For Their Eyes Only?

It seemed to go highly unnoticed by the blogosphere that two weeks ago Experian decided it would no longer be participating in FICO's consumer business division. Huh? What does this mean?

It means that you will no longer be able to obtain the commonly used FICO score that will be reported based on Experian's data, but your banker, boss, and financial institutions can. That doesn't seem fair. But according to Experian, it's no big deal; their website states:

"This change by no means eliminates your ability to obtain your credit score and assess your creditworthiness.

There is no one credit score that all financial institutions use to make decisions and there is also no one credit score that consumers must use to help them understand and manage their credit.

There are many reputable credit scores on the market that you can use to evaluate your creditworthiness before making financial decisions. Such credit scores include VantageScore^SM, PLUS Score® and others which are developed by the three national credit reporting companies or third parties. All of these credit scores provide prediction of your credit risk.

You have many options for obtaining your credit score, and a few of those options are listed below:

• Experian.com provides the ability for you to obtain your three national credit reports and credit scores based on data from all three national credit reporting companies.
• AnnualCreditReport.com provides you with access to a free annual credit report from each of the national credit reporting companies as well as an option to purchase a credit score along with the report.

This development has no impact on how lenders and other credit issuers evaluate your creditworthiness. Experian continues to offer its own scores, FICO scores and other credit risk scores to its business clients to enable their credit-granting decisions."

While it may have no bearing on how different lenders view you, it limits your information as to how you are being evaluated, and seems to be just another push for the Experian scores. The major credit reporting agencies have been seeming to attempt a beeline out from under FICO for a while now, but this seems highly unfair to the consumer.

Is Now the Time to Go Back To School?

So the irony is despite having a combined $22,750 in student loan debt, I honestly feel like additional schooling is definitely in my/our future. Mr. ModernTightwad and I both have vocational certificates, I have my Associates degree and am one semester short of a Bachelor's degree in Business/Marketing.

Some of this is spurred by a recent bout of self-discovery and an unfortunate revelation: While I love what I do, I don't like the environment that my work forces me into. I am in a female dominated profession that is consistently catty, political, and an overall pain in my behind. I stick with it because I really love what I do, I love the general consumer I interact with, and I love the fact that I can work 3/4 time and make enough to meet our basic needs.

Mr. ModernTightwad has very little, if any, desire to go to school. He knows it would help him advance at work, but he is uncomfortable in the atmosphere, and has difficulty with certain subjects. And he does not want to incur more education-related debt until the last round is paid off. I hate it when he's perfectly reasonable.

Except, for me, if I wait until my school loan is paid off to go back to school, I'll be extremely close to my 40s. While there's nothing wrong with going back to school at that age, it's just not where I want to be.

I'm pretty sure to maintain my carefree, (borderline or actual) freelance lifestyle, I know I will need to go back to school. The questions are: When? What would be the best path to take that will stay true to my frugal life choices? and For what?

Pros of going back to school:

1. Student discounts
2. Tuition and Fees Deduction on my taxes
3. Being able to re-consolidate my loans for a better rate
4. Being slightly older and wiser and knowing who I am and the lifestyle I want to leave

Cons of going back to school:

1. Incurs debt
2. Fear of success
3. Fear of having to go back to school again anyway

My frugal lifestyle is certainly not going to be hindered by school; not only did I copiously take advantage of student discounts when I was an attendee, it seems the more organized I force myself to become, the more I manage details like money.

What would be the best new (additional) career path for me? I honestly wonder if I'm interested in a new career path or would be happy just expanding my horizons. I could easily go into nursing, but that would probably be a similar environment to what I'm in now. The biggest issue I find is finding a profession that allows me to exercise my core values. The most important thing to me is to be a wife, and hopefully one day, a mother. Any profession I choose has to offer the flexibility to put my family first, which is rare today. Creative writing and journalism are certainly avenues I have considered before, as is graphic design. Being one semester away from my B.A. irks me as well, like I can almost touch it, but not quite.

It seems like a great time economically for re-training, and regardless of pursuing a degree I am interested in acquiring foreign language skills. I know that by attending a community college I can reduce costs incurred; I might even get Mr. MT to take a couple classes with me. ;)

Photo courtesy of (Avolore)

Free Filing ftw (for the win)!

I was panicked doing my taxes this year. First, Mr. MT and I posted our first loss for our business, ever (usually a red flag). While I always err on the side of caution, I do our taxes and don't have an accountant to give the stinkeye to if I get audited. And this was the first year I e-filed.

I know! I'm highly computer literate, do graphic design work, blog, and was nearly peeing my pants at the thought of e-filing! But I was pleasantly surprised.

