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September Income Report – Better Than Expected

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Oct 1, 2009

On the last monthly report, I wrote that I believed September was going to be a bad cash month. Well, it turned out better than I had hoped, but man, just a few more cents and I’d have been happier than I am, though I can’t really say I’m depressed about it all.

Here are the numbers:

Adsense – $93.86
Google Advertising Network – $3.77
Chitika – $1.03
Commission Junction – .70
Infolinks – .03
Grand Total – $99.39

So, just cents under the $100 mark; I’m not upset about that. What I am surprised about is that, though my blog grew in subscribers and readers for the month, I didn’t earn anything from this blog this month. And, once again, I really didn’t drive anyone to any of the things I wrote about this month. Well it’s possible I drove some to TalkBiz, but I’m still out of town and that’s the one password I forgot to send myself, so I can’t check it at all. But based on track record, I don’t have high hopes on that one.

If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice something missing. I earned nothing from TLA, better known as Text Link Ads. I dropped them pretty much after a few days of writing about it in my monthly update in September. I did so because the amount had gone down to a point where it didn’t make sense to have it anymore. So, I got rid of it, and have petitioned Google for page rank again. Now, I don’t know if I’ll get it or not, but it’s possible that one day I’ll look and see it there. I guess we’ll find out about that also; not worried, about it, though.

What I am worried about overall is that I have to increase my internet and affiliate marketing money, and fast. With what’s going on with my mother and my needing to be gone, I really need to ramp up the residual income thing in some fashion. I can keep up with some writing, but not all of it, as Mom and my grandmother need a bit more attention now than I can give to the writing. I’m not quite sure how I’ll get it done yet, but I’ve been working my way through Barbara Ling’s free Beginners Make Money Cookbook, which is more than 240 pages of stuff, and I’m hoping to pick something up from there. Hey, doesn’t hurt to try, right?

And I’m still hoping that my affiliate links will start generating income at some point, though it may take awhile to really get it going. After all, I’m still shooting for that $200 month; baby steps.

By the way, you’ll also see something a little different that I’m adding; I actually added it on another recent post. I don’t have my links underlined in my copy, as you’ve noticed, but that means when it’s a link to a product you might not know it from the others. So, you’ll see an dark blue underline whenever it’s a product from now on. If it links to a post that’s then pushing a product, it won’t; just to be clear. That should help you out, and thus, you might decide to check it out since it’s pointed out as a product. Or not; gotta try new things.

There you go; how did you do this month?

Update – Heck, I actually forgot something. I sold one of my products, my Management Training Program, for $39.99, which means I actually did surpass $100 for the month, finishing at $130.38. Okay, now I feel much better.

Weltman, Weinberg & Reis Is Abusive

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Jul 27, 2008

I’ve been battling a collection agency for a couple of months now. The name of the company is Weltman, Weinberg, & Reis; I’m not afraid to give their name. I’m not afraid to give their name because I don’t owe anyone anything, and their own processes need to be brought out into the open. It’s been a long time since I talked about anything financial; it’s now time.

Many years ago, when I was just getting my business off the ground, I ran into some financial difficulties. Hey, it happens to many people, and I wasn’t alone. I soon fell way behind a lot of people, and of course the phone calls start. I got a lucky break, things started to happen, and I made deals with, and paid off, pretty much everyone. Some companies I got letters from, some I didn’t, but most of them showed up on my credit report as being satisfied, and I didn’t think of it again.

Until last October, when I was contacted by a collection agency about a balance that I knew I’d paid. I told them so, and within a week they sent me a letter saying they weren’t going to bother me again. I thought I was done with it all; I was wrong.

Over the next few months, I was contacted by three other companies looking for this same balance; the last one was Weitman, and they were different because they told me they were going to sue me. I started going through all my papers, looking for something, and of course I couldn’t find it. I was at my wit’s end; I knew I had paid it. I checked my credit report, and sure enough, that balance was still showing as open. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, other than possibly having to start making payments.

Talk about being lucky. I finally came across something which was my agreement letter that I’d made with the company at the time to pay them back. Sure enough, I had paid the balance in 2004. I had a name and number; I had some proof, thank goodness. I called that company, and they told me that they usually only kept records of paid accounts for 18 months, but that they would check their fiche for my records. They also showed that I didn’t have an open balance with them, which was in my favor because it meant I hadn’t reneged on any agreements with them. I asked them if they could fax me a letter to this effect, and they said they’d see what they could do.

It took two weeks. In between that time, I got another call from Weitman, and I told them what was going on. They said they’d give me 10 days. I finally got my fax, looked up a fax number online for Weitman, since they didn’t give me a fax number on their letter, which they finally did send, sent the fax, and figured everything was fine.

