drop debt!

Making money through home based businesses

2007-06-16T21:05:00.000-07:00

One way to put a dent in credit card debt is to build a reliable second income. Home based businesses can be a great way to make that extra money.

Of course, watch out for the many online and offline home business scams. Any real business takes time and effort to build. But if you do your homework and put in your time, you can start an internet home business for little money.

Once your business starts to show a profit, make sure you immediately save the proceeds and use them to start paying off your high interest credit card bills!

Duke Prosecutor's Replacement: Coman a Controversial Choice

2007-01-13T15:06:00.000-08:00

A bit off topic, but I wanted to comment on the very recent replacement of Mike Nifong in the Duke case. Jim Coman, one of two prosecutors named to replace Nifong, seems a potentially controversial choice, given his 2004 statement supporting N.C. prosecutors who withheld impeachment evidence from the defense. This type of behavior is in direct conflict with Supreme Court rulings. (Impeachment evidence is evidence that would severely discredit a witness.)

Despite the fact that Coman later took back his comments, the very fact that he made them gives me concern and makes me wonder if it is possible that justice will be served in this case.

Is something rotten in this state or what?

Check out this article on Coman from December, 2004 from the Raleigh News & Observer.

Look for new ways to save money

2006-12-22T02:12:00.000-08:00

In order to reduce debt, always be on the lookout for new ways to save money. One way is to examine your auto insurance policy. It is possible to get cheap auto insurance from a quality insurer. Many people pay far too much, either due to unreasonably low deductibles or just laziness - they don't spend the time to periodically shop for better quotes.

You can often save hundreds a year just by shopping for a better auto policy deal, and you can then use this money to help pay down your debts. It doesn't take much effort, and given that the savings will extend for many years, it can really help put a dent in your credit card debt.

The housing bubble and personal debt

2006-10-26T03:06:00.000-07:00

Home sales fell another 1.9% last month (September '06) , and according to figures released yesterday (10/25), housing prices dropped a staggering 2.5% nationwide from September of '05, the biggest percentage drop in FOUR DECADES.

At the same time, David Lereah, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors has the brazen nerve to assert that the ÂThe worst is behind us as far as a market correction". Mr. Lereah, as always, failed to present any factual basis for his assertion. Of course, his organization desperately hopes this to be the case, since they make their money off the percentage fee they collect from home sales. As such, Realtors would hardly seem an unbiased source for prognostications of home pricing trends, though you would hardly know this from the way Mr. Lereah is constantly quoted as an economic authority by members of our (lazy?) press.

How does this all relate to personal debt? Well, if you are considering taking out a home equity loan to put in that swimming pool or buy that new car, you might want to hold off until we have a more realistic idea of the direction the housing market will head.

Remember when you read the news and watch TV to consider the quality and bias of sources that are quoted, especially when it comes to the housing market. Neutral publications like the Economist, the Motley Fool, Money, etc, are all now projecting a long-term cooling and even possible major drop in housing prices.

Yet organizations like National Association of Realtors are claiming that we have reached the bottom. Of course, this same group has also claimed this every month since the market started cooling off. Furthermore, they previously claimed that there was no bubble at all and that prices NEVER drop nation-wide. Again, be wary of listening to forecasts from organizations that stand to lose from a drop in housing prices - they are have a serious vested interest in maintaining the high housing prices.

The truth is, NOBODY knows what direction housing prices will go. All that is certain is that prices are at historic highs, and no market has previously maintained such a level for long.

So be careful with home equity lines - using them as your personal cash machine could have dire consequences if (or, more likely, when) the housing market takes a further dive.

Two new travel blogs

2006-10-08T12:54:00.000-07:00

Here are two new travel blogs, one dealing with general travel information and the other dealing with Alaska cruise and vacation information. If you love to travel as much as I do, check them out.

New Bankruptcy Law Update

2006-10-08T11:52:00.000-07:00

A new CNN/Money article asserts that the new bankruptcy law isn't having as negative an effect on debtors as consumer groups had feared it would.

