DaveRamseyGuru.com

Save 35% on Gas TODAY by making a few changes in behavior! (Hypermiling)

 Some folks have this “hypermiling” down to an art form.  If you don’t know what “hypermiling” is, here’s a little primer.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) – You can get 35 percent better fuel mileage out of your current vehicle by using a device most drivers already have.

That would be your right foot.

Most drivers agonizing over the cost of gasoline fail to realize the enormous impact their driving style has on fuel consumption.

During the last run-up in fuel prices, we wrote about Edmunds.com’s tests of common fuel-saving driving tips. Some common tips, it turned out, had little or no effect on fuel economy. (Edmunds.com provides data and content for CNN.com’s automotive Websites.)

For example, using the air conditioner at highway speeds had no appreciable effect on fuel economy compared to rolling down the windows.

Keeping your tires properly inflated, while important for safety, has only a small effect on fuel mileage, according to Edmunds.com’s tests.

Using cruise control on the highway, though, really does have a noticeable effect on fuel economy. In Edmunds.com’s test using a Land Rover LR3 and a Ford Mustang, the Land Rover got almost 14 percent better mileage using cruise control set at 70 miles per hour rather than cruising at driver-controlled speeds between 65 and 75 miles per hour. The Mustang got 4.5 percent better mileage.

Using cruise control cuts down on unnecessary speed changes which can eat up gas and it prevents “speed creep.” the tendency for a driver’s average speed to gradually increase with time spent on the road. (In that way, it can save you from an expensive speeding ticket, as well.)

If you want a big gain in fuel mileage, though, you need to seriously lay off the pedals when driving around town. Accelerating more slowly away from green lights and stopping more gradually for red lights cut fuel consumption in Edmunds.com’s tests by 35.4 percent for the Land Rover and 27.1 percent for the Mustang.

Slamming down the gas pedal pushes more fuel into the engine while it also keeps the engine running faster.

You can also save a lot of gas by just lifting your foot off the accelerator as soon as possible when approaching a yellow or red light or a stop sign.

For one thing, letting up on the gas sooner gives your car more coasting time.

More … http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/01/Autos/driving_for_mpg/index.htm

 Related:

• Hypermiling.com 
  • The first step toward saving gas and increasing mpg: Always know your gas mileage after each visit to the gas pump.
  • The second step: do you drive agressively but not know it?
  • The third step: Video: How long are you sitting still at red lights?
  • The fourth step: Keeping yourself moving in traffic congestion
  • The fifth step: Slowly accelerate after stops
  • The sixth step: Your cruise control saves gas (but not by using it they way you might think)

Posted in Budget, Frugality, Hypermiling | Comments Off

How do I freeze/thaw my credit?

Below you’ll find instructions and links on initiating a credit freeze or thaw from each credit bureau:EQUIFAX CREDIT FREEZE – [Website]

• Credit freezes may be done online or by certified mail – return receipt requested.
• Check your state’s listing for the exact cost of your credit freeze and to see if there is a reduction in cost if you are a senior citizen.
• Request your credit freeze by certified mail using this sample letter. Please note the attachments you must include.
• If your PIN is late arriving, call 1-888-298-0045. They will ask you for some ID and arrange for your PIN to be sent to you in 4-7 days.
• Unfreeze: Do a temporary thaw of your Equifax credit freeze.

EXPERIAN CREDIT FREEZE – [Website]

• Credit freezes may be done online or by certified mail – return receipt requested.
• Check your state’s listing for the exact cost of your credit freeze and to see if there is a reduction in cost if you are a senior citizen.
• Request your credit freeze by certified mail using this sample letter. Please note the attachments you must include.
• You can also freeze a child’s credit report. The information contained at this link is applicable for all three credit bureaus. You must first write a letter to each bureau to learn if your minor child has a credit report and if so, then you can proceed to freeze it.
• Unfreeze: Do a temporary thaw of your Experian credit freeze.

TRANSUNION CREDIT FREEZE – [Website]

• Credit freezes may be done online, by phone or by certified mail – return receipt requested. (Some users have reported difficulty with the online method. Please try one of the other options if you too experience difficulty.)
• Check your state’s listing for the exact cost of your credit freeze and to see if there is a reduction in cost if you are a senior citizen.
• Request your credit freeze by certified mail using this sample letter. Please note the attachments you must include.
• Unfreeze: Do a temporary thaw of your TransUnion credit freeze.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

SWAT Team breaks down man’s door over STUDENT LOANS!

STOCKTON, CA – Kenneth Wright does not have a criminal record and he had no reason to believe a S.W.A.T team would be breaking down his door at 6 a.m. on Tuesday.

“I look out of my window and I see 15 police officers,” Wright said.