Nope; life just doesn’t work like that. I got another call while I was out of town saying they never got the fax. I told them I’d send it again when I got home, and I did. Their office was closed, but they said they’d contact me the next morning telling me it was received. I never received that call, but I wasn’t worried about it since I’d sent it to the number they told me it was supposed to go to.

Then Friday, once again, I get another call, and now I’m livid. I’ve sent it twice, and they’re telling me they didn’t get it. I told the guy I was going to send it immediately to whichever number he gave me, then I’d call him and tell him I’d sent it, and he could go get it. This started the next round of things that really got me irritated, and tells us all some things about how life works.

I sent the fax, called back, and they couldn’t get me to the guy. Matter of fact, they wanted me to leave my number and said someone would call me back. I said I didn’t trust them now, because of everything that had been going, and I got the runaround. I got transferred twice to someone else; I hung up and called back. The last woman I got I just didn’t want to get off the phone. We went back and forth for about 5 minutes, then I decided I’d just keep calling back every 2 minutes until I got the guy I wanted. i did just that; they got irritated, but I didn’t care; after all, that’s how they treat us, right?

I finally got him, and he said he went to look for the fax and they hadn’t gotten it; what the hey? I got a confirmation back and they didn’t get it? It’s a good thing I’m me, otherwise I’d have started yelling and cursing. Instead, I asked for a second fax number, said I was going to fax it to both of them, and I was also going to fax it to myself just to prove that it would come through.

I did fax it to myself, then I sent the same fax to both letters. I got my copy; the original letter sent from the other company might come through a bit dark, but it came through. I called the office and now the guy I wanted was at lunch; ugh. I wanted someone to go look for the fax, but they wouldn’t budge. Figures, because I was taking money out of their pocket. The lady told me the reason was they had thousands of people making calls and that they didn’t have anyone who could go pull the fax; if they had thousands of people and no one could go pull a fax then this company isn’t worth anything to me because their processes are garbage.

They don’t care about any of the people they call because none of us are their clients, and, truth be told, their clients don’t really care one way or the other because the open amounts have already been charged off; check out this previous post on outstanding debt. Of course, the reason I was home was because I had a dental appointment, and I had to leave, but I did wait 30 minutes for someone to call me. I got home later, had a phone call from the guy asking me to call back, but of course he’d gone home, but the woman I talked to said his notes showed he got a fax. I hope that’s it, and that it’s all finally over, but I have my doubts. I didn’t mention this one earlier; they have “thousands” of employees, but not a single one of them has an email address, not even the supervisors; yup, you read this one correctly, because I asked, and if they truly tape their conversations, they’ll hear their representative telling me that. Come on, does Weitman really think we’re all fools?

At this point, I’m going to give them a week to see what happens. I asked for a letter saying they got it, but I’d been told before that’s not their policy. Yup, I have to prove to them that I don’t owe any money, but they don’t owe me a thing for trying to ruin my life and threatening to sue me for a balance I don’t owe. Frankly, I think the whole thing stinks, and that none of us can trust any of these people, especially Weitman. It’s not slander; it’s truth.

I’ll be leaving town again this coming week, so I can only hope they’ll send me something, or contact me with the confirmation that they’ll be leaving me alone. I’ll be protecting myself some more by sending copies of the letter from the other agency to Experian and the other credit agencies, though I only know for sure that Experian will do something about it since I do subscribe to their service. And I’ve learned it really is important to have a credit checking service on some sort of basis; people, check your credit yearly, because it’s free.

Learn your rights; protect yourself.

How Not To Be Rich

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on May 11, 2008

And while we’re on the subject of wealth, so to speak, there’s this post from Kevin’s No Debt Plan blog called 10 Steps To Avoid Being A Millionaire (who got it from Jonathan at Master Your Card [man, we all steal SO much from each other]) that details the behaviors one needs to exhibit if they don’t want to be wealthy.

Some of these sound really familiar, and I’m happy to say that I’ve eliminated a bunch of them from my life. Some of them don’t apply to me, since I work for myself, but the rest,… man, I need to get an IRA. Anyway, read either one of them; except for some minor stuff, they’re actually the same thing.

Credit Card Solutions

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Mar 12, 2008

This is something much different than my norm. I originally wrote what’s below the red line on March 12, 2008. At that time, there was a website called Credit Card Solutions that had a bunch of videos on it on how people could work down their debt. Now that site is pretty much gone; I think someone else owns it, but they haven’t done anything with it. I had to unlink this site from that site because it just looked pretty stupid with what I had here.

