One thing on credit cards that I hope is not too off topic. Be sure that any old credit card accounts that you may have had in the past, including retail store accounts (e.g. Pennys, Sears, Home Depot etc.) are actually CLOSED. Simply not using the account and cutting up the card is not sufficient; you must contact them by phone or snail mail to close the account. Here is the problem(s) if you don't.

1. The credit line that you have with, say, Pennys, eats into the overall amount of credit you have when another lender looks at your credit report. Enough of these old open but unused accounts and you have no credit but don't owe anybody anything.

2. It an identity theft vulnerability. You forgot about the account. Someone gets your account # and starts using it. You suddenly find that you owe $$$ on an account you thought was closed.

I recommend 2 credit cards. One primary daily EDC and use. A second for back-up if the primary one is lost/stolen/compromised. Do not keep them in the same place.

And always pay the bill off when it comes in.

Uhm, if I had a couple spare grand hanging around it wouldn't be as much of a problem. Right now, I can consistently keep my account north of 1K, and going higher, but it only takes take a bad month to blow that away and leave me with nothing. Right now, I'm putting about 30% of my after-tax into housing, and another 40% into repaying my school loans which I've begged and pleaded as low as I can get them.

I'm thinking of this thing as the financial equivalent of a suture kit and tourniquet. Can I use either one? My class work says I can us the latter, and I've been taught by friends how to use the former, but I'm pretty sure I never want to.

Us too. To help out even more, our most used credit card is an American Express from Costco. Ours is the older version, we get 1.5% back in cash for everything we put on it outside of Costco, and 2% back for Costco purchases. Almost all of our normal monthly payments are automatically put on the card. We ALWAYS pay it off completely every month, and in a normal year we will get between $600 and $700 back from Amex and $150 or so from Costco, just for using their card, giving them zero back. Free money...

Congratulations on getting and staying out of debt. It is always a good first step.

A CC that offers a percentage cash back may be an improvement over regular CCs. It depends on the fee arrangements, interest rates and all the other details.

But if you really want to see savings your better off avoiding CCs and debit cards altogether. Many studies have shown that using cash, and the act of physically pulling out and counting cash, serves to make spending more conscious and focused to the point that people who use cash consistently spend less overall. Savings far exceed what cash back CCs offer.

With a CC or debit card paying is so quick and easy that there is less chance to feel the weight and consequence of what your doing. A days wage can be tossed away in a thrice. Which is what the CC companies want. Paying off the bill is, of course, far less quick and easy. This is something the CC companies want you to forget as soon as you enter the store.

Using cash keeps the mind much better focused on the weight and consequence of the issue.

With the money you save every day you can afford to save money the old fashion way: Socking away a few dollars every week in an interest bearing account.

1 thing I learned from a close friend: Get a receipt for every purchase you make during the day. Sit down with your spouse every night for a few minutes while y"all go through the day's receipts.

This way, you're both aware of where you spent money each day. As Arney pointed out, this keeps people aware of their spending habits and subsequently, they spend wisely!

Too true. So many times I've made purchases and didn't even know the total as I signed the slip. With cash I'd have known. . . I don't carry that much cash.

The point is to control spending. As inflation ramps up (as it will once the reality of our financial situation kicks in), folks will start to watch prices much more closely.

That's what I like about using Quicken. (YMMV)

We categorize everything so when I sit down (theoretically daily) and enter in the debit receipts everything gets put a category.

It makes spending patterns a lot easier to identify.

Example:

FOOD
FOOD: Groceries
FOOD: Dining - Planned
FOOD: Dining - Unplanned

FINANCIAL SERVICES: Good (for tax preps, etc)
FINANCIAL SERVICES: Bad (for late fees, finance charges, nsf fees, credit card interests, bank charges for having balance below certain point, etc)

My wife and I sit down every so often to look at our categories and see if the info we want to capture is being covered.

End of year tax time is a bit easier as well, by just printing out the cash flow report for the CPA.

The main problems are:
1) Me disciplining myself to enter in the receipts as we get them instead of waiting for the end of the week

2) Doesn't capture cash purchases.

3) It's a lot harder to fool myself that I really didn't blow that much on "X" this month. Quite depressing when "Denial" is removed as a coping mechanism.

I'm still looking for a "Denial Reconcile" function on the tool bar, anyone know where it is?

Well, I'm gonna assume/hope that 40% going into student loans is more than the minimum payment. In this case, consider stopping or reducing the extra principle for a few months to build up your cash emergency fund. What? Tom is telling to you slow paying down your debt?!?!? Kinda. If you get into credit card debt for an emergency while aggressively paying down your student loans, that is exactly as if you borrowed on your credit card to pay down principle on your student loans.

Now, if you don't ramp your debt payment back up after you've built the emergency fund, I'm gonna have to send my brudder in laws Vinny and Angelo over there to have a discussion.

One can set up a cash account in Quicken and use it the same way as a checking/debit account to track expenditures.

Thanks for the reminder Grouch,

We did try that for a while early on with a household petty cash account, and at that time in our marriage (going on 18 years)it was just too cumbersome.

Now that the both of us have settled into our routines and habits as a couple/financial entity, maybe it's time we revisit that.

(Wow, contemplating that did bring back some memories for me.... wait til my hunny-bunny gets home!!)