While this should come as a bit of a relief to those with large amounts of credit card debt, the trouble seems to be not the reality, but rather consumers' perception of reality.

In other words, many consumers who are aware of the new law seem to think that it has limited access to bankruptcy and that they will in fact have to repay their credit card bills, whether they file for bankruptcy or not. This makes them more susceptible to the manipulations of collection agencies, who may take advantage of this perception to force consumers to agree to less than reasonable repayment plans, etc.

In reality, people are actually having to repay less of their credit card debts under the new law. It is important that consumers be aware of this, as the threat of bankruptcy can be an important bargaining tool when negotiating with creditors.

Need a vacation? I do!

2006-10-08T11:36:00.000-07:00

Here's a good site for planning an Alaska cruise. I'm hoping to plan one soon!

New debt site

2006-10-03T20:41:00.000-07:00

There is a new site that covers the methods of eliminating Credit Card Debt Check it out if you are looking for information on how to handle your debt.

Dreamhost down AGAIN!!!!!! Day SIX!

2006-07-19T00:13:00.000-07:00

Dreamhost could really not suck any worse than they are sucking right now. Just when my sites had been up for a few hours (though FTP has still been slooow), Dreamhost goes down again. Naturally their auto-detect problem reporting system claims nothing is down. But then why can I access any sites but those on Dreamhost? Let me guess, what is it now... somebody tripped and pulled out a cable? Rats in the control center? Oh, I know, it's techno terrorism, and they decided to target the least competent web host and take it DOWN. (Who said terrorists were the brightest bunch...)

OK, I am ranting and rambling, but these bozos have set me back almost a week now. And imagine if DMOZ or anyone else chose this week to check out one of my sites. Hell, a week is a long time. It is entirely possible I lost out on one or more directory submissions thick week thanks to the Dreamhost downtime fiasco, and I'm sure I wouldn't be alone. And to think of the time it will take to set up at a new web host. ARGGGH!

Dreamhost in now an "elite" group

2006-07-17T19:26:00.000-07:00

I noticed that, thanks to their 72-hour-plus downtime, Dreamhost is currently the 7th most searched tag on Technorati right now, right after Israel, Lebanon, and Bush. Boy, have they made the big time or what!

Well, they say no publicity is bad publicity. (But I'm not buying it).

Dreamhost.com down: Have they fled to Cabo?

2006-07-17T17:35:00.000-07:00

So now on dreamhoststatus.com, they say things are getting "even worse". I tried opening even www.dreamhost.com and got a 404 error. Makes we wonder if they've packed everything into a U-Haul and fled to Cabo.

Dreamhost Downtime Disaster - Day 4

2006-07-17T09:59:00.000-07:00

S0 it's now been 30 hours since Dreamhost posted any updates on dreamhoststatus.com, my sites are still dead or close to non-functional, and this all started for me Friday afternoon with lack of FTP functionality. That makes this day four - DAY FOUR - with little or no access to my websites. This is way beyond acceptable now, and the response from Dreamhost support has been incredibly slow. A brief, vague update every 10 hours has turned to no updates at all.

If you have been considering switching to Dreamhost, DON'T. The mere chance of this type of episode recurring - 4 days of outage to all sites -should give anyone pause. They have no phone support on their average plans, and thus you are left with their status page, which they are SO slow to update (and now seem to have stopped updating altogether). Ugh.

Dreamhost Filer Disaster Update!

2006-07-16T17:03:00.000-07:00

I just got this back from Dreamhost support:

***************************
Hello,

As you may know, we recently had a network filing system crash causing severe downtime. When a filer like this crashes, it basically has to go through each of the it's disks to verify that they are ok, and can accept, read or change data. This takes an extremely long time, due to the sheer size of the machine (two terabytes!).

Once we got the machine up, fixed and serving files, everything seemed like it was ok, so we went back to making sure all content, data and websites were working normally.

Right about then, it crashed again! This time, however, it came back up correctly, so it didnt take as long as it had previously.