Wright came downstairs in his boxer shorts as a S.W.A.T team barged through his front door. Wright said an officer grabbed him by the neck and led him outside on his front lawn.

“He had his knee on my back and I had no idea why they were there,” Wright said.

According to Wright, officers also woke his three young children ages 3, 7, and 11 and put them in a Stockton police patrol car with him. Officers then searched his house.

As it turned out, the person law enforcement was looking for was not there – Wright’s estranged wife.

“They put me in handcuffs in that hot patrol car for six hours, traumatizing my kids,” Wright said.

Wright said he later went to the mayor and Stockton Police Department, but the City of Stockton had nothing to do with Wright’s search warrant.

The U.S. Department of Education issued the search and called in the S.W.A.T for his wife’s defaulted student loans.

More at http://www.news10.net/news/article/141072/2/Dept-of-Education-breaks-down-Stockton-mans-door

Posted in Dave in the News, Genius of Dave Ramsey, Misc. | Comments Off

Bank of America in Wikileaks crosshairs?

It certainly appears that everyone’s favorite big bank without a soul, Bank of America, is on tap to get the Wikileaks treatment.

In a story published yesterday on Forbes.com, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is quoted as saying that the whistleblower Web site is sitting on tens of thousands,  possibly even hundreds of thousands, of sensitive internal documents from “a large U.S. bank”.

Assange said that the documents will offer a “true and representative insight into how banks behave at the executive level in a way that will stimulate investigations and reforms.”

The documents are not related toa specific incident, but highlight a systematic pattern of what he calls “Enron-like violations and unethical practices”.  As any Dave fan knows, Bank of America is scum of the earth, so this should be very entertaining.

“When Enron collapsed, through court processes, thousands and thousands of e-mails came out that were internal, and it provided a window into how the whole company was managed. It was all the little decisions that supported the flagrant violations.  This will be like that.”

Related:

• WikiLeaks sets sights on major U.S. bank, founder says
• Bank Of America Shares Fall On WikiLeaks Fears

Posted in Misc. | Comments Off

Things we don’t need …

“We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like.”
— Dave Ramsey

Posted in Genius of Dave Ramsey, Oft Quoted, Total Money Makeover | Comments Off

Dave Ramsey / Guide to Getting the Most out of Your Social Security Retirement

Posted in Broke Desperate Stupid, Dave Books, Genius of Dave Ramsey, Government, Total Money Makeover | Comments Off

Dave Ramsey endorses Zach Wamp. Why? Sellout?

Dave can do whatever he wants for sure, but I wish he would stay out of politics.  For one thing, he pisses off lots of listeners/viewers for no good reason, for another Zach Wamp?  Seriously.  Sad.This poster at Ron Paul Forums sums it up nicely ….

Why did Dave Ramsey endorse Zach Wamp for TN Governor?

- Zach Wamp voted for the bailouts. 

- Zach Wamp lied about his tenure in Congress (promised to serve less terms than he has) 

- Zach Wamp wants to unionize all police, fire, and EMT’s in the country 

- Zach Wamp is the king of pork in TN 

- Zach Wamp touts himself as a conservative but his voting record shows this to by hypocritical 

- Dave Ramsey doesn’t like liars 

- Dave Ramsey doesn’t like bailouts 

- Dave Ramsey is (was?) a fiscal conservative 

- Dave Ramsey has railed against the bailouts and socialism (which Zach Wamp voted for) 

- Even talk show host Phil Valentine thinks Zach Wamp is unfit to be Governor 

Posted in Government | Comments Off

Dave Ramsey: Abraham Lincoln’s debt letter to his brother

Abraham Lincoln’s Letter to His Deadbeat Brother who needed to get a job, instead of borrowing more money …

Dear Johnston:–

Your request for eighty dollars, I do not think it best to comply with now.

At the various times when I have helped you a little, you have said to me, “We can get along very well now,” but in a very short time I find you in the same difficulty again.

Now this can only happen by some defect in your conduct. What that defect is, I think I know. You are not _lazy_, and still you _are_ an _idler_. I doubt whether since I saw you, you have done a good whole day’s work, in any one day. You do not very much dislike to work, and still you do not work much, merely because it does not seem to you that you could get much for it.

This habit of uselessly wasting time, is the whole difficulty; and it is vastly important to you,and still more so to your children, that you should break this habit. It is more important to them, because they have longer to live, and can keep out of an idle habit before they are in it easier than they can get out after they are in.

You are now in need of some ready money; and what I propose is,that you shall go to work, “tooth and nail,” for somebody who will give you money for it. Let father and your boys take charge of things at home–prepare for a crop, and make the crop; and you go to work for the best money wages, or in discharge of any debt you owe, that you can get. And to secure you a fair reward for your labor, I now promise you that for every dollar you will, between this and the first of next May, get for your own labor either in money or in your own indebtedness, I will then give you one other dollar.

