I came across this site where you can pre-purchase gas at today’s price and use later. We all know if we purchased bulk gas 3 year ago at around $2.30/gallon we would be reaping the benefits today with gas inching its way to $5/gallon. I’m not absolutely sold on this idea yet, but I do commend the entrepreneur that came up with this idea. It’s ingenious.  

Become A Member Of MyGallons

Sign up and become a member of MyGallons. Similar to joining any other price club such as Sam’s, COSTCO, etc., there is an annual membership fee of $29.95* backed by our 100% money-back guarantee*:

If you do not save money on at least one redemption throughout the subscription year, we will refund 100% of your first year’s membership fee. Upon signing up, your MyGallons Card will be sent to you. You will also receive additional cards that you can give to family members or friends to activate.

Purchase Gas At Your Current MyGallons Prices

Pre-purchase fuel at your current MyGallons price – Once you have logged in, you will be able to access your MyGallons account. You will see how many gallons of fuel you have available, transaction history, current price for purchasing more fuel, etc. You will also have the option of pre-purchasing fuel to add to your account at your current MyGallons price. The price of fuel frequently changes. The quote you see on your screen is good for making a pre-purchase at that point in time. When you pre-purchase fuel, you are locking-in the price on the gallons you are purchasing at that moment. Your “MyGallons price” refers to regular unleaded fuel and includes estimated taxes based on your location. You will add gallons to your account at any time except as described in 3 below.

Pump Gas

When you are ready to fill up your vehicle, simply visit any of the over 200,000 participating filling stations. (See Location Finder). Using your MyGallons Card is as easy as using a debit card and it is accepted at virtually all stations that accept credit cards. The number of gallons pumped is deducted from your MyGallons account balance. Please note that an adjustment, in gallons, will be made to your account balance if you choose a more expensive grade/type of fuel such as premium or diesel. In some circumstances, adjustments will be made to your account balance to reflect price differences caused by location, typically resulting from tax discrepancies between your home and redemption areas. For example, you will receive a credit in gallons if you fill up at a price significantly lower than the average price in your home area on the same day [or a debit in gallons if you fill up at a price significantly higher than the average price in your home area on the same day]; Be sure to log into your MyGallons account regularly to check your balance and be certain that you have enough fuel available to fill your vehicle. Please note that some filling stations can take up to 72 hours to report transactions. Therefore, the balance shown in your MyGallons account will not include more recent transactions.

*Cost of annual membership is $29.95 when enrolling in the auto-refill program. Cost of annual membership is $39.95 for the manual refill program.

Personal Finance | 1 Comment »

In the Part I of this series I had you develop your personal budget using the Personal Budgeting Spreadsheet.
This budget should detail all your cash inflows and outflows for a given month. Under the Quick Budget Section you should be able to get a snapshot view of Income and Spending. If this is your first time developing a budget you will know that it is very difficult to forecast spending for any given month. I would recommend that you look at last months income and spending habits by reviewing  paycheck stubs, receipts, ATM and credit card statements to get an idea of real historical values. This will allow you to develop a more thorough and accurate budget.

This part of the series deals with credit card debt. If you were like me 5 years ago you had several credit cards of varying balances yielding ridiculous interest rates (ranging from 15% to 24%). Looking at those interest rates you are better off sometimes borrowing from the mob and risking the chance of losing a couple fingers or limbs for failing to repay. However, what’s done is done.

Stop using your credit cards (but don’t cancel them, you can cut them up but don’t make the mistake of canceling the credit card, I will explain this when we get to the Credit Score part of this series)! Setup a payment plan and pay more than the minimum payment. If you have the ability to pay double, triple or quadruple the minimum payment do so. The interest you will pay over the course of paying the minimum payment is almost enough to give you a heart attack.

If you are planning on putting a purchase on credit ask yourself, “Can I really afford this if I am paying with a credit card?”.

The plan is to evaluate how much money you will allocate (in your budget) to paying down credit card debt.

Let’s look at a hypothetical scenario. Let’s say that we have the ability and means of allocating $500 per month to repaying credit card debt. This number is dependent on your Personal Budget Worksheet. It’s basically a financial commitment you are making for credit card repayment. Try to stick with this allocation from month-to-month. As I stated before, your financial budget worksheet should be a “living and breathing document” and after editing and modifying this worksheet from month-to-month your monthly allocation may go up, sometimes down due to unforeseeable circumstances. However, in most likelihood, the number should go up over time.

The logic is as simple as it gets. Payoff higher interest charge cards first. Why? Because, they yield the highest interest from month-to-month! It’s pretty much common sense, however I’ve seen may people make the mistake of paying their cards in an even distribution. Let’s say they have $500 allocated to paying credit card debt, they pay $500/3 = $166.67 to each credit card but don’t realize that this is the wrong way to approach this type of debt. So here is the plan. In the chart above you will notice three credit cards varying in interest rate, minimum monthly payment, and balance. The plan as I stated earlier is to pay minimum payments on the lower interest rate cards and (what I call) “front-loading” the highest interest credit card.