That was 6am PST this morning. Since then, we are currently constructing a new filer machine (we had to cannibalize two just to get this current one back up and running) to offload everyone. In the meantime, it has crashed again, however, it seems to come back up in the correct state. If possible, you may want to get any sensitive, or important data off of your account, just to be safe. We are working on getting everyone off the faulty machine, however, as you can imagine, it will take sometime.

We are terribly sorry about the problems related to this disaster and hope to have everything stabilized and working ASAP. Please understand that we are doing everything humanly possible (including working 24 hours shifts, and sleeping in our data center!) to get every site back up and running. If your domain is down, or showing an error, we are working on reconfiguring all of the effected services, and should have them fixed soon.
******************

Just thought I'd post it for anyone searching blogs for updates. This is the type up information I had emailed them suggesting they post on dreamhoststatus.com, but since it isn't there, maybe some other people affected by the current Dreamhost server problems can see this information here and at least have a clearer idea of what is going on.

Dreamhost problems (or is it nightmares?)

2006-07-16T15:36:00.000-07:00

Boy, this weekend has been a terrible one for my web host, Dreamhost. All my sites have been alternately down, slow, or slower for going on 48 hours now. My biggest complaint is the terribly inadequate update information posted by Dreamhost on dreamhoststatus.com. I know they are busy fixing hardware, but surely somebody there should take the time to post a cogent update every 2 hours or so during the time they have shut off web server access completely. When my site visitors are getting a 404 screen for 12 hours, I want to know exactly what's up. Instead, they have only left confusing and incomplete update messages, on average one every 8-10 hours. Am I the only one that is frustrated by this? I think not.

A new wrinkle with the federal bankruptcy law

2006-06-19T00:49:00.000-07:00

A less emphasized element of the new Federal bankruptcy law requires all people filing for bankruptcy to enroll in credit counseling programs at their own expense. This could be seen as adding insult to injury for those median and above income earners who have already lost access to Chapter 7 bankruptcy under the new law. Not only will they have to repay a good portion of their debt after bankruptcy, but they will also have to pay for pre-bankruptcy credit counseling.

Many have criticized this counseling requirement, pointing out that it such counseling comes too late to do any good. People who are ready to file bankruptcy are too far along in the process to benefit from advice and assistance from credit counselors.

Now a new problem has arisen - the credit counseling agencies themselves are unable to keep with the sheer volume of new clients forced to seek their services. Furthermore, most of these agencies are non-profit and have been forced to reduce their fees for these customers. After all, anyone ready to file for bankruptcy tends to have little spare cash hanging around.

So this has lead to a budget crisis at some agencies, which have already been suffering from cutbacks in support from credit card companies. Not a pretty picture. Here is a link to an article on this subject in the Columbus dispatch. An interesting read.

Link to related story

The new bankruptcy law and the middle class

2006-06-18T23:02:00.000-07:00

The new Federal bankruptcy law enacted last fall was predicted to have a major impact on people with credit card debt. The biggest losers were projected to be uninsured or under-insured middle class Americans who racked up major charges for medical bills, and many of whom would now be unable to seek the protection of Chapter 7 bankruptcy and the "clean slate" it provides.

Instead this group would be forced into Chapter 13, where they would face years of large payments. The jury is still out on how this change will ultimately affect people's ability to bargain with creditors. Anecdotal evidence seems to suggest people are still able to negotiate repayments involving repayment of as little as 25-50% of the PRINCIPAL on their accounts.

The one thing that seems certain is that you should investigate settlement options well before they get to the point of bankruptcy. Earlier (pre-bankruptcy) debt settlement still benefits the consumer and the creditor. The consumer gets a reduced repayment amount and is able to proceed with rebuilding his or her credit much sooner, and the creditor gets to recoup part of the debt owed while saving on court and legal costs. It's a win-win situation

In the beginning...

2006-06-18T02:55:00.000-07:00

This blog is dedicated to helping people get out of debt and start to lead prosperous lives. Check back regularly for news, debt relief strategies, and commentary on the growing crisis of consumer debt.

For lots more information on methods of achieving credit card debt reduction, head to:

Guide to Credit Card Debt Reduction