Finances and other tidbits.

I have been watching the showtime television show Weeds on Netflix. I am almost done with season 1 and for reasons I cannot determine, I really like the show. I feel no connection to any of the characters, however, for reasons unknown - it has caught my attention. The good news is - there are 5 seasons available for me to watch instantly thru my Wii. Netflix is really hit or miss with their streaming library - they have Weeds, which is a show that I have heard very little about - in fact - I don't even know that I have any friends that watch it. True Blood, however, is not available for streaming, and I know many people who are devout fans. I have yet to figure out what the rhyme or reason is behind Netflix's availability of streaming videos.

I know I haven't blogged about our trip to the national championship - I will - I promise I will. Once I find the football pump out in the garage to pump myself back up - losing really takes it out of you. I kid - sorta. The boys played very well, and I am very proud of them and very proud to be a Duck - and no matter what - I still love the Ducks and cannot wait for next season - but I am still sad - sniff.

I had a date night with a girlfriend the other night and we were talking about finances. I mentioned that I had reduced my interest on all of my debt payments since losing my job. This was not magical - pity based reductions - anyone can do it. So, with that - I pass on my knowledge of interest rate reduction (not really knowledge, courage might be a better word). In a nutshell, all you have to do is ask. Have you ever heard the saying "it never hurts to ask" - well - that's the name of the game in debt reduction.

-I called my mortgage lender to ask about refinancing into a lower rate. I had been dragging my feet on this for a while because we had a decent rate (best rate you could get back in early 2008 when we bought our house) and because I didn't want to have to pay points or appraisal fees or any other fees for getting refinanced. We had worked hard to pay down a significant portion of our house so tacking more on to principal just put a bad taste in my mouth. But I called anyway. Turns out, our mortgage lender had a program that reduced interest rate without any of the fees - why? you might ask - well, because the mortgage lender knows that there are lots of low rates out there and out of fear that I will take my business elsewhere and refinance with someone else, they offer to lower my rate without so much as a fee. The moral here? All I did was ask.

-I went into my bank (well, credit union) and asked about lowering my interest rate on my car loan. I have had the loan since 2007 - back when rates for cars ran about 6.75% - since then, the rates have plummeted. So, I figured - what the heck, I may as well ask. So ask I did - low and behold, without so much as a fee, they would lower my rate so long as my credit was above 720. Hurray! There went that rate too. And she lowered my rate on my credit line associated with my debit card to boot!

-The one that will resound most with the ladies (and gents, if there are any that read this blog), is the credit card interest rate. Yep, thats right - the evil, soulless credit card companies will generally lower your rate when you ask (I say generally, because I am sure there are all kinds of circumstances that would cause them not to). I have done this on several occasions. Sometimes you have to get a little, how can I say this nicely...firm? Ok fine, bitchy - but they have always lowered it.

So here is how the call goes - you call the number on the back of the card. You hit the buttons or speak to the machine until you get thru to a person. I generally resort to hitting 0 a million times, or if I am unfortunate enough to get one of those machines that is supposed to be able to talk to you, I just say operator like a million times - don't resort to swearing - she will hang up on you. Once you get a person - nicely say - I think that the interest rate I am paying is too high and I was hoping that you could reduce it for me. Usually this results in them lowering the interest rate and ending the call. This is the best case scenario. There was one instance when I had to threaten to pay off the balance and close my card - ok - there were two instances. On one occasion, I had a Victoria's Secret card - Victoria's card is evil and I actually had to make good on my threat, I paid it off and promptly closed the account and destroyed the card (and learned never to hold credit cards from big box stores or other mall places - happily, I have only 1 credit card now). The other time, they sent me on to the manager and she changed my rate straight away. On the most recent change - I got my interest rate reduced from 21% to 11% - the most infuriating part about the high interest is that my credit is considered Excellent! The happy news is that we pay our cards off monthly - hence the fact that I allowed myself to have a 21% interest rate - however, there was one month that racked up quite a bill and when I got a jaw dropping $75.00 interest charge - my hair stood on end and I called the card company straight away.

So there you go - happy reducing all! Good luck!