From one point of view it is great to know that every two weeks you will be getting another paycheck. Every 14 days, like clockwork, your bank account is filled up. But that is also the downside.

Your monthly bills do not always line up with your pay dates. Let’s say you have a large bill due on the 15th. One month your paycheck might land on the 13th and another month it could be the 17th. Regardless of the day you get paid your bill will still be due on the 15th.

This can get you into trouble those months where your paycheck comes after the bill is due. It is very hard to budget, especially to create an automatic budget, when there is no consistency of the due dates to the pay dates.

Solution
One solution to this is to keep extra money in your checking account so that you will always have enough. By keeping the equivalent of a half a month’s bills in your checking account you will create a buffer that protects you during those months that the check comes latter. See this post for the details: How to Budget on 26 Pays.

Another Solution
I am hesitant to mention this solution because it involves the use of a credit card and credit cards can get people into financial trouble fast. However, they are a tool, and like all tools, it is how you use it the matters. As long as you are careful, you can use a credit card to your advantage. Here is how.

Instead of using cash stashed away in a checking account to cover you those months when the bills are due before the paycheck arrives the bills can be charged and your available credit can be used to float the cash. The trick is that you need to pay the card off each month.

So instead of paying cash for each bill, you charge them, and then use the cash all at once to pay off the credit card. I recently tried this with two of my bills, totaling roughly $500. The companies I owe, my car insurance and a storage unit, charge the card automatically each month. I don’t have to think about them.

Now I get paid every other Friday, and I set up an automatic bill pay through my bank to pay $250 every other Monday. In this way, the bills get paid without needing my involvement and the credit card gets paid off each month.

So Why Did I Do This
Now I had my entire finances running fine with the first method I wrote about, but I had two reasons for trying something new. The first reason was because I wanted to see if it would work. I am the first to admit… that is a stupid reason. But we are all entitled to do stupid things every now and then.

The second reason I think is a better one. The credit card I chose to use gives me 1% cash back. I though that as long as I had to pay the bills anyway, why now give myself a 1% discount on them.

Now keep in mind, this theory can only work if you pay the card off each month. If you don’t, the finance charges will quickly add up and wind up costing you more then if you had ditched the credit card to begin with. Remember, a credit card is a tool, you can use it to your advantage or to your demise. Be smart.

In my mind, a budget is never good unless it can run by itself with little to no required input each month. After my budget is set up, I just want it to work. In an effort to reach this perfect state, I advocate setting up automatic bill payments to pay your bills online, automatically, at a scheduled times.

The more that can automate the more worry free –a better the chance for success- your budget will be. However, once your budget is set, you need to ask yourself… “Is my budget really automatic?”

A month after your budget is automated, sit down with your budget and your bank statement and check off each bill. Make certain that you budgeted for every bill. Make sure that every bill got paid.

The perfect budget can be ruined if an expense was not taken into account. Worse yet, perfect credit can be ruined quickly if an expense –whether budgeted for or not- is not getting paid.

I have had this happen where I thought everything was set up properly with the bank, but I mistyped the payment amount and ended up being $100 short of the minimum payment when I thought I was paying extra.

It just goes to show, once your budget is set, check it. Remember the perfect budget runs by itself, but it first needs to run.

Matthew 6:24
No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other you cannot serve God and wealth.

The message couldn’t be much clearer. God or money. It is a choice each of us must make on whom to serve. Money should never be elevated to such a high position in our lives that it begins to take the place of other things. Money can be a great tool. After all, we really can’t live without it. The trouble comes when we value it more then anything else.

It is easy to become obsessed with money and finances. Those of us with little, easily fall into obsessing about acquiring wealth. Those with much, easily fall into an obsession of keeping it. Our lives should not be spent wasted on the love of material things.

Our lives are better spent focused on the Lord. Remember what it says in Deuteronomy…

…Remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you the ability to produce wealth.Deuteronomy 8:18

“The best free way to manage your money.” …or so they say.

For those of you who haven’t heard, Mint.com is a free web site that helps you organize your finances. We “download, categorize, and graph all of your finances automatically every day” is the claim on their homepage. I was intreged so I signed up for an account, its was free after all, and gave it a spin.

