Americans have grown accustomed to car loans. It just seems normal to buy cars that are brand new and finance them for $300, $400, or even $500 a month. This is a culture with a mindset that $300 or $500 a month is affordable. However, I just want to say: “Paying a car payment every month is just insanity.” Just invest that car payment every month and you will completely your financial position. Instead of just using the money to pay for a car, you would be investing for your future.

Over the entirety of this blog, I have continued to preach the importance of buying used cars, driving these cars until their wheels fall off and always buy cars in cash. What would push me to think about getting rid of my old car? It's simply one number:

Many years ago, I got myself into a large amount of consumer debt and had to climb myself out. I was sloppy with my money and lived outside of my means. I'd been down that road of overspending and I used my credit card to dig that hole. From using my college ID to charge snacks in college to maxing out my credit cards a few years later, I was not the right person at that time to have a credit card.

Since March, I have been taking time to focus on articles about student loan forgiveness. From an article about how I used Student Loan Forgiveness to pay off $22,500 of student loans to articles detailing the steps needed to successfully have your student loans forgiven. In all of these articles, I focused on the facts of the topic, but I never gave my opinion of utilizing student loan forgiveness. Student loan forgiveness is great in theory, but is it worth it?

Two summers ago, my wife and I were jumping into home ownership for the first time. We hit the ground running and started to tackle our mortgage. We have always had a goal of paying off the mortgage early and used this mindset to make extra payments on our mortgage.

Last year, we were on fire and paid off a lot of our mortgage. I am going to recap where we stood last August, then we will move into the year 2 mortgage update. By August of 2016, we had made 12 mortgage payments, plus multiple extra principal payments.

There is a rather new employer benefit that I am glad is gaining traction in today’s workplace. The benefit is employer-sponsored student loan debt repayment. Most often, this comes in the form of employer matching programs that help employees to pay off student loan debt by matching their payments up to a capped monthly and yearly amount. 

In this article of Student Loan Forgiveness Info, we are going to focus on Federal Perkins Loans. I will be defining the loan and listing all the possible ways that you can utilize student loan forgiveness.

For anybody out there dealing with the choice that they made to take out student loans, you may be looking for opportunities to find a way to get rid of those student loans. I was able to utilize student loan forgiveness and have made it my goal to educate everyone on the loan forgiveness opportunities available to them.

In the middle of June, my wife and I got married on a beautiful and humid Texas day.  After our wedding, we went to Jamaica for our honeymoon and celebrated with a week long vacation. A honeymoon is amazing, because it is a new marriage with a trip that let's you forget about everything.

There is just something about the galaxy far, far away that peaks my interest. I love the characters, the story, the force and the lightsabers. I would even re-enact lightsaber battles using yardsticks with my sister as kids. I have been mesmerized with everything Star Wars and Rogue One was no different. Rogue One was made and developed in a way to honor the original Star Wars movies and I am a big fan of how it showed us a story leading up to Episode IV: A New Hope.

Many people in the United States feel like that they need a brand new car.  I have heard the reasons before and these reasons deal a lot with the cost of owning an older car.  Statements like, "An older car will cost too much in monthly expenses," and"I don't want that car to dollar me to death."  The mindset is that a older car will cost more per month than a brand new car.  The issue is that most people take out a loan to buy that brand new car.  Therefore, these people have traded a false sense of security for a bunch of debt payments.

Teacher loan forgiveness is a program that has been implemented by the Federal Government that forgives either $5,000 or $17,500, depending on the subject that you teach.  Since I taught math, my forgiveness was $17,500.  This is only one of the requirements of this program and I will detail how you can utilize this program as a way to get some of your student loans forgiven.  

Personally, I don’t like being in debt and I personally don’t like paying interest charges.  A house is a big ticket item that my wife and I will purchase using a mortgage, but we will only take out a 15-year mortgage, because the math is just so obvious about how much you save when compared to a 30-year mortgage.  There are two reasons why I prefer a 15-year mortgage.

My goal has always been to not post on Saturday or Sunday to have a true weekend, but this news is so good that it required a special Saturday post!

By now you have figured out that debt is evil and should be thrown out to the curb and never to be let back in!  Once you reach this point of freedom from debt, then you can start building wealth!  Today, I would like to talk about the scam of payday lenders. 

The best way to win with money is to get out of debt.  So, I am big on getting rid of car payments, student loans, credit card payments, and any other type of debt payments.  Once you get out of debt, then you free up tons of money for saving and investing.  Are car leases any different than debt?

The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey is a book that helped shape my financial understanding and helped my wife and I's journey out of debt.  Read the following article to see how I feel about this book.