Filed under: Debt, Wealth

If you need more evidence that people do really, really, dumb things with money, look no further than this great video from the Today Show about a Beverly Hills pawnshop, where famous actors and professional athletes pawn their jewelry for some much-needed cash.

This is so incredibly stupid. Interest rates on pawn loans can easily extend into the 3-digits. It’s pretty insane to use these loans in the first place, and it’s really dumb if you earn enough money to be able to survive in the first place.

It just goes to show you that financial stupidity does not discriminate based on income.

Share This

Share This

Filed under: Borrowing, Debt, Simplification

I find that some of the most educated and experienced people I know don’t comprehend how credit scores are determined and maintained. It seems that this score which essentially controls your ability to achieve the “American Dream” is a mystery to most people. The slew of advice makes it even harder separate the wheat from the chaff. Thankfully the Today Show has provided some wonderful information to help inform consumers about their credit score.Having recently bought a car I have the ability to personally attest to how important it is to know your credit score when seeking financing. We mistakenly financed through the dealer and went through several rounds of negotiation during which they tried to state we’d returned a C credit rating on their in house scale. Needless to say our credit score actually sat at the bottom of their “A” level even though they wouldn’t admit it. We ended up refinancing with our local credit union saving a load of money on interest, fees and GAP even after any penalties associated with our dealer sponsored loan. As an additional take-away if your dealer tries to shaft you on the loan process it may be a sign they’re also selling you a lemon, which is exactly what happened to us. The moral of the story is to know your credit score.

You’ll be in a much superior financial say if you know your credit score and comprehend how your actions influence it. You can pull your credit report for free from each of the massive 3 reporting agencies once a year at AnnualCreditReport.com but you’ll need to pay to get your FICO score. Occasionally you can get this cheaper by visiting your bank rather than through third parties. For the love of god don’t go to FreeCreditReport.com, if I’ve to listen to one more commercial featuring the guitar playing pothead lamenting his crappy job or vehicle all while claiming that just knowing his credit score would help him, I’ll throw my TV out the window!

Share This

Share This

Filed under: World wide web, Social Software

Twitter’s a great way to keep up with your friends latest thoughts and activities — if you’ve just a few friends to follow or if you spend each waking moment monitoring Twitter. But if you follow a few hundred people and happen to walk away from your personal or mobile device for more than a few minutes, odds are you’ll miss a ton of messages.

CrowdStatus makes it easier to make sure you don’t miss tweets, by letting you organize your contacts into groups. Say you follow 100 people, but there are 10 people whose every word you want to read, another 10 who are usually good for a laugh, but aren’t as critical, and 80 who you’re just following to be polite since they already followed you. You can create three different groups and when you’re in a hurry, just click the high priority group to display the latest messages from your top 10 list.

You can also share your group URLs with the world, letting everyone see the latest updates from Download Squad bloggers, for example.

Another tool we ran across which lets you visualize your Twitter messages in a new way is Gridgit. It’s not quite as versatile as CrowdStatus, but Gridjit displays your latest messages according to user instead of in chronological order, making it easier to track the last few messages from each of your contacts. If you’re willing to give up your password, you can also post to Twitter directly from Gridjit.

[via Blog Herald and WebWare]

Read

Share This

Share This