Avoid the Free Credit Report Scams, it really is free.

Many of you have probably seen those so called "Free" credit reports all over television, the radio, and the Internet.

I can't believe how people fall for this scam. The 3 major credit bureaus offer a look at your credit report for free once per year.

Here is some great links--

First of all, our friends at the FTC have us covered. This page outlines what is a scam, and what isn't.

The only site that is free is annualcreditreport.com

The only hook is that you are only allowed to check your credit on the 3 major bureaus once every 12 months. What I do is check one bureau every 4 months using the annualcreditreport.com website.

When you get into the reports, here is what to expect. You will see a snapshot of all the credit that you have out. Every loan, every revolving credit account, every credit card, etc. You will also see a bunch of old accounts that you had closed, paid off, etc.

You will not see your actual credit score. They want a little under ten dollars to get your score. If you take a deep look at your credit snapshot, you won't need to pay the money, unless you really would like to.

I recommend that everyone has a good look at their credit, and figures out how they can improve their score.

I recently applied for a home mortgage, and wanted to make sure that my credit was in order before applying. Everything on the 3 major bureaus looked excellent. When I applied for the mortgage, the broker ran my credit. He came back with a score of 761. I'm pretty pleased with this score, but there is room for improvement.

The credit snapshot offers codes, or ways to improve your score. Mine was to "reduce debt on accounts." So basically I had to pay off my student loans..

Wish me luck!

I bought a house, you can too.

I've been pretty busy this past month, hence the lack of posts.

Anyways, this is a major money saver that I wanted to share with all my viewers.

I bought a house!

If you are able to look past all the gloom and doom on the nightly news, then you will see that there are many deals to be had in the real estate market. That combined with cheap interest rates is a good buying market, and an EXCELLENT buying market for first time buyers.

I'm going to talk a little bit about the loan procedure, and what to expect, as well as the loan program that is PAYING ME to use their loan product.

First thing is first. Get a competent mortgage broker. I made this mistake at first, but thanks to my realtor and brother (I'll introduce him later), I was able to correct it in a BIG way.

It is so important to look around and get a good mortgage broker. It is the difference between someone looking after YOU and someone looking after their commission checks.

I had decided that I wanted to go with a SONYMA home loan. This loan applies to residents of New York state, but check around with your local broker, and see if they have a similar program.

Now, here is what the SONYMA program was able to do for me. I decided to go with the Achieving the Dream SONYMA program. The link will explain the loan program, and it worked great for me. My terms were a 30 year foxed loan, for 5.5% interest, with only 1 percent down. Plus SONYMA is giving me a $5000 grant to pay my closing costs.

Linking from the SONYMA website was a few banks. I took a look at the top of the page, and there was Bank of America. I thought great, I have a checking account with them, I'll do the loan with them.

Boy was I ever wrong. The woman I was dealing with kept pushing me to do a conventional loan with Bank of America, and wouldn't even consider doing another loan for me. It was either the fact that she didn't know how to do the SONYMA loan properly, or she was acting in her own interests, not mine. She was very rude on the telephone, and very pushy.

I then asked my brother, who was acting as my real estate agent, to help me out. His name is Joel HusVar, and he works for Farley Real Estate Enterprises.

He put me in touch with M&T Bank.

That was a great turning point for me. I worked with a true professional, and learned that M&T specializes in doing this type of loan, they had a whole floor of people who just did that loan. I spent two hours with my mortgage broker, talking face to face. He acted in my interests the entire time, and did a great job with the loan. His advise and service was absolutely excellent. Send me a message through the comments, and I'll get you in touch with him.

So, I had a loan secured, and it was time to go house shopping. I worked with Joel HusVar in his office, and he was able to do an interview with me, asking what I wanted in a house, and what I didn't want.

We narrowed it down to about 150 properties, then down to 50, then 25. We ended up viewing about 10 properties before I found the one I wanted to make an offer on.

We ended up making an offer on the house, and after a few counteroffers, we did get the house under contract!

Time to get the property inspected..

I again turned to Joel for advice. He recommended an excellent service, that had reasonable rates. This guy was fully licensed, and totally professional. He spent about 3 hours with me showing me everything in my house, and what to look out for. I left with a large binder of information and his report.

We are going to be closing on the property in Late April.

Wish me luck in the new world of home ownership..

I'm using Google Calendar to pay my bills on time.

Here's a quick and dirty tip for those of us who are known to "forget" about bills. I used to be one of these people myself. I literally had a stack of bills piled on my computer desk, and absolutely no organizational system to get them paid on time.

Here is my new system, and since I started it, I have not had one late bill, and I am right on top of what is due, and when it is due. This is one of the most popular "Web 2.0" apps on the planet.

Google Calendar is an absolutely free application, all it requires is an account with Google, which is very simple to setup. If you have a Gmail account, you already have calandar, now put it to work!

Here's what I do..

When bills come in the mail, I open them up, then fire up Google calendar. I setup an event for each bill that is due. If the bill is paid on the same day every month, then I setup a repeat monthly event, and that will save a little time.

I list the event as the companies name, followed by the amount due. For example Geico, $100.

