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When you’re about to get married, you and your future spouse have several things to think and talk about with regard to how you are going to manage your financial life together. Your credit scores are one of the many things to consider as you enter into married life.

Many people are surprised to learn that marriage itself doesn’t do anything to your credit scores. They don’t combine when you get married or get averaged out. You keep your pre-marriage credit, as does your spouse. But marriage can affect credit indirectly in several ways.

The main impact of marriage on credit is that the debt you enter into together will appear on both of your credit reports. Of course, this is only true if both of your names are on the debt. Therefore, if you take out a car loan together and both sign the loan documentation, that loan and all of its payments will appear on both of your credit reports. The same is true of credit cards, mortgages, and other types of loans or lines of credit.

Therefore, although your credit scores stay separate, your financial choices as a couple can affect both of your scores. On the flip side, both of your credit scores can affect your financial choices. The biggest area this applies to is your mortgage. If you both earn income that you need to use to qualify for a mortgage, then both of your credit scores will count as well.

A spouse with a low credit score can cause you to have to pay a higher interest rate, which could cost you hundreds of dollars per year, and thousands over the course of your mortgage. Therefore, it’s important to talk about your credit scores before you get married and work together to improve both of your scores.

One great way to improve your scores is to add the spouse with a lower credit score as an authorized user or joint account holder on the credit cards of the spouse with the higher score. This puts all of the credit history on the spouse with the low score’s credit report, ideally raising the score.

Another strategy for improving your credit is to work together to pay down the debt of the spouse with bad credit. Reducing credit card balances and catching up on accounts with late payments are two major ways to boost a bad credit score. Although there’s no way to erase a history of late payments, as you replace the bad habits with good ones, the score will gradually improve to reflect that.

Having good credit scores makes it easier for you as a couple to borrow money at low interest rates. It also can affect your car insurance premiums, ability to find employment, and ability to rent a home or apartment because all of these entities often check your credit. Therefore, talk about your credit scores before tying the knot and make a plan for how to manage credit wisely as a couple.

Photo by: artct45If you’re between 20-40 years old, don’t do anything. Stay where you’re at, markets fluxuate. That is their nature and that should have been something you learned before you got it. If this is your first time hearing about it, don’t worry and more importantly, don’t run. Let the traders panic. That is their job. They’re pounding down 15 cups a coffee per day and enjoy the stress. Let them deal with it. You’re paying a person that the traders are relaying information to in your mutual funds. You’re 3rd tier on that – sit back and enjoy the cheap stocks you’re getting into.If you haven’t sold, you haven’t lost. Stick to your guns and don’t get scared out of the market, recessions happen. But they always come back. As long as you still have a job, you shouldn’t be worrying. If you HAVE lost your job, you should probably not be reading this blog, try this one.

This week I had a lot going on, but still managed to check out a few blogs of interest -

Millionaire Mommy gives some good advice on “What would I do in your situation“.
Beacon Financial shows you how to save for college AND retirement – an interesting read.
Essentials of Trading lets people know about NOT letting the markets drop a bomb on you!
Lazy Man let’s people know how to Eliminate debt, the ultimate way.
Green Trader has another green stock riding the wave: NLIA.
Terrible trader let’s people know a good way to drive traffic to your blog via blogrush, I like it, and agree.
Keep more income sings an ode to frugality with a post about finding cheap places to do laundry.
Mojostock lets us know we’re headed down further in the stock market.

Stumbling the blogosphere this week landed me on a lot of new sites. A lot of them themed around travel. I haven’t planned anything for this year yet, but last year landed me in the “land down under.” Where I will land this year is a mystery for now; for me, my wife, and the rest of my family so far. Enough said though, on with my favorites for the week.

1. DailyMoneyTips touched on the biggest benefit of a 401k if your employer uses one!

2. Consumerist interviews a WaMu banker and gets some confessions on how things work.

3. CashMoneyLife gives a few examples of ways to use the Economic Stimulus package that will help you in the long run; NOT the short, which is a better idea, eh?

4. FinancialBlogger gives a few tips to cash in on getting a promotion. I love ideas like this, and I’m certainly going to give them a shot in the next year.

5. SavingFreak saves heat. Harness the suns power? A good idea? SavingFreak gives some stong reasons and examples to do so!

6. ChangeYourTree destructs why thinking you can pay for something isn’t a reason to BUY something. Dig deeper.

7. FrugalDad reviews Dave Ramseys Total Money Makeover. It is still on my list of things to read, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.

