The other day I found out that banks are offering incentives for customers to close out their home equity lines of credit. The largest incentive I’ve seen was a $700 gift card. Banks are targeting people that don’t have a balance or have a small balance they can most likely pay off pretty quickly. When I first heard of this happening, I was surprised. As I thought about it more, the more sense it made. Banks have to keep reserves based on the loan outstandings; therefore the more open lines of credit, the more reserves. What I think is really crazy is that banks are still desperately trying to make their loan goals for 2008 despite the financial crisis. It is extremely hard to get approved for a loan now, not to mention high interest rates. I checked the other day for rates on a second mortgage loan and they are as low as 7.9%. You would think that with prime rate dropping, banks would lower their interest rates on loans. It seems the opposite is happening. How are high [...]

The last time I updated about our debt reduction, we owed more than 50% on our student loans. I am happy to say that today we hit over 50% paid! I am ecstatic! I thought it would take us a lot longer than this to knock out some debt.  I had originally planned on paying off the student loan in the next nine months, but then decided that I would do a “reverse debt snowball” instead, and put the money that I was going to throw at the student loan in a savings account earning 4% interest. It looks like that was a sound decision, because now there’s rumors that they will start converting my area first. Oh well. I’ve got an emergency fund, and that’s what it for: in case we need it. I can’t wait until I get to 50% of our car loan, but that should only take us 5 months or so.  I’ll keep chiseling away at these debts and try my darnedest to save, save, save!

I just wanted to pop in and say Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to my lovely blog readers and friends.  Mr. Money and I are celebrating Christmas with my side of the family this year.  I couldn’t be happier!  I’ve got all my presents together and am ready to hand them out.  I hope you all have a wonderful, very merry Christmas!