Last year I tried to e-file, but was unable to make the tax software work with our business info, etc. I was probably just challenged, but after reading all of the updated tax laws on the IRS website I didn't want to learn a random tax preparer's software as well. However, finding out that the difference in receiving my refund was eight to 10 days with e-file vs. four to six weeks by mail spurred a bit of bravery.

Enter Free File Fillable Forms. This was the greatest thing since sliced bread. After preparing my taxes, all I had to do was transfer the info. on my 1040 and various schedules into the electronic forms, and press e-file. Time-wise I can see why this was a great thing for the IRS as the filer fills in the W-2 information and schedules instead of an IRS employee sitting at a computer.

(In fact, the only time I've ever had an issue on my taxes was a database entry on my Schedule D that was put in the wrong box; easy fix!)

Time-wise it couldn't have been better for me. After filing I received e-mail confirmation that the IRS received my documents. Fourteen hours later I received an e-mail that the IRS had accepted my tax return and I would be able to track my refund in 72 hours. Sure enough, three days later I was able to go to Where's My Refund? on the IRS homepage and find out that my refund was coming, eight days after my tax returns were e-filed. This was one of the easiest tax experiences I've had and I will definitely be doing this again next year. I didn't ever know I would say this, but, "Thank you IRS!"

more animals

Life is What Happens When You're at Death's Door.

Okay, so I'm not dieing, I just get a teeny bit melodramatic when I'm sick. I look pitiful and, well, I just look pitiful.

I had to do something I truly detest today: I called in sick. But I think it's incredibly important when I think I might be contagious to call in sick as I work in close quarters with customers.

However, I don't feel like wasting a day for any reason, so Mr. ModernTightwad and I opened our first ING savings account. We were debating between ING and smartypig. ING is at 2% (give or take) while smartypig is at 3.25%, but smartypig seems to be most realistic when saving for a specific goal. Mr. MT and I really want to take a trip to Hawaii in the next year (more on how to plan a frugal luxury vacation), and we'll probably use smartypig to save up for that, but for some reason I feel more comfortable putting our emergency fund in ING. I really don't think you can sacrifice peace of mind for a percentage point. I'm actually very excited about this. Benefits include:

1. Allows me to set aside sub-accounts for our yearly expenses, so we don't have to raid our emergency fund for unplanned expenses we should have known about.
2. Raises the interest we're receiving on our savings account from .2% to 2%.

But now, we have to keep track of multiple online accounts which could get confusing. Mr. MT and I will be looking into Mint.com and Quicken Online to see how we would like to keep things as organized as possible. (Any others you know would be great to hear about.) When we decide, we'll let you know, and why, of course.

Photo courtesy of (Augapfel)

Friends in Town

I currently have friends in town making it extremely difficult to keep to my goal of daily blogging. I will be blogging again next week, hopefully cooking as well. Until Monday!

But I'm Not Miserable!

Last week MSN Money released the Misery Index. It lists bankruptcy and foreclosure filings and ranks them by the percentage of households affected. It's no surprise to me that Nevada tops the list, but frankly, I'm not miserable.

Yes, we are having a hard time paying our bills, but so are a lot of other people. The question I'm asked most frequently by customers here in Las Vegas is "Are you guys feeling the economy here?" Well, of course we are! People are "feeling" the economy everywhere.

But I've lived through worse. I'm not living on rice and beans because I can't afford meat and I even have something that makes my life easier in hard times....resources. Unlike many people who moved to Las Vegas searching for a quick buck (either at the tables or behind the scenes), I moved here to be close to my family. So even though times are tough, we are rallying together to help each other.

And while a lot of households are affected, economic times do not have to be a source of misery. I guarantee there are people who are going to come out of this time as multi-millionaires by taking advantage of opportunities they see; they certainly won't view this as a miserable time. This seems like a good time to buckle down and learn what we're all capable of, and being miserable isn't going to cut it.

MT Tip: Giving Freely Doesn't Cost Money

Any truly modern tightwad knows that you can be charitable without removing your arm, leg, or giving away your firstborn. This charitable spirit is what differentiates the MT from its scrooge-like predecessors.

On the right you will see a few of my favorite click-thru charities. Free Rice gives, what else, free rice to impoverished people through a UN food program for answering trivia questions. The Hunger Site and The Animal Rescue Site allow you to feed people and pets (and if you're feeling spendy they do have advertisers that sponsor the site). Lastly free kibble and free kibblekat was started by a 12-year-old girl who wanted to help her animal shelter; it's modeled after Free Rice's trivia base and has served almost 700,000 meals to hungry pets.

I will add to the list as time goes on, and if you know of something that should go on this list drop me a note. These sites allow people to support charity regardless of their financial standing, the only requirement is access to a computer, the internet, and their heart.