Creating and setting up an account was easy. The interface for adding your financial accounts is streamlined and very intuitive. And once your information is in Mint provides a variety of information on your money.

The Awesome Overview Screen
An overview screen shows you the current state of your finances. All of your accounts are listed on the left with up-to-date balanaces and a net worth calculation below it. The page includes alerts -both for low balances and credit limits-, spending trends, and ways that Mint feels you can save money.

Another neat feature was an net income graph that shows your revenues over expenses for the last couple of months. It was nice to be able to see how I faired financialy each month.

The nicest part of this screen is that Mint has all of your financial information consolidates onto one screen. No more logging into a ba-zillion accounts to check balances. One single login to Mint displays all of your information in one place. I am a big fan of one stop shopping.

Transactions
Another feature of Mint is that it downloads not only balances, but all of your financial transactions as well. One click onto the ‘Transactions’ tab and you have your history available to you. Between this tab and the Overview screen, the only thing you are likely to need to log into your bank accounts yourself for is to transfer money.

Trends
All of the data Mint gathers from downloading transactions it displays in a helpful graph on the ‘Trends’ tab. Here you are able to see visually -and in cool colors- where your money is going.

Investments
Just like transactions, all of your investment information is avalible in summary and on a cool chart. This tab shows how your investments have preformed over time as well as individual data for each stock and fund that you own. Again, just about all the information necessary to monitor the health of your investments can be found here. Like I said above only thing you are likely to need to log into your investment accounts yourself for is to buy and sell.

Ways to Save
This is a new tab where Mint attempts to provide you with helpful tips to save you money. Mint looks at what you have and what you have been upto and suggests comparable services that could save you money. This is not my favorite feature on Mint.

Budgeting
A big feature on Mint is the ability to set up budgets. The budgets are more of a reminder system then anything, but they are very nicely done. You set up a budget for the categories that you expect to spent money on. Mint will then alert you when you are getting close to, or have exceeded, your budget. And of course, in the style of Mint, there are graphs and charts to show you how your actual spending compars to your budget.

Conclusion
I am a fan.. Mint provides a consolidated view of all my finances on one, nicely designed, web page. I would highly reconmend, if you haven’t see it already, to head of and give Mint a try.

1. Build an Emergency Fund
If you could only do one thing to prepare for the unexpected building an emergency fund should be it. This is without a doubt the best way to secure yourself financialy against an unexpected future. For more information on this vital topic take a look at this article. Once your emergency fund is created you will be protected in the event that your car needs repairs, or the washing machine breaks, or -God forbid- you are laid off from your job.

2. Plan for Infrequent Bills
So you have got your emergency fund built or atleast started. Good for you, it is a major step in the right direction. You even have a budget that allocates your money each paycheck. But what do you do for those infrequent bills that come once or twice a year like licenses plate renewals and membership fees? If you have created a zero based budget all of your income is spent on paper before you get it. Chances are, since you do not pay these expenses every month, they are not budgeted for.

Don’t fret, planning for these expenses takes little time and only a bit of effort. Take a few minutes and think back on all those bills that showed up only once or twice last year. Once you have them, write down the total and divide by 12. If you save that amount every month, you might want to include a bit extra just in case, you will be ablle to build up a savings for infrequent expenses so that you won’t be surprised the next time those yearly license plate renews come up.

3. The Infrequent, Unset Expenses
The above might be just fine when you know, or at least have an idea, how much those infrequent expenses will cost. What should you do however to plan for unset expenses like everyones favorite holiday… Christmas? A lot of people do not plan for this event even though they know it is coming (it is the same time each year, every year after all ). Anyway, what do you do to plan for this when you don’t know how much it is going to cost?

My solution is to do the same thing that we discussed in number 2 above, take the total and divide it by 12 months. Since I don’t know how much I am going to spend yet this coming season, I reached for the best indicator of my future spending that I have… my past behavior. My wife and I added up our Christmas bills from last year and reasoned that this coming year would more then likely be similar. Even if it is not, at least we will have a good portion of this expense covered. If you put the same ideas into practice you will be covered as well.

