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Trading in Dusty DVDs for Store Credit – Round Two

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About two and a half months ago I went to my local F.Y.E. and traded in a bunch of DVDs that were doing nothing but collecting dust on my DVD stands. Well, earlier today I was looking at the remaining DVDs and video games that are sitting on my shelf (collecting more dust) and I thought it would be a good time to engage in Round Two of trading in these unused movies and games.

Since F.Y.E. doesn’t take video games, I stopped at GameStop, too. Oh, and since I wound up with a few DVDs that F.Y.E. wouldn’t take, I dropped for movies off at the local SPCA as a donation for them to sell in their thrift shop. A final note – F.Y.E. had some deal where I was getting 20% more than I would have received if I opted to get cash back instead of store credit so I obviously went with that deal! Here’s what I wound up with at the end of the day:

Thanks, F.Y.E. and GameStop!

From F.Y.E.:
Star Wars (4 – 6) – $7.50
Viva la Bam Season 1 – $1.50
8 Mile – $2.25
Batman Begins – $2.25
Garfield as Himself (cartoon) – $1.50
Garfield the Movie – $2.25
Kids – $3.00
Kingdom of Heaven – $1.50
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – $3.00
Road to Perdition – $1.50
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves – $8.25
Seabiscuit – $1.50
So I Married an Axe Murder – $2.25
Super Troopers – $2.25
The Adventures of Ford Fairlane – $1.50
The Amityville Horror – $2.25
The Aviator – $1.50
The Exorcism of Emily Rose – $1.50
The Gate – $1.50
The Gospel of John – $2.25
The March of the Penguins – $1.50
The Shining – $3.00
Van Wilder – $1.50
Waiting – $1.50
War of the Worlds (new version) – $2.58
Total: $61.08

From GameStop:
Children of Mana (Nintendo DS) – $5.09
Sonic Rush (Nintendo DS) – $7.33
Super Mario Advance 2 (Nintendo Gameboy Advance) – $6.50
WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2008 (Nintendo Wii) – $6.33
Total: $25.25

Donated to SPCA:
Big Momma’s House – Special Edition
Little Shop of Horrors (Jack Nicholson Edition)
Barber Shop
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys (New, CGI-based Musical Version)
Total: Not applicable, but I feel good for having donated these otherwise unusable DVDs!

All told, at the end of the day I’ve got two gift cards worth $61.08 and $25.25 each. When I woke up this morning, I didn’t have that extra $86.33 worth of buying power so I feel good knowing that today I translated some unused, dusty “assets” into usable store credit. And while I had some very minor, almost nonexistent, conflicts about whether or not to trade in some of the titles listed above (which I definitely didn’t have when I traded in the titles two and a half months ago) I know that trading in these DVDs and video games was the right thing to do on so many levels.

As people, we all run the risk of getting too involved with our physical objects. For me, what it boils down to is that there’s no reason for a person to feel any type of connection or need for a DVD that they haven’t watched in years and that has contributed nothing to a person’s life or space other than acting as a dust catcher. Frankly, I don’t need any more dust catchers thank you very much.

All of that being said, I now look at my remaining DVD collection of about 150 titles – easily half of what I used to own – and I’m wondering what Round Three of this purge may look like one day. I have a bunch of Christmas movies that I know I’m not going to part with because I watch them all at least twice a year. Same thing with my Lord of the Rings Extended Edition DVDs – I enjoy watching them once or twice each year. However, I look at my Family Guy box sets and I know that I haven’t opened them up in over a year and a half, if not longer. Same thing goes for my Smallville box sets, though I think I’d like to watch the Smallville box sets again one more time before sending them off to F.Y.E. I also have a bunch of WWE DVDs that I certainly haven’t watched in a long time. Instead of bringing them to F.Y.E., though, I’ll probably wind up giving them to my younger brother and letting him do what he wants with them, I guess.

Then I have some movies that I really do like, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever watch them on a consistent enough basis to warrant allowing them to continue to collect dust. These titles include (among many others) Nothing But Trouble, Funny Farm, The Great Outdoors, Private Parts, Caddyshack II, Spaceballs, Office Space, Wedding Crashers, Shrek, and Shrek 2.

Stay tuned and see what I trade in or donate next! I’m thinking that it’ll be some of my used books to those good folks at EcoEncore.org. Oh, and on that topic – does anyone know where I can donate used cell phones for a good cause?