8. MortgageGuideUK describes the best way to complain. If you’re going to complain about a product, you should have the right firepower to do it right. Some good examples can be found here.

9. FreeFromBroke wraps up a few quintessential quotes from the past Presidents. I love reading inspiring words. Tossing them around the realm of finance and I like them more!

10. WiseBread shows us how to keep “Budget” in Budget Travel. Many times people traveling on a budget find that budget really getting out of hand. I fell for this on my trip to Australia last year, spending 4k more than I thought I would.

 Where o’ where did I stumble through this week?  It’s snowy ’round here in the mountains, get prepared for winter!

- Who needs gift cards this year? Well, not your co-workers, give them a little something different says IWillBeRich.
- StealthWealth decided to let go some of the position he held before the end of the year. Not a bad idea I’d say.
- Beacon had an interview with MoneyMakeover discussing saving for college or retiring. I’d do both.
- More shopping advice to save for the holiday from Peazyshop. What a good way to invest, by not spending in the first place!
- Foreclosure help from Mortgagedebt. Some good questions answered.
- ChristianPF joins the ranks of Hanks Roundup for an unprecedented 3rd time by saving a bunch of money switching to Geico! Good job!
- MoneyRelations posts about the battle between men and women financial bloggers – this one actually was pretty interesting and made some good points.
- Why is it so hard to find good financial or credit advice? I’ve actually had this same experience myself with Edward Jones and soon to be Hartford Mutual with my Life Insurance – Good post BetterCreditBlog.
- Closing a home soon? EverythingFinance has some tips!
- Taxtips has some tips for end of year home businesses!
- Lazyman is staying on track when he works from home, are you doing the same? It’s tough for me I know sometimes…

That about wraps it up for this week – Happy reading and happy December all!

In continuing the series on debunking these most popular and 12+ pages being too much for one post – here is part 4 of 4 on the series Debunking The 25 Most Outrageous Money Myths.  Part 1 can be found HERE.  Part 2 can be found HERE.  Part 3 can be found HERE.

19. Money Corrupts People

Very similar to #1 of it being “the root of all evil”. Money itself isn’t the corrupter. Think of how many good things have happened in this world with money. How many charities, art pieces, hospitals, parks, etc have been made with this “corruptive money”.Yes, there are people that will use the money in corrupt ways, but the money itself isn’t the enemy. You’re trying to walk again on the higher moral ground than those with the money.

20. My Best Investment Is My House

First off, if you paid the full amount for your house and plan to live in it for 20 years, it may be a good investment, but if you’re like the 99% of the world that can’t do that, it’s hard to justify it being a good investment when you’ll likely pay at least double that amount over the life of your 30-year loan.Additionally like all other investments, home ownership involves the risk that your investment may decrease in value. While commonly cited statistics say that housing appreciates at somewhere between the rate of inflation and 5% per year, if not more, not all housing will appreciate at this rate.In fact, it is perfectly possible for your home to lose value over the years, meaning that if you want to sell, you’ll have to take a hit. The only way you’ll avoid realizing a loss in such a situation is if you continue to own the home until you die and pass it on to your heirs.

21. I’ll Save Money When I Have Enough

When is enough enough? This can work if you set a number and stick to it. Say you’re going to start saving when you make $1500 a month, and stick to it. That could work. But I’d recommend sticking in as much as you can up to and through that amount with a percentage of your money instead of a dollar amount.Any amount of money you save, no matter how small, is enough to save. The habit of saving money is more important than the amount.

22. I’ll Never Get Rich In This Down Economy

“There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” SOMEONE is making money when the rest of the world is not. Money doesn’t just evaporate; it’s going somewhere. You just need to find where that is. During a recession, good sectors to put your money are in places that people have necessity: medical, food, and energy are resources that people can’t live without, even in a down economy.The key is to understand that there’s always an investment that’s good right now. When stocks go down, bonds go up. When interest rates fall, stocks go up and homes get cheap. If the economy is ‘bad’, that means it’s time to sell your bonds at a profit and buy stocks at a discount.

23. If I Carry A Balance On My Credit Card I Will Improve My Credit Rating

All your improving by doing this is the amount of money the credit card company is making off you. Your credit gets better by proving you’re a good borrower and pay it off each month.If you want to take it a step further, don’t charge more than a 35% of your card’s limit because the amount of available credit you’ve used is another component of your credit score.