Good Luck, Good Saving, and God Bless

There are a lot of things that you can do to increase your score. But you need to be careful, as other things that you do can hurt your score. Some things that negatively affect your score are obvious, like not paying your bills, but other things are more subtle.

So without any more ado, here are some things that will hurt your score.

Not Keeping Up Your Side of the Deal

1. Paying late
2. Not paying
3. Being sent to collections
4. Court judgment

It is said that thirty-five percent of your credit score is your payment history. Consistently being late on your credit card payments will hurt your credit score. And if not paying is bad, ignoring your credit card bills is much worse. If you are really bad and don’t pay your bills, your account will be sent to collections. This not only shows that you don’t pay your bills, but that the creditor gave up trying to collect and has hired a third party to try to get the money you owe them. If that is not bad enough, having a judgment against you shows that not only do you avoid paying your bills, but that the court had to get involved to make you pay the debt.

Obviously, all of these hurt your credit score. Pay your bills on time and avoid the hit to your credit.

Really Not Keeping Up Your Side of the Deal

5. Having your account written off
6. Loan Default
7. Filling Bankruptcy
8. Home foreclosure

Having your account written off is bad. This happens when creditors think you are not going to pay your bill at all. Filling for bankruptcy is almost as bad, by filling you are telling all your creditors and potential creditors that you can’t pay what you owe. Understandably this lowers your credit score. Loan defaults and home foreclosure shows the same, that you couldn’t pay your bills. So why should you be trusted with more debt?

Over Use of Credit

9. Applying for too many accounts
10. Almost Full Credit Cards
11. Credit Cards to the Max

Something else that will hurt your credit score is using too much credit. Seems odd, but if you are given a $5,000 credit limit, you will get penalized if you use all of it. From the lenders perspective using all that credit that you have available is irresponsible. They look at high balances as proof that you are strapped for cash and could be having a hard time making payments. The higher your outstanding debt, the lower your score will be.

Overlooked Things that Hurt You

Here are a couple of things that can hurt your score that are not quite as obvious.

12. Library fines: The fines themselves won’t hurt you, but if you leave them unpaid the library could send you into collections for the money. A simple $1-2 fine could potentially make it impossible for you to qualify for that mortgage .

13. Shopping for a loan: When you apply for a loan or a bank account your credit report gets pulled. Too many inquiries into your credit history will also lower your score. This is because it looks like you are trying to open a lot of new lines of credit. To help avoid this, try to do all of your comparative shopping within two weeks, all those credit pulls will look like just one that way.

14. Closing old account: Part of what your credit score is based on is length of credit history. You may think you are acting responsibly by closing old accounts, but from your credit scores point of view, you are shortening your credit history. Also the amount of debt you have in relation to the amount you have available is a big deal. By closing an old account you are removing its potential available credit from the calculation. The result is your outstanding debt becomes a bigger portion of what you have available.

Conclusion and Further reading

Keep these things in mind whenever you make decisions on your finances. It really could make the difference having a poor score and a score that will open doors to a new home.

For those that our interested, below are a couple links to other articles with even more information on what not to do in them.

• 5 Things that Can Hurt your Credit Score
• Weird Stuff That Hurts Your Credit
• 11 Things People Do That Hurt Their Credit
• 15 Things That Hurt Your Credit Score
• How to Hurt Your Credit Score

I’m sure you have seen the comercials. A little kid being told to ride a bike, but then stop from going more then a foot or two. A boy given a toy truck to play with but having it swept away and replaced with a cardboard version shortly after. The point of the commercials is to say that even children know that this kind of behavior is wrong, so why don’t banks?

These commercials are for a new kind of bank in town, an honest bank. They claim no monthly fees, no minimum deposits, no minimum balances, and their fine print is couple font sizes greater then other banks.

Who Are They?
The bank is called Ally. Technically they are not new, they have been around for awhile under a different name. GMAC just recently rebranded itself and emerged under the new name Ally Bank. Part of the reason for the name change is no doubt to put some distance between them and there old relative General Motors -which I am sure you have all heard by now, is not the most trusted company to be associated with these days.