I’m Doing Less in 2010, But Doing So Much More in the Long-Term

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After re-reading the title to this entry, I want to let everyone know that this isn’t some misery-loves-company type of post nor is it some way for me to bitch and moan about finances. Instead, I thought I’d share the quick conclusion that I came to after doing some number crunching the other night. For reasons of specificity, the numbers that I crunched the other night included reviewing and revising the following documents: my personal budget through September 30, 2010, my income projections through December 31, 2010, and my student loan repayment schedule through April 1, 2011.

First things first – yes, I really do sit down and dedicate a good deal of my time to revising and reviewing these documents. I’ve been doing this for a few years now with Microsoft Excel spreadsheets that I created from scratch and it is a tremendously effective method for forecasting my financial intake and outflow (i.e. money in and money out). If you haven’t created these types of documents for yourself and you are trying to dig out of serious debt or just want to be a more fiscally sound individual, then I highly suggest sitting down and creating a spreadsheet that works for you. Let me know if you have any questions because my spreadsheets rock!

Now then…

It would appear that I am doing less in 2010. I’m not quite sure how to quantify what “doing less” means in a specific way other than saying that I’m doing less of everything that people normally do. I’m going out to eat less, I’m going out to the store less, I’m buying less clothing, I’m driving the car less, I’m hanging out at the bar less, etc. Does that make any sense? In essence, the 29th year of my life is going to be a year marked by a great reduction in my student loan debt that was made possible, in part, by doing much less. There is a symbiotic relationship there – spend less money by “doing less” of the activities listed above and spend more money on repaying student loan debt.

In the short-term, it obviously sucks doing less of these activities. But in the long-term, I’m doing so much more. I’m setting myself up to be able to buy a home sooner rather than later; I’m setting myself up to be financially free much sooner than most people; I’m ingraining a strict budget mindset in my life which will pay dividends (figuratively and literally) for the rest of my life. It’s great.

So, while I won’t be doing much for the rest of this year, rest assured that I’m spending my time laying a strong financial foundation on which to build my future.

And now for some fun, numbers crunching stuff!

This year alone I project about $36 thousand in student loan payments (pretty gross, huh?). By December 31, 2010, I project holding about $65 thousand in student loan debt broken out as about $54 thousand in USDOE debt and about $11 thousand in NJHESAA debt. These projections are based on a repayment plan that is even more grueling and strict than the one that I am currently on because it incorporates income that I expect to receive from teaching at the local and online colleges through the end of the summer and this fall. Up until I began drafting this proposed stricter repayment plan for myself, I’ve never banked on teaching income for these types of payments. However, when I was doing all of this the other night, I wanted to create the most rigorous financial assumptions possible and so I decided to include them for the student loan repayment projections only. In other words, the student loan repayment projections are based on a best of all possible worlds scenario while my personal budget forecast is based on projected income and expenses outside of the teaching income.

Another item that isn’t included in any projections is income derived from my website company because, well, it’s a separate and independent entity and it creates its own financial statements. I don’t take a salary for my web work, so I don’t anticipate any “new” income coming to me from that source. I also don’t bank on any federal income tax or state tax rebate checks (this only applies to the student loan repayment projections since the projection document that I created extends out through April 1, 2011… and even a few more months beyond that date).

A final income category that I don’t touch is the possibility of getting a raise at my day job. To stay conservative in my financial projections, I opted to assume my income level stays stagnant at its current level (though I better be getting a raise at the end of September!).

Again, while my friends and family may not think that I’m doing much this year, rest assured that I’m spending a great deal of time putting all of my financial assets to work. Now, if I can find a way to incorporate getting some more physical activity in my daily routine and drop some of this weight… Hey, if I can manage an overly complex repayment plan, investment schedule, and ever changing personal budget, I can manage to workout a little bit more, right?

Hmmm…

Graduates are Drowning in Student Loan Debt – It’s Getting Worse

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While I believe that I have made impressive strides to repay my student loan debt, there are new reports that delinquency rates are increasing in the student loan market. Last week, Forbes posted an article that contained a bunch of interesting information – here are some of the juicier parts of the article:

National credit bureau TransUnion revealed recently that the 90- and 30-day delinquency rates on private student loans were 6% and 7.5%, respectively, in the first quarter of 2010. That’s up from 5.4% and 6.8% in the previous year. Meanwhile, the Department of Education recently released its fiscal year 2008 draft student loan cohort default rates, which showed that federal loan defaults rose from 6.7% in 2007 to 7.2% in 2008.