Today it’s September 10th, 2009. I’m rewriting this post because, strangely enough, it seems to be a post that many people come by to visit because of its title. This makes me feel as though I’m misleading you because what was here isn’t here any longer. I decided I had to rewrite this post and offer those of you who are coming here some advice and options.

I’m going to assume you’re in some kind of difficulty with your credit cards, and that’s why you’ve stopped by looking for solutions. Here’s the first one, which is more informational than actual solutions. I have a blog on finances called Top Finance Blog. I wrote a review of a book called The Skinny On Credit Cards. Go there and read my review, then buy the book. Trust me on this one; it’s the easiest way to understand how credit cards work.

Number two, immediately stop using your credit cards until you can figure out your debt. You figure out your debt by looking at all of your balances, looking at your interest rate, then seeing how much you owe monthly. I could give you the easy way and the hard way of putting together calculations for how many years it would take you to pay off your debt, but I’m going to give you an easy way to make an estimate.

If your balance is $500 or less, look at how much your monthly payment is. Take $5 off that amount, then multiply that figure by 12. Subtract that total from your balance. Then take another $5 off your previous payment amount and multiply that by 12, and subtract that amount from your balance. If you’re at a negative balance, but barely, it means it’ll take you between 18 and 24 months to pay off your balance if you don’t use your card again and only pay the minimum balance.

If your balance is between $501 and $1,500, do the same thing, only in $10 increments every 12 months until you’re down to between $15 and $20. Yes, that’s right; it’s going to take you 5 years or so to pay off that balance if you never use that card again.

If it’s higher than $1,500,… well, just realize it’s going to take you more than 5 years and run with that for now.

Number three, call each of your credit card companies and ask if you can get a reduction on the interest rate. If you can, great. If not, you at least now get to request a free credit report from all 3 agencies, because they have to give you an official reason why you didn’t qualify.

Number four, start paying off your cards, but get rid of one as fast as you can. There are different rules of thought here, but I’ll tell you mine. If you can get one card paid off, you’ll feel a sense of accomplishment and see the plan works. Concentrate on the card you can actually pay off the quickest, and pay more than what’s due only on that card. Doesn’t matter how much it is, just pay more than the minimum. When that card is paid, take that payment and add it to the next card, and so on. If you have only three cards, pay in the order you can get rid of them. If you have more, start with the lowest two, then go after the one with the highest interest rate, not the highest balance. You actually will bring your debt down quicker because that high interest rate is kicking your behind, but now you have extra funds to throw at it, so it’ll come down quickly.

And there you are; it’s not a lot, but these are some valid solutions on how to bring down your credit card debt. If these work for you, then subscribe to the RSS feed of my finance blog, because periodically I write posts on budgeting that might help you out. As a matter of fact, there are a few on there right now, which I’ve paused because they haven’t been getting read all that much so far. But if interest peaks up, I’ll write more. Good luck.

A friend of mine sent me a link to some videos created by the lawyers who set up the site CreditCardSolution.com. It’s very good stuff, especially the videos on third party debt collectors, of which there are two. In a previous post I talked about the Fair Debt Collections Parctices Act, and the guy in these videos takes it even further. It’s something important for everyone to hear, so here’s the link to their video page. Great stuff; thanks guys!

The Skinny On Credit Cards by Jim Randel

Know Your Charge Off Amounts On Your Outstanding Debt

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Dec 12, 2007

And now, the first real post. This is informational, and it could help a lot of people.

Many people have had at least one credit card or something go to a collection agency. Sometimes it’s legitimate, sometimes it’s not. However, we’re going to talk about the legitimate ones here for a minute.

Here’s the deal. Credit card companies, or whomever else, will do what they call a “charge off” of the outstanding amount you owe on a claim. When you fall behind on your payments, they attach all these fees and the like, but when it finally gets reported to the credit reporting companies, the amount they’re allowed to charge off is the actual amount you owe, not all those fees. So, if you owed them $2,000, even if they tacked on $1,000 worth of fees, they can’t report all that.

Why is it important? Because they have these collection agencies known as “scavengers“, that buy all this debt at between 5 and 8 cents on the dollar, look at what the amounts were with all the interest, then start pounding your phone trying to get you to start paying on all of that. Thing is, if you make even one payment, or agreement on that amount, by law you now are responsible for all of it. If you don’t, as in you’ve checked your credit report and know what the charge off amount was, you can get them to either start negotiating from that point, or only pay them based on that amount, which will still be thousands less in many instances.

They don’t want you to know this, obviously, but I’m telling you how it is. If you want more information on it, read the Fair Debt and Credit Collections Act; it’s there for your protection. Make sure to always know your charge off amounts; you could save a lot of money on the back end.

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