I then set a reminder to email me a week before the bill is due. Google makes it really simple to set this up. You can do whatever a reminder that you require. You can even have Google send you a SMS text message on your mobile phone saying "time to pay your bill".

I then pay the bill, and update calendar's title with the word paid.

It's simple, now you try!

calendar.google.com

So could you get rid of your Cable or Satellite Dish?

Think about what your cable bill costs you on a monthly basis.

It is pretty easy to rack up a bill over $100 per month.

Think about how many crap channels are out there that you are paying for, but never watching.

Personally, I could go mostly without television, but not fully.

I tried this experiment when I first moved into my apartment. I didn't subscribe to cable, but instead just put up an antenna out the window, and was receiving mind blowing HDTV quality.

I could watch all the network television that I wanted, all the PBS, and that was fine and dandy.

After a while, this grew a bit tiresome, and I turned my gaze to my cable modem.

Could you get by with Internet television, in combination with your free over the air signal?

I'm going to try it.

Here are some links to some great free television available on the Internet.

1.) Fancast.com

This could be one of the greatest new sites to hit the web for Internet television. First of all, its ran by Comcast, and its not all screwed up. I'm shocked. The premise is that is asks you what you want to watch, then it shows you where you can watch it. It will also show you listings for your local cable of satellite provider. There are a ton of full episodes of your favorite shows. I just finished watching an episode of NBC's Las Vegas. It came right up over my slow 3 megabit dsl connection, and played great.

2.) Beelinetv.com

Here is another one for those who would like to watch a bit of international television. The quality is much lower than Fancast, but watching something in your home language would be interesting. Not my cup of tea, but worth stumbling upon.

3.) Joost.com

This service is one of my favorites. It does require registration, and the download of a player, but I'm very satisfied with the service. The video quality is excellent, and there is a ton of shows on there. I watched a few PBS documentaries on Joost, and will keep using the service.

4.) Quicksilverscreen.com

This is another service that scours the net looking for divx movies, then it streams directly to your PC. There is a huge selection of movies, videos, and tv shows.

Now I'll have to rig a computer to watch all this content on my bigscreen, and I'll be all set.

Later..

The Spitzer Money Grab.

Here is another money grab from the Albany machine.

Governor Elliott Spitzer is proposing a bill that would result in NYS sales tax being collected on items purchased via the Internet from stores that do not have a presence inside the state.

The key Internet store being singled out is Amazon.com, which is based in the state of Washington. Spitzer claims that the state is losing out in millions in tax dollars from Amazon.com alone.

Surely, the next move would be assigning a tax to every item shipped into the state of New York.

The state currently relies on the honor system, and residents are expected to log what they purchased on the Internet, or brought into the state, and pay taxes on that at the end of the year.

When does it end?

Here are some links to articles discussing the story.

Story from Syracuse.com
Another story from Syracuse.com
Story from DailyGazette.com


And of course, they deserve a raise for all their good work!

Link to NYtimes.

File your taxes with Turbotax online for free ***

Here's one for those of you who want to file taxes online, but don't want to pay a dime for software, or filing fees.

Asterisk, Asterisk, Asterisk..

Of course there was a catch.

You have to either earn under $30k per year, or qualify for the Earned Income Credit, or be Active Duty Military for the year 2007, and earning under $54k per year.

Believe it or not, a lot of folks fall into these categories, including myself.

The website is called Tax Freedom, it has been run by Intuit, the makers of Turbotax.

Here is the website (www.taxfreedom.com)

You can also file your State return for free, if you live in the following states of the "Free Tax Alliance" as they call it.

AL, AR, AZ, GA, ID, IA, KY, MA, MI, MN, MO, MS, NY, ND, NC, OK,
OR, RI, SC, VT, WV

I'm shocked to see that my home state of New York is on there. We finally get a freebie.

Anyways, the software is very good. I was able to run through my girlfriends somewhat basic tax return, and get it filed in about an hour of time. The software prompts you what to file by asking basic questions.

I recommend that you have your bank account routing and account numbers handy. You can direct deposit your return, and have the funds in as soon as 8 business days.

If you don't qualify for the Tax Freedom Software..

There is no need to despair. Even the IRS is getting into the free file act. Here is a link to the IRS's free file page. Please note I have not used the IRS software, maybe someone could let me know how well it works.

So the bottom line is, don't go to the big box store and spend $40-$60 dollars on a boxed tax program, when it is all available online for free.

If this article or my blog has helped you save a couple bucks, do me a favor and click some of the ads to the right, and check them out.

Thanks,
Justin

20% Off Your Biglots Purchase, Printable Coupon

Hey Folks.

Here is a link to a printable coupon for Big Lots stores.

It is good for 20% off your entire purchase.

It is good from 1/27/2008 - 2/03/2008 so hurry up.

Link to Printable Coupon Here!

Disregard the "Buzz Club" mentioned on the coupon. Its just an email club. When you take the coupon to the store they will not verify that you are a member of their email sales club.

But if you do want to join their email spam club, then here is the link.

Link to join Big Lots Buzz Club Here!

If this or any of my links are useful to you, please click the adsense links to your right to support my cause..

Until Next Time..