By this, if you hire yourself at ten dollars a month, from me you will get ten more, making twenty dollars a month for your work. In this, I do not mean you shall go off to St. Louis, or the lead mines, or the gold mines, in California, but I mean for you to go at it for the best wages you can get close to home, in Coles County.

Now if you will do this, you will soon be out of debt, and what is better, you will have a habit that will keep you from getting in debt again. But if I should now clear you out, next year you will be just as deep in as ever.

You say you would almost give your place in Heaven for $70 or $80. Then you value your place in Heaven very cheaply, for I am sure you can with the offer I make you get the seventy or eighty dollars for four or five months’ work.

You say if I furnish you the money you will deed me the land, and if you don’t pay the money back, you will deliver possession–Nonsense! If you can’t now live _with_ the land, how will you then live without it?

You have always been kind to me, and I do not now mean to be unkind to you. On the contrary, if you will but follow my advice, you will find it worth more than eight times eighty dollars to you.

Affectionately your brother,
A. LINCOLN.

Posted in Abraham Lincoln's Debt Letter, Genius of Dave Ramsey, Gods and Grandmas | 1 Comment »

Who was the Johnston in Lincoln’s Debt Letter? John D. Johnston was Lincoln’s Step Brother. Abe sets some boundaries.

Dave often talks about the infamous letter that Abe Lincoln penned to a debt-beat, lazy relative who wanted to borrow $80.  If you haven’t seen the letter, written on December 24, 1858, or want to enjoy it again, it’s here.

There seems to be a lot of disinformation floating around on exactly who the “Johnston” is that Abe is writing to.  Many times, Johnston, is referred to as Lincoln’s brother in-law.  It’s easy to see how such a mistake could have been made.  Mary Todd Lincoln’s family sounds like a bad Dave Ramsey call.  It seems that Mrs. Lincoln could have used some boundaries in her family.   Johnston was, in fact, Lincoln’s step brother, John D. Johnston,  the son of Lincoln’s father’s second wife – Sally Johnston.

You can tell from the letter that Lincoln has had it with Johnston and sees that giving him $80 is not going to help him.  Dave tells folks on his show all the time that giving a drunk a drink is not helping.  Abe got this concept at least with Johnston.  Of note, the letter to Johnston was written on the the same page as a letter that Abe wrote to his father in which Lincoln gives his dad $20 to keep his land from being foreclosed on in order to payoff a judgment.  It seems that Lincoln may have had lots of boundary issues in his life, I don’t know what the story with his father is, but if he was losing his land and had judgments, he for sure was not enjoying financial peace.

It was well known that Lincoln was generous towards people that he cared for but it seems that Johnston’s past behaviors made Abe take a different approach with his brother.  In a previous letter, Johnston had stated that he was “broke” and “hard-pressed” on the family farm in Coles County, Illinois.  It seems from Lincoln’s response that this was a situation that happened frequently and Lincoln realized that just giving Johnston money was not helping him.

There may have been other reasons for not giving Johnston the money.  Dave often tells people that they are too broke to be helping someone else.  Lincoln probably didn’t care to put his own family at risk in order to help old Johnny out yet again.  I doubt that he was in a position to be doling out $80 too often.  In  1858, when Lincoln penned the famous debt letter, he was a professional politician who was very poorly compensated if at all for his efforts at getting the brand new Republican Party off of the ground.  He had just lost a race for the Senate to his arch-rival, Stephen Douglas and $80 was a LOT of money.  $80 in 1858 is the equivalent to about $1,800 in today’s money.

The New York Times, in an article dated February 11, 1917, stated that this letter “out-Franklins anything of Ben Franklin, in the matter of good advice to the unthrifty.”

Posted in Abraham Lincoln's Debt Letter, Genius of Dave Ramsey | 2 Comments »

Why do you always buy too much stuff at Costco?

Source:  Science Explains Why You Always Buy Too Much Stuff at Costco.People don’t shop rationally. They make decisions based on an “emotional tug of war” between the pleasure and pain sensing parts of their brain.

But it’s not enough to just excite the NAcc (pleasure): retailers must also inhibit the insula (pain). This is where Costco really excels. When consumers are repeatedly assured that low prices are “guaranteed,” or told that a certain item is on sale, the insula stops worrying so much about the price tag. In fact, researchers have found that even when a store puts a promotional sticker next to the price tag⎯something like “Bargain Buy!” or “Hot Deal!”⎯but doesn’t actually reduce the price, sales of the item will still dramatically increase. These retail tactics lull our brain into buying more things, since our normal response to price tags is pacified.

Posted in Frugality, Misc. | Comments Off