Money: It's Not Just For Rich People
By Stephanie, updated 7 Comments This post may contain affiliate links
Oh man, you found me out. Yes, this is the future home of Poorer Than You. But I’m still in the process of moving, so things are still a little bit crazy around here! Check back in a couple days, or subscribe to the feed, which will keep you updated: http://feeds.feedburner.com/PoorerThanYou
Peace out!
(If you’re reading this in a feed reader, or by email, you might have no idea what I’m talking about. Visit poorerthanyou.com to see!)
By Stephanie, updated 5 Comments This post may contain affiliate links
I just deposited over $400 in the bank! Included in that was a check for money I was owed, cash from selling an old textbook and my iPod shuffle, and a bunch of rolled change! Of course, things are not all cheery in the Financial Land of Stephanie…
I called the school back today – I had called them Friday to talk about my notice of delinquency, and they were supposed to call me back, but didn’t, so gave them another call today. I ended up agreeing to pay in $100 installments until it’s paid off, so I have to send them the first payment as soon as today’s deposits clear!
Also, I still have my car and credit card payments for this month. Speaking of the credit card though, I had some charges that Blockbuster placed on my card way back in September – and I just got them reversed! So that’s $65 toward paying off my credit card just for emailing Blockbuster.
The bill for my first student loan payment should come next month. Does anyone know anything about student loan deferment? If I register to go back to school in the fall, will that put my loans in deferment automatically? Or will I have to pay until I go back to school in September, and then they’ll go back into deferment? I’m sure the financial aid office will know, but I’d like to know before I go and talk to them.
By Stephanie, updated 3 Comments This post may contain affiliate links
People are fond of saying “Time is Money!” Usually, people say this as some excuse not to be somewhere, or not to do something. Like, “Gee Stephanie, I’d love to stay here and help you organize your sock drawer according to a precise mathematical formula, but, uh, time is money!” *runs away*
But my friends that have an aversion to helping me organize my sock drawer actually are correct. Time is money in so money ways. We spend money on countless things that give us the impression that they’ll save us time. We use money to buy things to fill up the time.
But it’s through the glory of compound interest that we can really see the glowing relationship between time and money. For definition’s sake, there are two kinds of interest:
Simple Interest: If you earn 5% “simple interest” on $100, you’ll end up with $105, and it will never grow any further. Simple, eh?
Compound Interest is the interest that we all know and love (or in the case of debt interest, “know and loathe”). If you earn 5% “compound interest,” compounded (meaning “calculated and paid out”) every year, you’ll get $105 at the end of the first year. But it will just keep getting “calculated and paid out” every year. So at the end of year two, you’ll have $110.25. And after year 50, you’ll have $1146.74. Compound interest is obviously better than simple interest – unless we’re talking about debt interest, in which case you’ll owe $1146.74 after 50 years, in which case you’ll probably shake your first, look up at the sky, and curse compound interest.
But ignoring debt interest, we can be happy that most situations call for compound interest instead of simple interest. And time is compound interest’s key ingredient. Sure, having lots of money to save and invest is great, but having lots of time is actually better. If you have lots of time before you’re going to want that money again (say you’re 16 years old and thinking about your retirement fund), then you can put a relatively low amount of money away, and let time do most of the work for you (in this case, you put away just $8000 and end up with over $1,000,000).
On the flip side – and I’m not pointing this out to depress you – let’s talk about student loans. It’s easy to wrack up $8,000 in student loans (I pulled down that much my freshman year!), and one of the fun things about student loans is you can never escape them – not even through bankruptcy! So let’s say you have 10.7% interest on your student loans (which is outrageous for student loans, but it makes my example work, so just stick with me, ok?), and you duck out of paying them for 47 years, and finally, those $8,000 worth of student loans catch up with you. How much do you owe now?
Just like the 16-year-old that puts $8,000 away for retirement, you have over $1,000,000 – IN DEBT! Yeah, I bet you wish your hypothetical self had made your student loan payments now, don’t you?
So time can be your best friend, or your worst enemy. But you already knew that from all of your other dealings with Harsh Mistress Time, didn’t you? So what should you take away from this (aka “If You Didn’t Read Anything Up Till Now”)?
By Stephanie, updated 1 Comment This post may contain affiliate links
The W2 from my summer job finally came in the mail today. Yes, I’m well aware that it’s more than a month and a half late, and and I’m still not really sure why. I’ve been trying to get this resolved for the past 2 months, and they just kept telling me they didn’t have my address (my address hasn’t changed since I worked there, it’s the same address that was on all the paychecks they gave me). I had to give them my address no less than three times.
But, I have it now, so I can finally get the ball rolling on some things. This single piece of paper might actually be the key to me going back to school! See, because I can now:
Hey guys, soon enough, I might not be a dropout anymore!
By Stephanie, updated 13 Comments This post may contain affiliate links
Man, I want a Nintendo Wii. I mean, really. Lots of things tempt my wallet: 100 Grand Bars, Super-Special-Ultimate-Edition DVD sets, Buffy action figures… you get the idea. But few things really pull at me the way the Wii does. I mean, it’s so white and shiny – like a giant iPod, but better because it hooks to an actual screen instead of a dinky screen smaller than a Post-It (or in the case of my iPod shuffle, no screen at all!), and better also because it has games instead of just Steve Miller Band MP3s.
I think I got a little sidetracked there. This happens when I think about the Wii, and how cute it would look in my living room. And how all of my friends would actually visit me if I had a Wii. What was I talking about again?
Oh yes, that’s right. John Chow, he that is the root of all evil, is doing a Nintendo Wii Giveaway. Ooo, a Nintendo Wii, and I don’t have to put out any cash for it? I bet you want to win instead of me, don’t you? Hmph! Well, if you really want to give me competition, you can enter by writing your own blog post about it. The whole contest-thing is sponsored by 1234Pens.com – they make, not surprisingly, promotional pens.
Yep, I’m a sucker for a giveaway… especially for something I want as badly as a Wii.