Why the title? The name, Southern Fried Finances doesn't seem like it goes together, does it? Well, actually, it makes about as much sense as how much I knew about finances until a year ago when I began reading personal finance blogs and discovered how little I knew about personal finances.
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Savings? Zilch! Wasn't savings something temporary that you kept back in your billfold or pocketbook which ultimately got spent on a little road trip or a new pair of jeans??? And...'bank savings'...??? What was the use of that when they gave you such a little bit of interest anyway? (Considering the amount I would save and then spend.) 401K? Sure they offered that where my Hubby works, but if we chose that, we might not get to go to the beach or the mountains for our little vacations, would we? No thanks to that, either.
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Credit cards? We paid CASH! That's right! CASH, you heard it! Cash for everything, except checks I wrote to cover some things from our only money account, a checking account at our local bank in town. That was, until a couple of years ago...after Hubby had worked a lot of overtime over a few months and bought me my dream baby grand piano for Valentine's Day in 06, I naturally wanted to make him happy, too, so one night while we were browsing around inside a local store, he surely let it be known he wouldn't mind having a new riding lawn mower, and not having the CASH, the store was more than happy to let us get credit with them, thus was born CREDIT CARD MISTAKE #1. But what is a new riding lawn mower without a new outside building to park it in? So, that also went on CC#1. Another time, I got a new computer at a store and paid CASH for the computer but the other essentials I wanted to go with it were acquired thru CREDIT CARD MISTAKE #2... (the first store d0esn't carry computer stuff)...which, the computer essentials were paid off but still having the card, I decided to get Hubby his dream HD 52-inch color tv for Christmas 06...so here we were with 2 store cards with HIGH INTEREST RATES. Of course we didn't know what the rates were when we were 'APPROVED' and we were in celebration mode over that word 'APPROVED'. Yay, we are approved...we get to get what we want at this store...isn't that grand!? I don't even think we knew what the monthly payments were going to be...all we were concerned with was that we were 'APPROVED'! Next was CREDIT CARD MISTAKE #3 although I'm not sure it was too much of a mistake. You see, when about a year ago I began reading personal finance blogs, I read about a lot of people doing 0% interest balance transfers. It was around this time that I realized that CC#1 interest rate was 21% and CC#2 interest rate was 22.65%. Through an online calculator, I found out that if we transferred #2 onto a new CC#3 @ 0% interest for a year, AND pay it off within a year, we would save HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS!!!! I was so excited I told my dear Hubby and his response was the usual "I make the money and you're the one that pays the bills...you know what you're doing!". Bless that man. If he only knew how rich we could be had I learned what I know now about finances before we got married years ago. Anyway, I got CC#3 and they wouldn't put the whole $1300 or so on it, as it was only approved for $1000. So I figured better some than none, at least that would still save HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS in interest, especially since we'd only been paying the minimum monthly payment. So, we have still been paying on CC#2 as well as CC#3...and of course let's don't forget CC#1 also. Our credit is not the best because of the way I abused it in the past. Not knowing anything about the importance of credit reports and paying bills on time, I would simply not pay a bill or two (or three) when it got time for Hubby and Yours Truly to take a little road trip vacation until we got back home even though I'd saved up the money for us to go on. I thought it would be good for us to have backup emergency cash in case our vehicle broke down or something...so I thought we'd simply make the payments late when we got back home and if we ended up spending that money while vacationing, we'd simply catch it right back up as soon as we could. I did this routinely. Which meant once or twice a year. And we'd catch it up over time and lots of angry phone calls from our creditors, which surely didn't help our credit rating, to say the least, thus the high interest rates.
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Well, would you believe that within a year of my having studied lots of personal finance blogs (maybe including yours!) that I realized my mistakes (probably not all but I'm still learning) and our bills have been being paid on time (thank the Lord) and our credit rating has dramatically improved? (Also Hubby now has 401K at work, which we started at 2% and now have raised it to 3%, hoping to soon be at the full 6% which his employer matches half of up to 6%.) Hubby recently bought him a nice used Dodge truck at 11.0%!!! (That's EXCITING for us! We had BIG SMILES over that interest rate, cause what I've been learning about finances, I've been teaching him, also!) This was a few months after I got a 'new' used vehicle at 8.9% which I was happy with, considering the best we'd done in the past with vehicles was 14.5% and the truck my Hubby 'had' been driving that he traded in on his current one was at 19%! So, you see the improvement although we had on-the-lot financing done for us and didn't try to get a lower interest rate ourselves and I don't know if that would have made a difference, anyway.
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So, I decided to write a personal financial blog to try to help others like myself (are there any?) who have made financial mistakes in the past but who want to learn how to be a good steward of what God blesses us with. Also, we have a goal...to pay off our home within a few years, and I figure that this blog will help us stay on track with that as well. So, ya'll have a new baby on the block...Southern Fried Finances...(btw, my name is Maria)...Hello and Welcome to you!
