We added stockings for our two kids as they entered our lives, but I always followed Vonnie's lead when it came to filling them.

Here's how to keep your stuff safe while traveling:

Next were school supplies. I could barely look as my wife plugged the numbers into the calculator. The amount left was what we had for school clothes.

As a debtor you do have rights. Creditors and collection companies are legally not allowed to contact you with reckless abandon. The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act was put in place to protect debtors from creditor harassment. Below is an outline of what creditors are allowed to do and what to do

You have now started your second month on the DMP. During the second month there are generally two groups of customers; those who made their first payment in the first month (A) and those who postponed their first payment to the second month (B). There are an additional small number of people who may call and change their payment to the third month and unfortunately usually do not fare well on their Plan. It is about the creditors receiving a payment, not just being “enrolled” in a program.

This month's question reflects on your CareOne payment.

We call it "junking" and you can make as much or as little as you want.  All you need to get started junking is a good eye for items that can be repurposed or brought back to their former life and then sold for a profit. 

I'm talking about the person in the family that eats all the leftovers and uses all the products that everyone else has grown tired of, or has thrown in the trash convinced the container is empty.

A Debt Relief Plan is not for everyone and there are several things to consider before enrolling in one.  The marketplace has many options for Debt Relief Providers and often consumers struggle to make sure they are comparing apples to apples. With options such as; Credit Counseling, Debt Management, Debt Settlement, and Bankruptcy it is difficult to ensure that the same type of plan is being compared from one provider to the next.

If you are considering enrolling in a Debt Management Plan or have just enrolled you may be wondering what will happen with your credit cards.

February brings Valentines day and unexpected expenses are bound to crop up to make your loved ones feel, loved. Dinner, flowers, chocolates...they all add up! This year make Valentine's day guilt and debt free by entering our CareOne Gives Back Giveaway! 

Our emergency fund had enough in it to cover the cost, but I was hesitant to do the repair immediately. We had just started building up our emergency fund recently, and spending $350 for brake pads would leave it dangerously short should we incur another unexpected expense. 

This month's question reflects on how your credit is affected by settlement.

With this recent focus on using coupons, I suddenly feel like I may be missing out on something and leaving money on the table. I've decided I'm going to try couponing, and I want you to follow along win my adventure. Maybe you can even help me!

This month's question reflects on the difference between a Debt Management Plan (DMP) and a Debt Settlement Plan (DSP). 

This month's question is: Can you explain the benefits of signing up for Easy Pay?

A Debt Management Plan (DMP) is a structured repayment plan which involves you making a payment to a Credit Counseling Agency, who then distributes the payments to the creditors.

In the late 1980s, I was a struggling young father in my 20s who was going through a divorce and trying to make ends meet. In an effort to seek help managing my debt, I took the advice of a lawyer and declared bankruptcy. It was a huge blow to my self-esteem, but it made an important impression on me. I was committed to learning more about managing money, investing, saving, and making my money work for me. What I soon discovered is that most financial companies only help people who have lots of money, not people who are struggling to live paycheck to paycheck and pay their bills on time.

As my blog posts detailed, we were completely unsure of the process. After reading some elementary books and combing every website for tips, we are more well-versed in the buying process. Besides finding a place that we could see ourselves living in, researching mortgages was the trickiest thing about the process.

For years, I happily ran from store to store using credit to finance holiday extravaganzas. I bought everything from enough food to feed a hungry army, to a mind-boggling pile of Christmas gifts. Throw in many, many expensive restaurant dinners because I was too exhausted to go home and cook, and you have a good picture of the spending frenzy that ran from pre-Thanksgiving until New Year's Day. 

We made our list as we have done for years.  We wrote down ideas about what to make for meals for the coming week, and then made a list of the ingredients needed to make them, adding to that other household items that we needed.  After we were done I scanned the ads for the two major grocery stores that are nearby our house for coupons for anything on the list.

This experiment was quite an eye-opener.  The best way to keep our grocery costs down is not only to stick to a pre-made grocery shopping list, but to eat within the bounds of the food planned and purchased for the week. 

Unable to locate it, she grabbed a box of the store brand that had just recently become available and put it in the cart.   

There's at least one piece of junk mail in my mailbox every day. There are repeat offenders such as credit card offers, which I get extreme pleasure out of putting them immediately through the shredder, the realtor that we used to buy our home, and even ads from grocery stores. 

But even as that final withdrawal was taken from our account, I didn't cue the trumpets just yet.  I wanted to see all my creditor balances at zero.  On Friday, February 7^th our payments had all posted, and we were officially DONE, and $109,000 of credit card debt was officially GONE