Minor Car Accident

Husband was rear ended on the way back from the dentist today. He was stopped at a light and a woman who wasn’t paying attention hit him from behind. I was following several cars behind and pulled into the parking lot when he did to check for damage. The car wasn’t obviously damaged but husband insisted on getting the woman’s insurance information just in case.

For reasons of plot, I drove husband’s car the rest of the way home and he drove my car. When we were almost home I heard a crunch from the front strut area of the car – like something had broken. Then, as I drove up the street, there was a clunking sound.

I didn’t cry as I called our insurance company to file a report, nor did I cry when I called the mechanic to drop the car off. Who knows what is wrong with the car but I am afraid the insurance company will deny payment. The mechanic said that because husband was stopped, the front of the car took the brunt of the impact. In cases like this, it is not uncommon for a spring to pop out.

I guess there is no point in worrying about it tonight. Tomorrow I will worry after the mechanic calls.

Buy an iPhone or be a Millionaire

The Joy of Tech cartoon depicting the decision to buy a new iPhone or invest the money and retire a millionaire.

The analysis of the computation is pretty interesting too. But is it accurate? It seems the big assumption is the interest rate of the index fund being 10%. This hasn’t been my experience for the last 8 years but maybe going forward…

Anyone Try Scour to Search for Cash?

A friend sent me a referral link to Scour to search and earn Visa gift cards for searching. I signed up it and received 50 bonus points. My friend who I signed up under gets 25% of the points I earn, so yes, this is a bit like multilevel marketing. It took a while to figure out how many points it took to get a gift card but here is the breakdown.

25,000 = $100
12,500 = $50
6,500 = $25

I am not recommending the site because I haven’t spent enough time on it but if you want to sign up:

Sign up for Scour – I will update after I get my first gift card.

Student Loan APR Decrease

My student loan APR went from 8% down to 5% and I didn’t even notice. Today when I got my statement, I looked it over and noticed the different interest rate. Woo hoo! I wasn’t even trying. The interest on my student loans is variable so all I can think is a change in the prime rate changed my interest rate.

I did notice some discrepancies with the balances of the student loans so I will have to contact the company tomorrow and ask them about it.

Edited: Received a letter from the student loan company. They lowered my interest rate but didn’t say why. They also sent new coupon books. Between the paid off loan and the lower interest rate, I am saving $60 a month to put toward my debt snowball.

Paid In Full Student Loan Letters

Yesterday I got my paid-in-full letter from the student loan I paid off about a month ago. It filled me with gooey happiness to have the letter stating that I have one less loan.

In other news, I checked my credit score and the score calculator said my score is lower because I have too many installment accounts on my credit report. The only installment accounts I have are my student loans but I had 7 of them. Now I have 6. Don’t know if this will raise my credit score but I’ll check and report back.

Save Money or Pay Off Debt?

We have a larger emergency fund then Dave Ramsey recommends and we still have debt. We go back and forth about whether we should have less in savings and pay off more debt or keep our savings.

Dave Ramsey recommends: $1000
We have: $9000

There are a few reasons for having a larger emergency fund.

Pros:
Husband is in grad school and if I lost my job I could hold out before putting kid in daycare fulltime.
Husband finishes in 1 year and we have some foreseen expenses for him to get a job (travel, postage for 100 applications, moving out of state expenses).
When husband gets job, we could pay off all of our debt in 6 months.

Cons:
We could pay off entire car loan.

I think we should keep the savings because our financial outlook will be drastically different in a year. We also need cash for those things that are going to be coming up.

It is just hard to sit on the money and not send it to Capital One.

Saving Money on Dinner – The Hillbilly Housewife

The Hillbilly Housewife has an emergency $40 menu that is free to download. I don’t like that kind of food but in a pinch it will work. It looks like she updated the site to reflect current prices because although the menu used to be $40, the title is reading $45.

I think I will try making the homemade tortillas for the kid. She loves anything rolled up. I can even sneak some mushed pinto beans for some protein.

Mechanic Called

And it looks like our ‘96 Toyota needs about $1000 worth of work. The noise I was hearing was the mounts on the front struts, both needing to be replaced ($660). The squeaking of the belts meant the belts needed to be replaced ($100) and we need new motor mounts on the car ($200). I knew the front end noise would be expensive and figured the belts need to be replaced.

I can do the AC and alternator belt but I don’t want to do the timing belt so I am just having the mechanic do all 3. I know from experience that the belts are about $25 each at a parts store so I don’t think I would save much by doing it myself.

Believe it or not, I have done struts and motor mounts before. They took me all day. I just don’t have that kind of time (or childcare) right now.

Fortunately I saved $2,000 out of the tax return just in case. I was planning on sending it to the auto loan place and I am a little disappointed that I can’t pay down the auto loan by that much. Oh well, such is life. We have saved so much with that little car, I can’t begrudge it the repairs.

Saving Money on Insurance

This article from Time Magazine reminded me on a way to save money on insurance. If you telecommute, bus, walk, bike or simply don’t work, you can get a reduced bill on insurance by claiming a certain number of driven miles in the year.

I’ve done it.

When husband and I lived in our beloved city, we shared a car and drove about 6,000 miles a year. I asked the insurance agent for the reduced driving rate and it knocked off quite a bit from my insurance. Now we live in suburb hell and drive considerably more, we don’t qualify. I am hoping to move back to the city in a year, sell one car and qualify for our “only driving to the store on Sundays” rate.

Car is in the Shop and Big Private School Payment

Tonight we dropped off our cheapie, paid-off Toyota with nearly 150,000 miles on it to be looked at. The poor thing was making a knocking noise in the front, passenger side near the axle. Hopefully it is nothing terribly big but we should find out tomorrow.

July 11 is the deadline for paying the deposit for the kid’s private school. The deposit is first and last month’s tuition rolled into one so that is a little over $1000 we need to shell out 9 days before payday. Fortunately we have the money in savings but paying that much at once still hurts. At least the girl is learning something and having fun.