Financially savvy

Yes, me.

Well, I'm getting there.

As most of you know, money management has never been my strong suit. I have credit issues (big'uns) and I'm very much an impulse buyer, randomly going out and spending a good deal of my "discretionary" income on crap I don't need, not leaving enough left over for bills (so I guess it wasn't discretionary, huh? But seriously, when I got paid, I'd go buy fun stuff first and then pay bills with whatever was left over instead of the other way around. And saving? Fuggetaboutit! (In hindsight, a lot of this financial behavior could be due to the BP, since that's actually a BIG red flag/warning sign, but either way, I've been quite sucky with the finanical resources).

Good thing, then, that my roommate is a financial planner. (A STONED financial planner, but a financial planner nonetheless.) And he's good, too. So far, in the last month or so, I've opened up a savings account, signed up for auto billpay so my bills are paid very first thing, started tracking where I've been hemorrhaging money (note to self: stay the hell out of CVS); reorganized my 401K and my diversification plan (LOL, is that a word?) and even started researching which stocks I want to invest in when I've saved up enough (apparently, THAT'S the way to make money).

I also took some advice from the new Cosmo about how to "get rich quick" (saving strategies)--the best one there is to transfer balances to a 0% card to pay off principal faster, even if it's only 6 months or so; unfortunately, right now my credit is still kind of crappy so I can't get a "good" card yet. But I will. In the meantime, I'm checking my mail for other CC offers--even a LOWER one is better than what I have now.

By the way: how many of you have a savings account? Now, how many of you have an INTEREST-EARNING savings account? Do you know you can do that ONLINE?? I didn't until Brad showed me the way. Check out etrade.com or ingdirect.com for 4-5% interest yield rate thingies. =-) Etrade.com's is slightly higher but Brad recommends ING and frankly, I liked their site better, too. Much easier to open an account. Hey, if your money is sitting there, it might as well work for you. And, of course, this is now a "bill" that comes out of every paycheck and gets deposited right into savings.

None of this is major and you probably do a lot of it already, but if not--hell, start with the savings account. No minimum opening balance, minimum deposits, etc. And it's a huge plus that it's not linked right to my "regular" account, where I can see the money every day...I'm hoping that this makes it easier for me to forget about it/reduces temptation so that it can really grow.

I don't have a lot of debt--credit card, Penney's card--until you add in my student loan and now my car loan (gulp--but at least this really was a valid, necessary purchase). Stilll, my credit needs a'fixin' from prior financial decisions, and this is the time. Trust me--I'm still getting paid jack shit as a teacher, but when I saw how much I was leaking each month on NOTHING, I almost had a heart attack. Time to put this money to use!! First up: credit cards.

I'm geeked.