Filed under: Fun, Internet, News, Social Software, web 2.0

Yes. It’s true. Now, you can broadcast to the world what you eat, want to eat, feel like eating (hey, let’s keep it clean) on a site dedicated to doing just that, called FoodFeed. We guess there’s no end in sight to the banal, continuous, slog of bytes that people feel they must ingest and digest too.

Among the breathtaking features FoodFeed offers is the capability to search by yes, you guessed it - Food! Now you can put a search term in like, state, chicken, and bingo - everyone who has eaten chicken pops up. Wow. After you scroll through all the exciting chicken eating people, you’ll probably either a). want to find all the beef eating people b). throw up or c). find some other place to explore on the interwebs or d). go outside and get some fresh air.

If you must tell everyone what’s on your plate, well you can set up a feed, but first you need a Twitter account. Just add “having” as a friend on Twitter. Then check your feed out at “http://username.foodfeed.us.” You can post by sending tweets to @having (showing up in your Twitter updates) or d having (not showing up in your Twitter updates).

What do you think? Do you think people are interested in your food itinerary? Are you riveted to others’ food moods?

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Filed under: Debt, Shopping, Tax

In the next few weeks, economic stimulus checks will start hitting mailboxes and bank accounts across America. Like all good Americans, you should be ready to spend your check as soon as it arrives in order to stimulate the economy. Several retailers have already announced programs to lure shoppers through their doors with stimulus incentives.

Both Kroger and Sears are offering 10% bonuses, in the form of gift cards to anyone who signs over their stimulus check. If you want to get in on the spending but received your economic stimulus check via direct deposit, you can still take part in the “deal” via check or debit card.

I’m going to go out on a limb and predict the future, in Might and June, we will see loads of check fraud as retailers have untrained clerks accepting checks for over $1,000, just wait and see.

The real question which you need to ask yourself is, whether this additional 10% bonus is worth spending your government windfall, rather than tackling debt. While these gift cards have no fees or expiration dates, cards are simple to lose and misplace, costing you a nice chunk of change. Also although gift cards tell the holder to, “treat the same as cash,” in my case, a gift card gives me a feeling that I have the ability to purchase whatever I want since it isn’t really money, often leading to frivolous buys. If you find that you had similar feelings with the last gift card grandma sent you on your birthday, this deal may not be for you.Personally I’m going to forgo stimulating the economy. That’s right, much to my wife’s disappointment, we won’t be spending the rebate on scrap-booking supplies and a flat screen TV. Our stimulus check will be heading straight to our credit card debt, which last time I checked, we were paying more than 10% interest on. Although the debt is on its way to a 0% card in the next month, knocking over a grand off of our debt is way more satisfying than any shiny, beautiful, sexy new HDTV is. Right? Right?

Unless you have a killer interest rate, your stimulus check might be ideal spent on what you purchased last year, rather than what you want to purchase this summer.

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Filed under: Debt, Retire, Saving, The Dolans

Ken and Daria Dolan, America’s First Family of Personal Finance, answer your money questions each Friday.

Dear Ken and Daria,

My husband and I are 62. We are debt- and mortgage-free. Our savings, however, are not as high as we’d like. What can we do to make sure we still have money for when we retire in a few years?

Joyce

Ken and Daria Dolan offer advice on all of your retirement questions and concerns at Dolans.com.

Click here to ask Ken and Daria your question.

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Filed under: Debt

Since I wrote the column on paying off credit cards using the snowball effect, I’ve received numerous questions asking whether it’s better to pay off the cards with the lowest balance first or pay off the cards with the highest interest rate first. Personally, I think it’s ideal to pay off the highest rate cards first, no matter what the balance is on the cards. I know others believe it’s best to pay off the cards with the lowest balances and then work up to the ones with the highest balances no matter what the interest rate, getting rid of payments to build up that snowball as swiftly as possible.

Actually the best way to get started using the snowball effect is to transfer all your high interest rate credit card balances to cards with the lower interest rates, if that’s an option for you. For example, suppose you’ve $5000 on a credit card that charges19.99% interest and you have $2,000 on a credit card that charges 9.99% interest. If you can reverse that and transfer $3,000 to the 9.99% interest card, do that before you start working on your payoff. Many cards even allow you 0% interest on the first six months after transfer, which helps even more.

But even if you can’t transfer those balances, you’re still better off paying off that higher interest credit card first. If you’ve $5,000 on a card charging 19.99% interest you’re probably paying about $84 in interest per month and the minimum payment is probably about $100. The $2,000 card at 9.99% interest probably has an interest charge of about $17 per month and a minimum payment of about $20 per month. Since most cards calculate interest based on daily compounding, interest payments could be higher than those I’ve calculated. But we’ll use to keep things simple.

Suppose you’ve found $500 per month in your budget that you can use to pay off your credit cards. You could pay off the $2,000 card at 9.99% in about fiveand a half months and then work on the $5,000 card or you could make minimum payments on the $2,000 card and start working on the $5,000 balance at 19.99%. Which should you do?

If you begin on the $2,000 card, the first month you would pay the $100 minimum payment on the $5,000 and then pay $400 on the $2,000 card. After that payment your balance on the $2,000 card would be about $1616.70. Your balance on the $5,000 card would be $4,983.73. The interest the next month would then be $13.47 on the $1616.70 balance but would be $83.70 on the $4,983.73 card. Since you only paid $17 on the balance of the card to which you are paying 19.99%, your interest payments stay about the same.

Over a five and a half month period you would pay off the $2,000 card and pay about $51 in interest, but during that time you’d be paying very little on that card that started with a $5,000 balance and the total interest you’d pay during the five month period would be about $415.

Now let’s reverse that decision and pay $480 toward the $5,000 card with the 19.99% interest rate and just $20 toward the $2,000 card. In five months, the balance on the $5,000 card would go down to about $3,400 and your total interest would be about $350. The amount going toward interest each month after those five months would then be about $56 rather than $84. You would not have paid much down on the $2,000 card, but the total interest there would be $83, about $30 higher in total interest on that card in the same period. You would pay half the interest over the payoff of both cards and be in a much superior position to get rid of the higher interest rate card faster.

The snowball effect works best if your primary goal is to get the cards paid off the fastest with the least amount of interest. The round robin plan is superior to use if you want to improve your credit score more swiftly.

Lita Epstein is the author of more than 20 books including the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Improving Your Credit Score.

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