Recently I decided to buy my first house. There has been a lot of learning experiences with dealing with sellers and banks. One thing that almost burned me was the cash that I deposited into my savings account. My bank needed me to be able to account for where the money came from for me to get my mortgage. Luckily, the money came from a savings account that I had in another bank, so I was able to get a statement from that bank stating that I closed my account and the money that I withdrew matched the amount I deposited into my main bank.

A few years ago, I installed Norton Anti-virus and used it for a wile and then converted my windows computer to Linux and no longer needed Norton Anti-virus. I forgot to call and cancel my Norton account and was hit with the auto renewal charge a few months later. I contacted Norton and asked them to remove the charge and cancel my account because I'm not using Norton anymore. Norton refunded the charge and canceled my account. Until today, I was happy with how Norton handled the situation. This morning I checked my bank account and saw a $73.84 charge for Norton again.

Today I opened a new savings account. The woman asked me for my personal information such as name, address, social security number, etc. She wrote it down on a post it note because she knew that she was going to have to enter it in a few different places. I asked her to not just shred the post it note with my information on it, but also the ones underneath because someone could use a pencil to see my information. This might sound like going over board about protecting data, but identity thieves often go through trash to see what the can find.

The $8,000 tax credit has expired. So is now a good time for first time home buyers to buy that new house? Investing in a home used to be a fairly simple question to answer, real estate always went up. After the crash of the real estate market, we now know that real estate can actually go down.

On the plus side, real estate is inexpensive right now in most markets. You can probably find a good deal. So what questions do you need to ask yourself to determine if now is a good time for you to buy your first home.

Currently in Minnesota, the real estate prices are still low, but there is good news too. I always like to search for jobs in the area around me and have noticed many great paying jobs around Minnesota and Wisconsin, especially in Minnesota. This means that real estate is going to start being bought and sold, in turn, prices will start moving up. So I feel like if you're in the market for a new home, right now is a great time to buy. Interest rates are still low, today 4.85% on a 30 year fixed mortgage.

As a U.S. Citizen, I'm sure we all think about welfare reform at one point or another. I've been lucky and never had to use our welfare system, but I've often thought about how we can make it better.

While you're reading the rest of this article, I don't what to give you the impression that I'm against helping those in need. I'm happy to pay my fair share of taxes and to have a portion of those taxes to go towards helping those in need, whether that be welfare, SSI, scholarships, etc.

Debt Settlement is the process of negotiating your debt down to a lower payment. You usually go through a company that specializes in Debt Settlement, and they will actually be the ones that will work with your creditors. Depending on you situation, they can cut what you owe in half. Some situations can be more or less than that, less the fee that the Debt Settlement company will charge. Debt Settlement is pretty much the option that you would choose right before filing for bankruptcy.

Pros of Debt Settlement:

With all the talk today about unemployment and foreclosures, people are trying to figure out how to become debt free. You have many options available to you and one of those options is Debt Consolidation. Debt Consolidation, as it's name implies, is a method of consolidating your debt. This is done by taking the total balance of all your debt, or at least the debt you wish to consolidate, and putting it into one single loan.

Pros of Debt Consolidation: