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Long before I had this blog, I had a car loan.  My old car, a hand-me-down 1990 Volvo Station-wagon with about 200,000 miles, decided to stop working while driving west on Belleview Avenue one summer morning.  Fixing it would have cost as much as the car was worth, so I decided to get a brand new one.

After all, I had a good job and was living at home with my parents.  It seemed like a good idea.  Now, two and a half years later, it still seems like it was a good idea.  I still love the car and I was able to pay off the loan two and a half years early.  That is half of the scheduled time for those of you who are math impaired.

Over the lift of the loan, I paid a total of $675.53 in interest to the credit union for my $10,995 loan.  That is not too bad.  I like to think of that $675 as my car rental fee for the roughly 30 months I have been using the car so far.  That is a savings of $573 from the total interest if I had only made minimum payments.

I took a screen shot to commemorate my last online payment.  Silly me, I didn’t check the “payoff amount” and was left with four cents that I could not pay online.  A quick phone call took care of that though.

I plan to keep this car for many, many years and I am glad I have it.

What am I going to do with all of the money I had been putting into the loan?  I am sticking to my own advice.  My debt snowball leads me to student loans from here.  I have just about $21,900 left there.  I am still in school, so most of the loans are not accruing interest for another 7 months.  I have paid about $20,000 into my student loans while I have been in school, so paying down the rest shouldn’t take more than another two or three years.

Do you have any good loan payoff stories?  Please share in the comments.

Hi everyone.  If the title didn’t give it away, today is my birthday.  This twenty something is half way to thirty something.  On February 4, 1985 at 9:02am central time, I was born.  On February 4, 2010, I am excited to take advantage of the last birthday that comes with something new.

My car insurance, as a 24 year old guy, was about $125 per month.  That is a lot of money.  Even with good grade discounts and a good driving record, it is expensive to drive if you are a guy between 16 and 24.  At twenty five, I am magically less likely to cause an accident.  That means cheaper car insurance.

I ran through a quote program online last week and found that most insurance companies will lower my rate by over 30%.  I will probably find something around $80 per month.  That is a $45 per month, or $540 per year, in savings.  That is a weekend vacation to the mountains in savings.

The only other perk of turning 25 is also car related.  I can now easily find a rental car anywhere in the United States without paying extra fees for my age.  Pretty sweet, huh?

What do I have to look forward to from here?  Wrinkles?  At least I know that many women think men look better with age.  I am going for the Anderson Cooper or George Clooney look.  Girls think they are attractive, right?

(P.S. I didn’t pick the Progressive girl from the ads for any particular reason.  I just like her commercials better than the Gecko from Geico.  I have a different insurance company.)

I have paid for school for the last time! Yay!  Only 10 more years of student loan payments to go and I am free and clear, unless I pay early, which I plan to do.

I have also used all of my extra cash to pay down my car loan.  I plan to have it paid off by the end of the month!  In all, it was a pretty good month.  When your net worth is below $10,000, it is not too tough to have a 25% increase in a month.

If you have taken out loans to go to school, you most likely have Federal Stafford loans from at least one bank.  If you ended up with more than one bank, you have to make two sets of payments every month for those loans.

I have two sets of loans, and in about 7 months they will come due.  When that happens, I will probably find a consolidation loan.  There are a few important things to know about consolidation loans if you are planning to consolidate.

First, do not get the impression that a consolidation loan will save you money.  Federal Stafford loans, the most popular type of student loans, are fixed at 6.8% by the government.  If you have two loans with minimum payments of $100 each and you consolidate, you will just have one payment of $200.

If you do not get the same kind of loan when you consolidate, the process can actually cost you more money.  Make sure that if you have student loans to consolidate you continue with a Federally backed loan with the same fixed interest rate.

Consolidation can also impact your credit score.  The impact should not be big depending on when you got the first loan.  When you consolidate, you close two loans with history and replace them with one brand new loan.  This lowers your average account age and can impact your credit.

It has been a while since I gave you all an update on my credit score and why things have been moving.  There is no mystery to why my score has gone down and back up.

As you can see, my score went down from about 770 to 747.  Over those months, one of my banks closed my credit card accounts that I never used and I opened up a new credit card account to use as my primary card.  The combination of events decreased my average account age significantly.

The only way to raise your score after something like that is to be patient and keep paying everything on time.  I have, and my score finally took a jump up early this month.  I am now sitting at a cool 757.  It is just a step on the road to 800.

So, until further notice, you will see this credit score on the right side of the blog:

I have taken Ramit Sethi’s thoughts on making an extra $1,000 per month to heart.  I am not there yet, and would like to figure out a better way to keep things balanced, but I have found a fun, income producing hobby that I want to share with you.

Last month, I was accepted as a writer at Demand Studios.  I went through an online application processwhere I was asked for a resume and two writing samples.  I heard back about two days later with an approval e-mail.  Demand Studios is held under the same parent company as popular sites like eHow, Livestrong.com, and Cracked.com.  The parent company is called Demand Media.

Demand Studios hires people on as freelance writers.  Your earnings are paid by PayPal and are reported to the IRS, so you do have to pay income taxes on the income.  Writers are paid on Wednesday and Friday for articles written before a specific cutoff time.

The earning structure is fairly straight forward.  There are articles with a set rate (most commonly $7.00 or $15.00) and there are articles under a revenue sharing program.  Those articles accumulate earnings over time and pay once they reach $10.00.

