Month: November 2007

October Savings/Debt Payment Percentage

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I managed to put 43% of my October income towards savings and paying down my private student loan.  The student loan is not in repayment yet but I’m paying it off ahead of time since it has an 11.25%  interest rate.  It is also my smallest student loan.

My goal is for 50% of my income to go to savings and debt payment.  I won’t make that goal for November because the balance transfer of my student loan from Wells Fargo to Capital One is all screwed up and I’m not paying anything until it is straightened out.  Capital One says they sent payment to Wells Fargo on Nov. 14 but as of today Wells Fargo  hasn’t received it.

When I resume school in January I won’t be working so any income I have will go to basic expenses.  This makes December my last chance to make my 50% goal.  With the money I’m carrying over from this month into December I should easily meet the goal.

Cheap Movie Tickets

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Fandango is running a promotion with McDonald’s that allows you to buy a movie ticket for $1.  You have to go to their website at 12pm (pst) on Wednesdays and find out the word of the day which you then text to Fandango.  Then you will receive a text back with a promo code allowing you to buy a ticket for $1.   I did this yesterday and it wasn’t too difficult.  You need to visit the promo page to get all the details.

Also if you have a Discover card there will be a buy one get one free promo through Fandango starting December 4th.  This page will have the details.

I am a big movie fan and am always looking for ways to save money at the movies.  I usually go to the matinees but with my $1 movie ticket I’m planning to go to a late night movie.  If I would ever get smart and quit buying the large popcorn I could save a lot more money.  Every time I eat a large popcorn I get a stomachache but the next time I’m at the theater I seem to forget that and eat a large popcorn again.  Maybe now that I’ve written this down I’ll actually remember.

A Profitable Thanksgiving Trip

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I managed to get three days off from both jobs for Thanksgiving.  I still managed to make some money during that time though.  My mother works at a travel agency located inside a bank and while visiting her I noticed the bank was paying a $50 bonus for opening a free checking account.  Since I run a site on bank bonuses I couldn’t pass this deal up.   It wmas an easy $50 but it appears to be a YMMV deal and it is a small bank chain so I didn’t add the bonus to my bank  bonuses blog.

I also bought a Zune 80gb mp3 player and sold it on eBay.  It looks like I’ll make about $25 in profit after all fees are paid.  If everything goes smoothly in the transaction this will be worth my time.  If there are problems I’ll probably wish I hadn’t bothered.

Of course the main benefit of my trip was getting to see my family.  The Thanksgiving meals were a great benefit as well.

Back In Law School!

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I had my meeting with the re-admissions committee today and I have been re-admitted to law school.  I’ll return for the next semester which starts in January.  I have to retake a couple of classes.  I’m not thrilled with having to do that since it will probably mean it will take me an extra semester to graduate.  Of course graduating one semester later is better than never.  Both of the classes are important bar subjects so I do need to know them.  Taking them a second time should make them pretty easy.  Since this week is Thanksgiving week I have to wait until next week to finalize all the details.  The important thing though is I’m back in.

Transferred Student Loan to Credit Card

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One of my credit cards sent me a balance transfer offer for 6.99% with no transaction fee.  Since my private student loan is at 11.75% I decided to go ahead and transfer it to the credit card.  The loan balance is just a little over $1000 right now and I hope to pay it off by the end of the year.  If I do pay it off that quick the lower interest rate won’t make much difference but since it didn’t cost anything to transfer I figured I might as well save whatever little bit of interest I can.