The fact that this bank could be looked at as GMAC just with a sneaky new name shouldn’t bother anyone though. While GMAC used to be owned by GM, they were sold off awhile ago and are now quite separate entities. But, as the saying goes ‘its all in the name’ so GMAC re-branded itself as Ally Bank. And with the name change came a new philosophy, a philosophy of treating customers fairly.

Why Should We Care?
Apart from it being very refreshing to have a bank that whats to be honest, Ally has two products that I think will be of interest. First is there online savings account and their one year certificates of deposit.

Online Savings Account
Ally’s online savings acocunt has some pretty good perks. The best however is that the current interest rate is 2.05% APR (June 11, 2009). That is definitely higher then the norm these days. Some of the others include:

• $0 to open
• No minimum balance
• No monthly fees
• Daily compounded interest
• FDIC insured

I was surprised to see that Ally also had listed, very clearly on their online account overview page, that you only get 6 withdraws or transactions per statement cycle. This might sound like a big drawback, but it is not. Being limited to 6 transactions per cycle is actually a Federal law. This law limits electronic and telephone transaction to only 6 per cycle. So all banks, by law, can only allow up to 6 transactions. The difference between other banks and Ally is that Ally clearly states this while others hide it in the fine print.

One Year CDs
I said in my post about laddered savings that CDs are great for storing your emergency fund but that they need to be handled correctly because of the fees that you get hit with if you pull out early, like if there is an emergency and you need the funds. Ally Bank does away with this concern by offering no penalty CD with an APR of 2.30%. No minimum balance required and no penalty for taking the money early. So if you are looking for a good place to keep your emergency fund you might want to check out Ally Bank and look into their no penalty CDs.

Other Products
Ally also offers a classic certificate of deposit, there are fees on this one for early withdraws, but at 2.49% APR, you do stand to make a bit more interest if you don’t have an immediate need to withdraw the cash. A money market account is also available with 1.90% APR that includes a check card. Additionaly, as with all of Ally Bank’s products, there is no minimum to open, no minimum balance, and no monthly fees.

Tell Me More
On the account creation page it states that it will take only 10 minutes to open a new acocunt. In actuality, I would say it took less time then that.

Another nice feature was that, when you open and account, you can actually open multiple savings accounts and certificate deposits all from one screen.

Conclusion
From everything that I have seen and read, I am sold on Ally Bank. The no minimums, no opening balance, and no monthly fees are all a great plus, but so is having a bank that discloses it’s fees up front in a readable font size. They are fully FDIC insured so there is no risk to loosing your money as long as you keep your balance under the $250,000 limit. Oh, and them having higher-than-average-rates don’t hurt either.

I would highly reconmend you check them out at Ally.com

Matthew 19:21-26
Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” But when the young man heard this statement, he went away grieving; for he was one who owned much property. And Jesus said to His disciples, “Truly I say to you, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. “Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this, they were very astonished and said, “Then who can be saved?” And looking at them Jesus said to them, “With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

Money can be a gruel master. Doesn’t matter it you have a little or a lot, if you are not careful it will control you. Christ offered a man heaven and yet the man was so in love with his wealth that he could not accept the gift. He chose his worldly possessions over his eternal sole.

Jesus was not wrong when he said that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”. He was not saying that being rich is evil. After all, there are many godly men whose stories are told throughout the bible that were very rich. But when money is put before God, bad things happen.

… For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul? Mark 8:36

How about the 10/10/80 plan. You might have heard of this the other way around, 80/10/10. This is where you spend 80% of your paycheck on bills and living expenses, 10% goes into savings, and 10% is given away. I, however, prefer to look at it my way… in order of importance.

10…
Steady, regular, tithing of 10% of your income. There are many blessing to giving away your money. I can honestly say, few things make you feel better.

10…
Again, steady and regular. This time however, it is steady and regular into your savings account. Fortune grow when additions are consistent. How much is 10% of your paycheck? How about after a year? That much in savings adds up fast.

80…
Lastly, the remaining 80% of your paycheck is what you live on. By using only 80% of your income, you are making it virtually impossible to live beyond your means.

Basic? Yes. Simple? No. depending on your situation, learning to live on only 80% of your income could take time. Those that have never tithed before might find the concept strange. However, if you follow this plan you will be creating a strong financial foundation to live on.