24. Money Is A Big Responsibility

Well, yes it is, are you saying that you’re not responsible enough to have money? Even the most irresponsible of the wealthy can keep it flowing. It’s not about responsibility, it’s about your mindset to think you can never attain wealth and this is your excuse for it.If you think of money as a burden, it will become burdensome to you. Even if you do somehow to become wealthy with this mindset, you’ll end up letting it work you into penny-pinching with it rather than finding ways for it to maintain itself and grow to a bigger pot.Obviously, money doesn’t have to be a burden, quite the opposite. It can help you lift burdens that were created before it. if your money works for you, it can lighten your burdens. This myth is a powerful and self-fulfilling thing.

25. Renting Is Throwing Your Money Away

It is a mindset that has been captured a handful of times across the blogosphere (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) and no solid reasoning has been found for it during that time. It’s got 2 sides to the coin:Do you consider the money you spend on food to be money that is “thrown away”? What about the money you spend on gas? Electricity? Toilet paper? All of these are things you’d normally buy and just throw away when you’re done with them and get no lasting value from them, right? Well, consider dumping rent money in that same category.Even if you own a home, you still have to “throw away” money on expenses like property taxes and mortgage interest (and likely more than you were throwing away in rent). In fact, for the first five years, you are basically paying all interest on your mortgage. For example, on a 30-year, $250,000 mortgage at 7% interest, your first 60 payments would total about $100,000. Of that you “throw away” about $85,000 on interest payments.

Conclusions

A lot of money myths have to do with “mindsets” and “sayings” that have been passed down over the years from your parents and your parents parents and so on. Right alongside them are the tendencies of people and their actions around money.Yes, everyone has been stung by a bad investment, a sour financial transaction, or a seedy person trying to get their hands on your money. But the key is to not let that dictate how the rest of your life is going to be when dealing with money. It is an experience that you’ve had and you’d be better of to learn from it than you would be to dwell on it. Part 1 can be found HERE.  Part 2 can be found HERE.  Part 3 can be found HERE.photos by: digidreamgrafix.com, ??103,  Per Ola Wiberg (former ponanwi and Powi), Elfboy, mckaysavage,Ravenelle, saschapohflepp,

Some wordI participated in the Blog Action Day 2007 with a post about driving big cars.  It was nice to see the difference a site can make on trying to get the entire blogosphere involved, but clearly they’ve made some big strides in it.  Granted it is once a year, so they have a lot of time to market it, but they’ve gotten nearly 10 MILLION people interested and read about posts from around the world based on this years topic: Poverty.

I happy to say that I’ve never (knowingly) been in poverty; again my parents keep the shutters closed to us on how much they made, and I’m sure we were close, but never had food stamps or the likes.  We ate, dressed, and lived very frugally, but I don’t think we dipped to poverty.

It is pretty amazing the number of people around the world that do suffer from it though.  In the US alone, based on the latest available U.S. census data from 2005, the McClatchy Newspapers analysis found that almost 16 million Americans live in “deep or severe poverty” defined as a family of four with two children earning less than 9,903 dollars — one half the federal poverty line figure.

For individuals the “deep poverty” threshold was an income under 5,080 dollars a year.

“The McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26% from 2000 to 2005,” the U.S. newspaper chain reported.

“That’s 56% faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period,” it noted.

Under $5,080 Per Year

That means that we’re talking $423.34 per month and less than $14 per day for a family to live off.

Think of the meals you buy each day for yourself to go to work? I am not a breakfast guy, but if you’re spending $5 per meal per day, you’re busting that daily limit YOURSELF. Divide that by 4 and try to feed 4 people on $1.20 per day and THEN pay the electricity and rent. I can’t imagine that is easy by any stretch of the imagination.

Can It Change

I believe it can, but it is never easy even for 1 person to climb out. There are millions of people that live in poverty, but it can be done. FreeMoneyFinance says, “I’ll agree that the cases of people starting poor and ending rich are not that numerous, but it’s not because some are lucky and most are not. No, it’s because some are disciplined and most are not.

For all but the most poor in the most desperate conditions, financial well being can be had in a lifetime as long as the person learns and applies solid financial principles. Unfortunately, these principles require perseverance, commitment, and the willingness to spend less than a person earns. For most people, this is simply asking too much.”

It can change I think, but it is quite a road to climb from living in the streets to getting out, and it is most probably easier said than done. Depending on where people consider their personal “poverty level” it can change as well.

Some Who Have Done It

Chris Gardner went from having absolutely nothing and living on the streets with a child to being an absolutely successful Wall Street investor.  I haven’t gotten around to reading the book, but the film was very good and really drove home the point that if you have something worth fighting for (his son), it can be an extremely motivating tool to getting you where you want in life. 