For Example:
Monthly Allocated for Credit Card Repayment = $500.00

Month 1

* Does not include monthly accrued finance charges

Month 2

* Does not include monthly accrued finance charges

Month 3

* Does not include monthly accrued finance charges

As you can see, what you are doing is deferring principal payments on Credit Cards #1 & #2 to make larger principal payments on Credit Card #3. Once Credit Card #3 is paid off completely you will employ the same technique to the remaining credit cards (Credit Card #1 should be “front-loaded” while Credit Card #2 will get minimum payments. I would create a spreadsheet and develop a plan until payoff. Whatever you do realize that this is only as effective as your commitment! As you can see, if you increase your monthly allocated dollar amount for credit card repayment the life of your plan will decrease as you are paying these cards off faster! 

Summary
 

• Compile a list of your credit card balances, interest rates and monthly minimum payment
• Never pay minimum payment on all cards
• Develop a plan or schedule for pay off
• Develop an allocated monthly payoff amount
• Pay minimum on lower interest cards first and “front-load” higher interest cards with remaining amount from allocation.

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I have very few things in life that I am passionate about. One of those things is personal finance and personal financial planning. I think we all have the ability to control this aspect of our lives but many of us fail to do so. Now let me first note that I have made plenty of financial mistakes in my lifetime. Some of those mistakes include, but are not limited to:

• Purchasing three BMW’s in the span of 5 Years
• Purchasing a overpriced condo-conversion at the peak of the real-estate market
• Racking up $7,000 in credit card debt by the time I turned 22.
• Losing a couple thousand dollars in Vegas several times a year

So what happened?

I had a moment where I was just fed up with my credit card bills. In 2003 I owed $7000 in credit card debt (between 3 high interest yielding cards) and when I looked back at it I had nothing to show for the debt I managed to rack up. So I set a goal for myself, I told myself I would payoff this debt in a years time. Anyone that knows me knows that I have a very driven personality. If I set my mind to a goal whether it be short or long term; 9 times out of 10 I will achieve those goals. Needless to say, I paid off $7000 in a matter of 10 months! How I did that will be another part of this series.

Fast forward 5 years and you will see a drastic change:

• Zero Credit Card Debt
• 18% participation in deferred compensation through my employer
• Five-figure Savings Account Balance (ING Direct - PLUG!!! If any of you need a referral I can send you one)
• BMW sold and gone
• 5% net income savings
• I still have my tax refunds for the last 5 years yielding interest in my ING Account (let alone my milk money from the 3rd grad )

Most people think that you need to have tons of money in order to save and curb spending. The key is to develop a monthly budget and stick to it. It’s very hard to sit down and put together all of your incoming and outgoing cash flows starting with a blank sheet of paper. I found this budget planning spreadsheet that I use and update monthly to know exactly where my money is allocated from one month to another. A budget planner should be a living and breathing document. You shouldn’t sit down, develop a budget, and never look at it again. If that is the case you are simply wasting your time. The budget planner is most useful when you use it, modify it, and gain valuable metrics to your personal spending habits. I believe that if you don’t know where your money is going you can’t plan or forecast for the future.

The spreadsheet can be downloaded below in a Excel format. It is very user-friendly and I encourage you to use this religiously.
Personal Budget Spreadsheet

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I decided to write a series on Personal Finance that is based on my experiences over the course of the last 5 years. This series will allow you to see how I did it, the techniques and methodologies I employed to eliminate debt, save money, plan for retirement and raised my credit scores.  This whole series is based on the the perspective of starting young (being 26 years old) and archiving financial independence early so that you can enjoy your later years.

No one I know, likes living paycheck to paycheck, but many of us do. I can confidently say that if I was laid off or fired tomorrow I would have enough reserves to sustain myself for 12 months. This was a goal I set for myself years ago and I feel that everyone should be able to make that statement if they follow my plan.

Disclaimer: This series will provide you with techniques for gaining financial independence. However, results may vary and the entire process will not occur over night. Personal financial planning is long term in nature tinged with short term goals and objectives. 

I will structure this series in 8 parts.

• Budgeting
• Eliminating Credit Card Debt
• Easy Ways To Save
• Savings Plans
• Retirement Plan
• Investments
• Wants vs. Needs
• Credit Score Rebuilding

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I’m really big on personal finance. Anyone who knows me knows that I am frugal (not cheap) and am a big advocate about saving and budgeting. I frequent a few blogs and this blog moderated by Ramit Sethi is one of my favorites. Not only are his articles insightful, the humor he intermixes with his articles are pretty damn entertaining as well.

 http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/

Entry, Personal Finance | No Comments »

I stumbled on this website while I was reading a personal finance article on CNN.com. I’ve been using this site for quite some time now and have totally fell in love with it. Mint.com allows you to connect all of your online banking, credit card, and investment accounts under one single logon. You have the ability to see all of your accounts from one site, view spending trends, track savings, as well as budgeting capabilities. I was quite hesitant at first however, this site is secured using bank-level data security and industry-leading identity protection and is validated by Verisign and TRUSTe.

I found Mint.com’s services pretty unique in that before I was visiting over 8 sites to view bank account balances, credit card availability, and investment activity. Now I can visit one site view my entire financial picture in less than five mintues instead of spending countless hours online.  Online money management is not a new technology, it’s been around and most institutions offer some form of online account access. Mint.com has innovated a new way of “managing multiple website to get a comprehensive view of your personal finances”.

 Check it out for your self (Mint.com); best of all its FREE!

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