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Month: July 2006

Chase Cash Plus Rewards Card still around

Chase Cash Plus Rewards Card still around

A couple of months ago it appeared that Chase was ditching the Cash Plus Rewards card that so many people in the PF community loved. This card offered 5% back on grocery & gas purchases and 1% back on everything else. Well I was really dissappointed when it appeared that Chase pulled the plug on this card (I think less than a year after they implemented it) because I bank at Chase and well I like to be able to access all of my accounts from one on web page and have on point of contact for my banking/credit cards.

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My Credit Score

My Credit Score

Well I went ahead and splurged and paid the $5.95 to get my credit score with my free credit reports and my score currently is an 861. I believe that’s pretty good, although its not as high as it could be (scores range from 400-925). I have nothing negative on any of my credit reports and well there shouldn’t be. I’m guessing my credit score is hurt by lack of history seeing as how I am only 26 and my credit history is only a couple years old…. and possibly that my mortgage is still at about 78-80% utilization. Anyway I guess the score is high enough that should I ever need credit I can probably secure it, but I’m kind of ticked that I’m not in the 900s…oh well.

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Free Credit Report

Free Credit Report

Well it’s been a little over a year since we moved into our house and I figured it wouldn’t hurt to run a free credit report on myself with the three credit reporting agencies. For those of you that don’t know you can request a free credit report every 12 months by going to http://www.AnnualCreditReport.com. You just enter in your Name, Date of Birth, SSN, and address information and you can then go get a free credit report from Transunion, Experian, and Equifax. It really is pretty simple. Once you get to the individual credit reporting sites you may be asked a few more specific quesitons about your credit history just to further verify it is you, but all in all it is pretty painless and best of all it’s free, so if you haven’t done it go ahead and check it out.

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Frugal Tip – Don’t buy shaving cream

Frugal Tip – Don’t buy shaving cream

Well I recently had a coworker send me an article on the evils of shaving cream and after reading the article I quit using shaving cream cold-turkey and I couldn’t be happier. Not only can I shave quicker and safer, but think of all the money I willl be saving by not every having to buy shaving cream or after-shave for the rest of my life. Well ok it’s not that much at less than $2 per can that probably lasts 3-4 months, but still if I can spend less money on something and get better results I’m a happy guy. Besides building lasting wealth is more about small boring montonous things like this rather than the get rich quick using some glamorous method that you saw on an infomercial or MSNBC.

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Hiatus

Hiatus

Well in case you haven’t notice I’ve been AWOL for over the last month.  Well not sure what happened but it got warm and I’ve just been spending time enjoying the 3 months of “not winter” here in Wisconsin and spending time with the family.  I’m a computer nerd and probably averaged about 12 hrs on the computer a day, but honestly this summer I rarely touch it outside of work lately.  It’s actually been kind of refreshing and  I’m sure I’ll be back more once the snow starts flying and instead of golfing or chasing the kid around the yard I’ll inside on the computer delaying shoveling the driveway for the 5th time that day.

Anyway I host the Festival of Frugality next week so I figured I better get my blog back in shape before people start trampling all over it next week….gosh I didn’t even do my monthly report last month.

Anyway in the spirit of frugality I am going to try to churn out a few frugality posts before hosting the carnival.  I look forward to hosting and while I still plan on enjoying my summer I’ll probably write a little more often than I did earlier this summer.

June 2006 – Retirement NestEgg Report (Late -10 points)

June 2006 – Retirement NestEgg Report (Late -10 points)

Sorry about missing this report. Well despite another month of subpar performance I actually made some forward progress soley in part to my Roth 401k contributions.

My Roth IRA – $10,548.22 (-3.03%)
Wife Roth IRA – $11,824.13 (-0.03%)
Traditional 401K – $10,032.09 (-4.54%)
Roth 401K – $4684.31 (46.08%)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $37,088.75 (+1.17%)