One of the things I learned since moving away from home is that managing your finances isn’t always as easy as it looks.  I suppose that the money matters of our family were kept from me as my parents never discussed it and therefore my level financial mastery was really quite low.

It didn’t take me very long to rack up my credit card debt to the point where I was in trouble.  In fact, I it was even considering taking advantage of poor credit debt consolidation that was offered by a company in town.  But I really didn’t want to go down that road since I created the mess and to me that meant it was my responsibility to clean it up.

I went to a seminar on how to reduce credit card debt and it was there that I learned about debt diet plans.  By going on a debt diet I would curb my spending and have a plan for paying off my debt over the next couple of years.  Even though that meant I would have to exert some restraint when it came to spending, I knew this was a better alternative to my other options including bankruptcy.

Even though I have another year to go before I am debt-free, I know that I’m doing the right thing by taking control of my finances.

When I was in college, I was approved for a line of credit. This was the first step on the road to destruction for me. I was young and I did not know how to handle the responsibility of having this borrowed money. I started to sign up for credit cards and before too long, I was in debt up to me eyeballs.

I knew that I was not going to be able to make the minimum payments for very long and I had to start looking into my options. I did not want to go bankrupt, but I was at a loss for what else to do. I went to talk to a consultant and she suggested that I look into debt consolidation loans. She said that I would only have to make one payment per month and it would be substantially lower than the ones I was having to make with all of the cards and loans.

I decided to do it, and although it has taken me quite a few years, I am happy to say that I am completely out of debt and have kept my credit intact.

We have a franchise that we started a couple of years ago that has just taken off.  We started our first bubble tea shop about ten years ago now, and we have never looked back.  We offer something unique and with little competition, interest in our brand has soared.

The interest has become so high that we are looking to open about twenty five locations over the next six months, and we are looking to squeeze a little extra money out of each location.  You see, we have added a clause that each store owner must get their payment processor through us, so we have been looking for one with an affiliate program.

The company with the most potential so far is a company that offers high risk merchant accounts.  Their payout rate is very good as well as due to the nature of their business, none of the new franchisees should have any problems qualifying.

It definitely looks like a lucrative partnership to me.

I did not know what I was going to do when I found out that my ex-husband had been killed in a workplace accident. I counted on him for child support money and I knew that I was not going to be able to make ends meet without it. We could survive on what I would make, but I knew that I would never be able to send the kids to college, which is something I had always promised that they would never have to worry about.

A few months after the funeral, I got a call from his lawyer. Apparently he had started a child trust fund for each one of our children and had never told me about it. There was more than enough money put away for each one of them to put them through four or more years of college. It was such a burden that was taken off my shoulders.

In that instance, I had more respect for him than I ever had while he was a live. I am so grateful for doing this for the kids and am so glad that I no longer have to worry about their futures. He really was a wonderful dad and I will never again say that he always put himself before his children.

I don’t know about you, but I’m one of those people that wants everything right now.  I don’t want to wait, so when I apply for something or purchase something, I expect the product to be in my hand just after the transaction.

A good example of this would be my recent interest in credit card reviews is am looking for a new credit card to add to my "portfolio".  The kicker is I don’t want to wait four to six weeks to find out whether or not my application has been accepted.

So I’ve learned in my search that there are instant approval credit cards and I’m trying to figure out which one would work the best for me.  Though I haven’t applied for this type of card before, I know that with my great credit history I should be able to be using the credit card in less than an hour - which is perfect for me.

Our family has run a pizzeria first long as I can remember.  For the longest time, we have offered dining in and take out and it has been very successful.  But with the number of newer pizza restaurants offering ordering online, we knew it was time to bring our pizzeria into the 21st century.

We had to look around on the Internet to find a company that offered merchant account services both online and off-line that would integrate with a website that we were having built so that we can automate the ordering process.  I was hoping to find a canned solution to the online ordering but we were unable to find a software offering for our needs.

Thankfully, after searching for a few days, we were able to find a company that would be able to set up our website, provide us with a merchant account, and make our ordering system automated so that we could speed up our pizza delivery service.  We are going to try it out next weekend and hopefully everything goes smoothly.

I am always looking for new ways to promote my website and one way that I have been doing this is by writing a daily article and posting it to my blog. It gives little hints and tips and will eventually give a link to my webpage. I have received good feedback on it and I think it certainly can’t be hurting business.

In fact, I was reading a blog article on Michael Dinich one day and it contained a link to a website that has totally changed my way of thinking and has, in turn changed my life. I am sure that I am not the only one who used that article to click through to the site, so it must be a good marketing tool.

I am a firm believer that your money matters and that it matters what you do with it. This is the very reason that I purchased a blog website in the first place. I am hoping that, by writing the articles, I will eventually earn revenue and get visitors to my website.

Until I was in my first semester at University, I did not realize how easy it was to get credit cards for students. It was a really good time for me to get a credit card, as I was living on the bare necessities and it was nice to know that I had the card if an emergency were ever to arise.

A lot of my friends filled in student credit card applications and totally abused the credit privilege that they had been given. I had a couple that signed up for three cards and had all of them maxed out within a month. I don’t know if they did not understand that they were responsible for paying it all back or not.

I think that college student credit cards are a very good idea for students that are responsible enough to know how and when to use them. My friends that maxed theirs out are now all stressed out, because on top of being poor college students, they now have monthly minimums to meet. I thought you had to be smart to get into college, but apparently not.

While taking a commerce class in college, I found myself reading a lot of economic news. I read a lot just for the fun of it and I read a lot while doing research for term papers. I found myself in the economic section of the library almost daily. I didn’t mind, though, as I learned a lot from reading all those articles.

I found that the more time I spent reading the numerous articles, the more I caught on to some of the financial humor contained in many of them. What would have once gone way above my head, I was now really starting to get. I even got a chuckle a time or two.

I noticed, in my many hours pent up in the library, that a certain name came up many times. That name was Michael Dinich. I did not pay a whole lot of attention at the time, but I recently had the opportunity to hear him speak and it was great. He has a plethora of knowledge and I assume that we will be hearing a lot more about him in the short years to come.

I have had only two credit cards for the longest time and they have served me well.  Quite simply, I have owned a Visa and Mastercard for years, but neither of them give me any rewards.  After seeing my best friend Julie use her travel rewards credit cards to "pay" for trip after trip, I knew that I wasn’t making the best financial decisions in terms of my credit cards.

So what I did was check out some of the credit card offers that the banks in my area provided.  I was astonished that the offers were vastly different than one another, with some banks definitely promoting a better product.

What I ended up with was a credit card that gave both travel and shopping rewards.  There was a nominal yearly fee to have the card, but I figure that with the money that I save on travel, the card is a good fit for me.