His story began by dumping his life savings into buying a portable bone density scanner franchise that wasn’t as lucrative as he’d hoped.  He persevered through the rejection phone calls and kept making sales appointments that didn’t turn out as he had hoped.  With a failing business and the machines as his last way to keep himself above water, the devices were stolen, leaving him broke, without money, and on the cusp of being homeless.

He had read about Wall Street and took a free internship at Dean Witter Reynolds that nearly did him in, but put forth such drive that he learned what he needed in the business to survive and thrive -

Andrew Carnegie was born November 25, 1835 and died August 11, 1919. His life was a true “rags to riches” story.

Born to a poor Scottish family that immigrated to the United States, Carnegie became a powerful businessman and a leading force in the American steel industry.

Today, he is remembered as an industrialist, millionaire, and philanthropist.

Carnegie believed that the wealthy had an obligation to give back to society, so he donated much of his fortune to causes like education and peace.

“While Carnegie paid his employees the low wages typical of the time, he later gave away most of his money to fund the establishment of many libraries, schools, and universities in America, the United Kingdom and other countries, as well as a pension fund for former employees.

He is often regarded as the second richest man in history.

Carnegie started as a telegrapher and by the 1860s had investments in railroads, railroad sleeping cars, bridges and oil derricks.

He built further wealth as a bond salesman raising money for American enterprise in Europe.”

Conclusion

I think Pete from BibleMoneyMatters sums it up pretty well when he quotes Proverbs 21:5-6

The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty. A fortune made by a lying tongue is a fleeting vapor and a deadly snare.

Another verse today about being diligent and hard working. When you work hard at something, and make plans for the future, it will often lead to prosperity and happiness. Fail to plan, and make hasty decisions and you will end up with poverty. Worse yet, a fortune made through a “lying tongue” is never as good as you thought it would be.

Work hard, be diligent and ethical in all your financial dealings.

So in my quest for frugality, my brain will occasionally come up with something that makes my family laugh.  These ideas did:

1.  Don’t have stuffing with all the works – have a large plat of sod from the front lawn.  It’s already paid for, and likely has some flavoring already added!

2.  Instead of going to the relatives for the big day, use your webcam to point all the relatives to the same place, you’ll be using electricity to keep that running, but you’ll certainly be saving more in gas driving over there!  (Also possible to just have a photo of everyone sit around the table in lieu of the real thing).

3.  The big football game on tv?  Heck no!  Instead have the big footsie party in your living room.  Everyone take off your socks and have foot battles and don’t spend $ turning on that electric tv!  If someone has athletes foot though, don’t let them play, your frugality will catch up.

4.  Instead of cranberry sauce, just use some of the dirt from the sod as the main meal to put in some water, freeze to a chill, and enjoy!

5.  Do we want turkey this year?  Nah, the cat has been pretty annoying lately…

Have a good Thanksgiving weekend everyone and be safe!

Sorry this is a few days late – my Life Insurance statement hadn’t come in the mail yet; yes, the mail.  This is another reason I’m going to dump it.  I like to have everything online at my fingertips and I can’t see this account online yet.

So tt wasn’t too bad of a month across the board. I’ve got to be honest though, I had a “fat finger” typo in my house value excel spreadsheet that I overlooked, in the past 2 net worth update that I’ve resolved in this version, so I fixed that bug in the formula and the house is actually up 1/2% from last month, but down about 9% from the original value at the beginning of the year because of the typo; my apologies…

Like everyone in the country, my house is down over the last few months, and as I per my definition of “net worth” my house (as an asset) is part of that. Coincidentally, that asset didn’t fare so well this month. My 4o1k allocation changed dramatically, and lost about $1000 itself, but I have confidence still in my new big dog DODFX. My wife actually had a good trip in here 401k journey as I’ve got her invested 50% in REREX which rode well this month, and her 401k is up 28% since last month. That’s the one that is pulling the load now – My ROTH, although invested in the dastardly “B shares” went up 9% also, which was nice, but I’m still going to dump the “B shares” fund though -

Also on the positive note though, I DID hack off almost 2% of my wifes remaining student loan and more than .5% of mine – so that’s nice to see.

All in all a mediocre month for me – but there are good things ahead, I’m ditching the B shares, and likely cashing out my Universal Life policy that is draining $205.00 per month from me and performing horribly over the past 5 years (-3% or s0). Yea, I know, that’s one of my new years resolutions – dump that policy and have that $ work for me!  Remember, when shares go down in value, BUY MORE!

Without further adieu I present my December 1, 2007 Net worth update (click to enlarge):