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Sorry – Comments were not Working

Jim — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:50:04 +0000

Sorry – I just found out that comment from about the middle of January were not posting. This has been fixed and the comments are now posted.

Just my 2 cents. Jim @ ChangeJarSavings.com

Anniversary – Welcome to the new site!

Jim — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 18:01:00 +0000

Getting Ahead in Life was started at Blogger.com in November 2007. Yes, it has been a year. I had two things that frustrated me. I could not edit comments and I wanted a shorter address because http://www.gettingaheadinlife.blogspot.com/ was to long for me to remember, so how could my readers. I thought I could live with not being able to edit comments in Blogger but I really wanted GettingAheadInLife.com as the URL.

Also in this last year, my wife and I started a web site to sell our photography. It is still a work in progress and if you want to check it one you can. It is VoyageurGallery.com. There are some bugs but like I said it is a work in progress. With having the website I could have Word Press for nothing. I did not want the blog about personal finance to be VoyageurGallery.com/blog. But I played with a test blog.

It took several months to come up with a name that was meaningful and easy to remember. Most of the time the ones I thought up were already registered domain names.

The result is after a year of Getting Ahead in Life, I finally came up with Change Jar Savings. ChangeJarSavings.com was available. I registered it on Friday and proceeded to set it up with Word Press and import the old posts from Getting Ahead in Life. Like my other site it is a work in progress.

Like Getting Ahead in Life, the purpose of Change Jar Savings is to share information that I have come across, in some cases used to help make my life better both financially and in other ways. I like to share these with you, so your life may be better to.

You will continue to see the same things you have on Getting Ahead in Life but with some improvements. The first thing you will notice is a whole new look. A new beginning needs a whole new look too. So come on over to ChangeJarSavings.com. Also if you subscribed to the feed, there is a new feed as well at http://feeds.feedburner.com/ChangeJarSavings. Please change your feeds as well. For the next week I will post at both sites, so you don’t miss a thing but after December 6th, I will not be posting to Getting Ahead in Life.

Just my 2 cents. Jim @ ChangeJarSavings.com

Starting Point

Jim — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 18:15:00 +0000

Point of Reference
Just so you know I do not claim to be an expert. I am not a CPA, financial planner or a guru of anything. I am going to try not dishing out the same babble that is great if you have money. I have heard of paying yourself first; the 10 percent for savings and 10 percent for tithing and the rest for living; spend less earn more, etc. You have heard it all too. That is why you are searching for answers – answers of how to get out of debt, how to create a filing system, how to make life better. You are trying to Get Ahead in Life.

Starting to dig out
I am starting to dig myself out of hole that never seems to go away. As my step dad says, “Why does it seem like you take 2 steps forward and three back. It seems that bad luck follows you.” I don’t know about the bad luck but the steps backwards seem to be right. We would get a nice big tax refund and then bam the transmission in the car went out. Get a raise or a better job that pays more and then bam, the doctor gives a new prescription that equals or exceeds the raise.

Finances
Let see right now we have 1,100 square foot house with a mortgage and a home equity loan. The home equity was used twice to pay off the credit cards and other debt. That was maxed out. The value of our house could pay off this debt and if we are lucky we could walk away with not owing money.

My wife has applied for disability for fibromyalgia. She has been unable to work for over a year and a half. Our lifestyle was set up for two incomes. Currently we have $100.00 a month for groceries and forget about saving for a rainy day. It is pouring now!

Our finances are in such disarray that we just closed (10/31/07) a checking account at Northshore Bank due to the overdraft fees. Last month we had an addition error. The bank hit us with $290.00 of overdraft fees. We tried to get them to waive some fees since we have been customers of theirs for over 15 years. They refused to help. They used to have great customer service and several years ago when we would fall below $0.00 they would even call us to say you have an overdraft. If you can drop off some money by 11 am, you can avoid the overdraft fee. This was great customer service but those days have gone so we took our business elsewhere.

So right now we have one good income. It is barely enough to pay for shelter and transportation and a few groceries. We are starting to figure out a plan to dig out of the hole, the new credit card debt and the old debt on the home equity. As we develop the plan, I will share with you what we have done. What works. What does not. We are just starting to develop that plan. Details will follow.

Just my 2 cents. Jim @ ChangeJarSavings.com