a Super Trouper beam. So, it’s time to find my new goal. Or goals. So what’s on the table?

Debts

Down to just one… ish. My student loans. These are very complicated: some of them are accumulating interest while I’m in school, and some are not. Some of them I haven’t taken out yet! 6 more months of school and I’ll be at my final balance of around $40,000.

Savings

Emergency Fund: Growing. All of the money I get from ING referrals feeds into this. I’m not going to make it a huge priority just yet, since it’s growing and I have a credit line of $6,000 between my two cards to fall back on in a real emergency. I’m not ignoring it, but it’s not at the top of my list.

Textbook Fund: Going back to the question I asked earlier in the year – is it a better idea to pay off a bunch of my student loan interest, and getting a bigger new loan to cover the cost of textbooks, or should I get a smaller loan, pay for textbooks out of pocket, and possibly only be able to pay off part of the interest before it capitalizes?

I ran the math, and it’s better to pay for the textbooks out of pocket. I’m putting aside the money this month, and hopefully I can get good enough deals to not have to use it all! Any money that’s left in the fund will get rolled into a different savings goal.

Getting Established Fund: Just six months until I finish classes and hit the real world! I’m not sure exactly what I’ll be doing, but if it involves moving out of my parent’s house and paying for my own space, then a “getting established fund” will be hugely important. First month’s rent/last month’s rent/security deposit? Oh boy, I think this fund is the most important of all.

Future Car Fund: My car won’t last forever. The dreamy environmentalist in me wants to live someplace where I don’t need a car, but the small-town girl in me hates cities! Realistically, I’ve probably got at least one car purchase in my life, so I’d better get saving for it. I’d adore never having a car loan in my life!

Retirement Fund: Compound interest! It seems like time to think about starting a Roth IRA while my tax bracket is rock-bottom and my credit card debt is gone. But should this take a back seat to the things listed above? What good are retirement savings if I have to go into debt to get textbooks or pay a security deposit?

I could go crazy trying to decide between all of these things. But really, the only thing to do is rank them up and make a savings snowball! Basically, I’ve got to come up with a minimum I want to save for each goal each month. Then any extra savings I come up with beyond those amounts, I put toward the goal at the top of the list. Once I complete the first goal, it comes off the list, and everything below it moves up one. Goals are reevaluated, and the process continues…

Savings Snowball

Ok, I know, this list looks really wonky right now…

No monthly minimum for textbooks? Because it’s on top – priority #1 doesn’t get a minimum, it just gets everything I can afford thrown at it, after the minimums are paid for the other goals.

Only $10 a month into the Emergency fund and the Car fund? Well, those are low priority compared to the student loan and the Getting Established fund – both of the latter goals have a deadline within a year, so they need some major focus.

Retirement as the last priority? Only because the goal total is infinite, so it will never snowball down into anything else. The $5 a month is really just to start a habit, right now. I’ll increase the monthly minimum as my circumstances change.

What do you think? Am I doing it wrong? Am I doing it right? The beauty of a savings snowball (that you don’t get with a debt snowball) is that most of the money is just going into savings accounts, where it can be moved around if I change my mind about things. But I want to know what you guys think!

The two sides of my brain were fighting just now. If you could sneak a microphone into my ear, you would have heard this:

“Oh… oh… my fingers itch! I want to do this so bad!”
“No! Wait until you get your paycheck on Friday!”
“But… but… but… I just got some PayPal payments and there’s enough money in the account!”
“Wait! It’s only a few days! Slow down!”
“Psssh… forget you! It’s just moving money between my checking and savings accounts… I can always move it back.”

*click*

And with that, I made the last payment into my Credit Card Payoff savings account.

My friends, that debt is gone.

Gone-ish. The cash is going to sit in the saving account until October, because my 0% APR lasts until the end of my November statement. I’m going to just collect the interest on the savings account, and make the minimum payments out of it, and then pay off the whole balance a month before the intro rate ends.

Booyah.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about what’s next. I’m gonna bask in the glow for just one day.

Ohhhh… I bet you guys are wondering just what’s going on around here. Why is Stephanie, who claims to be poorer than everyone, giving away so much stuff? First, I let you guys know about a $100,000 sweepstakes. Then, I throw a secret giveaway on this site (which I’d link, but then it wouldn’t be secret! Poke around if you want to find that.). Now what?

We at the recently-formed College Money Network are throwing a big Back-to-School giveaway! Yep, we’re kicking off a batch of back-to-college-themed posts by giving away some awesome stuff! There are multiple ways to enter, all of which are totally easy… but I know what you’re really interested in is the prize list!

Prizes

• 4GB iPod nano
• $50 cash
• $20 cash
• Copy of The 4-Hour Workweek
• One-year magazine subscriptions
  • Young Money
  • Kiplinger’s
  • SmartMoney Magazine
  • Money Magazine
• $10 eBay gift certificate

Now you’re interested, right? Sweet. Nearly all the ways to enter can be found on the Back To School Giveaway page at the College Money Network.

Uh… nearly all the ways to enter? Yeah, that’s right, there’s at least two more ways to enter the contest right here!

PTY Method 1) If you’ll be at college for the upcoming year, leave a comment on this post letting us know what your financial goal for the year is, and how you’ll achieve it. For example…

My financial goal is to save $1,000 by the end of the school year. I will do this by getting a part-time job and putting $100/month in a high yield savings account.

If you’re not a college student, leave some words of wisdom for student finances in the comments. (You may leave as many comments as you like, but only the first one will count as an entry for the contest.)

PTY Method 2) Find the secret password hidden in my subscription feed. You can get the password whether you’re subscribed via RSS or the email updates – either will work. Just email in the password, and you’ll get an extra entry into the giveaway!

All entries must be received by August 31, 2008 at 11:59 PM PST. Other rules and restrictions can be found on the giveaway page.