I have earned $240.20 so far, with two articles awaiting review (another $30) and $45.00 as my expected next payment.  Click to enlarge the summary below:

So, if you are interested in writing, this is a great opportunity to get paid for it.  I make a heck of a lot more at $15 per 400-500 word article than I do writing on this blog.  It is less rewarding, but a better financial gain.  I have found that writing an article or two while watching TV in an evening is easy and quick.

Have any of you given Demand Studios a try?  Have you had similar experiences?  Let us know in the comments.

Are there any closet freelancers in Narrow Bridge reader land?  If so, I have a question for you.  I got a form from my accountant last week asking about any direct costs I have associated with freelance writing I do online.  I made about $650 last year from writing projects.

The question is, how do I figure out what percent of Internet costs were associated with the writing?  How about other utilities and rent?  I did the work from home, and could not have done it anywhere else.  I needed power, Internet, and space to do the writing.  What part of all of that is a business expense?

Have any of you done this before?  How did you figure it out?  Please give your ideas in the comments.

[Also, a quick thanks goes out to Evan for including Narrow Bridge in this week's Carnival of Personal Finance.]

I have been a member of Upromise for nearly a year, and I am thinking it might be time to pull the plug.  I tried the toolbar and registering my cards to the account.  I think I ended up with two transactions that paid me anything.  I will let the picture speak for itself:

Fifty two cents!  That’s it.  Far from the average savings of $458 that Upromise suggests.  Here is what I have decided about the site:

1. Unless you get their credit card, you are not going to make all that much anyway.  The credit card is a way for them to make a lot of money and pass a small amount of it to you.  This works like any other credit card rewards program, but pays for college instead of other rewards.  Not such a great deal if you ask me.

2. Unless you make a crazy effort to go to Upromise restaurants and online stores, you won’t make much else.  That is where I got my fifty two cents.  One trip to a restaurant (not on purpose) that is supported by their program and a website domain renewal, which I would have done anyway.  So, it takes spending money to really earn anything back from Upromise.

Overall, I would not recommend this program.  I try to only endorse sites I really like myself, and this one did not earn the Eric seal of approval.

I made a bad stock trade this morning.  There, I said it.

Given that, I still made a bunch of money, but had I not let emotions get involved I would have made more money.  Here is the story:

I bought BRK.B about a month ago for $3,404 per share.  Over the last month is dipped down below $3,300 and slowly came back.  I bought it because I knew it was going to split 50:1 in the near future, and I wanted to capitalize on the price increase I (correctly) expect would happen.

Yesterday the split was announced.  The stock was way, way up.  This morning it split.  It went up more.  The market opened, it went up more.  I put in a stop order, it touched it for a second and went up more.  So, I locked in a profit of over $200, but it could have been more.

I traded on emotion.  I was so excited that I was right, I had to lock in my profit shortly after the market opened.  That was around 9:45am Eastern, 15 minutes after the market opened.  Had I been patient and set things up correctly, I could have made an extra $100.

But then it went back down.  I ended up buying it back for .80 less than I bought it for.  Good deal right?  I did it again.  I got impatient and sold it for a modest gain.  Had I been patient, and let emotion take a back seat, I would be up an extra .50 per share right now.  That is a lot with 50 shares.

So, I made about $220 after trading fees.  Not a bad day.  If I could do that every day, I would be in pretty good shape.  But I did learn a valuable lesson.  Be calculated and leave emotion at the door when you are buying and selling stocks.

This is a re-visit to my old Intro To Investing post from October, 2008.  If you like this post, be sure to read the old one that inspired it.

Imagine the life of Mr. Buffet.  He lives like money is not really a concern, which it isn’t.  He is frugal.  He relaxes.  He is happy.

Who am I describing?  Who is the proverbial Mr. Buffet?  It is two Mr. Buffets actually.  Those are Warren and Jimmy.

Warren Buffet is the closest thing I have to a modern day hero.  Buffet is smart and calculated and made a lot of money over the years.  He is the world’s best investor.  Warren Buffet took his “value investing” education to turn an investment in an old textile company called Berkshire Hathaway into one of the most famous holding companies in the world.  With an insurance powerhouse and investment arm under its control, Berkshire Hathaway has produced consistent investor return for half a century.

When you picture paradise, you probably imagine clean beaches, tropical weather, and cold drinks.  Chances are, Jimmy Buffet is there waiting for you.  I imagine Jimmy’s life as the ultimate in relaxation.  While sipping away in Margaritaville and enjoying the Cheeseburger in Paradise (hold the cheese on mine), Jimmy Buffet is the American symbol for relaxing.  His ‘parrotheads’ often travel south, as inspired by his song “Changes in Lattitudes, Changes in Attitudes.”

So, while these icons appear to share little more than a last name, they represent something more to me.  I have to remember to be serious and dedicated in my professional life, but I have to remember to head south every once in a while, or just relax regularly.  Finding the balance between the Buffet’s is the key to my dream.

I hope to be able to combine those lifestyles more as time goes on.  I want to remove the tether of my office and be able to work wherever I want and whenever I want.  I hope to have the financial security to tell any boss how I really feel at any given time and not worry about the consequences.  (I like my boss today, in case you were wondering)

I dream of a freedom from financial worry and a freedom to pickup and go.  I want to enjoy paradise, and the ride to get there.  That is my dream.