Rising delinquency and default rates indicate that borrowers are struggling to repay the loans that they took out for college, especially in the midst of the current economic environment. The fact that student loans are unable to be dismissed in bankruptcy has created a financial nightmare for some borrowers. They’re drowning in a mountain of student debt and can’t collect the dividends that a college education is supposed to pay.

That last sentence – the idea that graduates who are drowning in student loan debt are unable to collect the dividends that a college education is supposed to provide – is what I find most interesting. What, exactly, are those dividends in the context of 2010? Can we safely say that college graduates earn more over the course of their lifetime than high school graduates? The studies still say that the answer is a resounding “Yes!” but we do not know how the current recession has altered those findings in the future. For example, if a subsection of college graduates from whichever group that was studied was supposed to make $1,000,000 more in their lifetime than their high school graduate counterparts, then is there data available to adjust for repaying (an estimated) $100,000 in student loan debt as well as being out of work from a high paying job for three years?

I don’t know, but I bet the results would be interesting to look at!

Taking a different view of this issue, I think that the real “dividends” that student loan borrowers are not able to access in 2010 are the great deals that can be had and could have been had on new cars and buying a home. Mark my words – the real estate market will not rebound from its devastating fall from the last few years because we are graduating a generation of students that are too burdened with student loan debt to enter into the housing market. And for those that are able to enter the housing market, they are unable to furnish their new home with the types of consumer goods that keep the overall economy afloat.

I’m not suggesting that this is a good or a bad phenomenon. I’m one of the rare believers that if you take out student loans to attend college, then you should be obligated to repay those loans. Like all things in life, I believe in living up to one’s obligations and doing what you’ll say that you’ll do. If I were to take some personal loans out, I’d make sure to re-pay them, obviously. In my situation, I required $121 thousand in student loan debt to attend college and graduate school and I intend to repay every penny as soon as I can (I’m down to $84 thousand still owed and that number is getting lower every week). However, even though I might be in the minority on this issue, I do think that the student loan suffocation is going to be the silent, stifling factor in this economic recovery.

If you get a chance, take a few minutes and read that brief article posted on Forbes.com and linked above. It talks about the possibility of making private student loan debt dischargable in bankruptcy court as it used to be before 2005. Some interesting stuff…

Investor’s Business Daily Praises Chris “The Boss” Christie’s Fiscal Strength

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For a state that is often the butt of jokes by those who know nothing about us, New Jersey is certainly getting a ton of good press coverage due to the unwavering fiscal responsibility being shown by Governor Chris Christie. The latest bit of praise for New Jersey comes from Investor’s Business Daily which wrote the following about our Governor:

Chris 'The Boss' Christie

The next time some of the more cowardly Republicans in Washington forget what they were elected to do, let them look to New Jersey and listen to the boss.

And ain’t that the truth, huh? I’m so sick of hearing about how the people in Washington, DC are deficit spending (i.e. spending our future tax dollars that haven’t even been collected yet). I’m so sick of hearing about how all of these government support programs are going to go broke before I’ll ever have a chance to access them as an older person or a person in need. Enough is enough. There are millions of people across this country, like me, who voted for change in the last Presidential election. What did we get? We traded a big spending Republican President for an even bigger spending Democratic President. It’s crap.

Real change has to start somewhere and it is starting right here in New Jersey. Governor Christie is doing to this state’s budget what we hope the 112th Congress does to our national budget – make the income match the expenses or (even better) make the income exceed the expenses. It’s not that hard, folks. It’s Budgeting 101. If I can make these types of budget decisions on a daily basis in my household, then why can’t the people in Washington, DC or the people who used to run Trenton make these decisions, too?

It’s a very simple procedure: if you have ten dollars and you want to buy something that costs fifteen dollars, you can’t afford to buy it so you look for an alternative or you wait until you have enough money to buy the item. Our Governor, Chris “The Boss” Christie, knows this and I’m glad that he’s bringing this fiscal responsibility to Trenton. Lord knows that this state needs it!

Realizing My Student Loan Repayment Schedule While Still Supporting Charitable Organizations

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You all know the drill by now: every two weeks or so I’m back with another one of these posts telling you how I paid down my student loan debt by a thousand bucks. So… as of a few days ago my student loan debt dropped from $85 thousand to $84 thousand. I knocked another thousand bucks off of my New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority debt to bring the total amount owed to that organization down to about $29 thousand.

Getting there. Slow and steady.

Down to $84 thousand...

Like I’ve been saying since I started this repayment plan in late December 2009/early January 2010 – this plan is strict and not the easiest to abide by. However, I’m sticking with it because I have to rid myself of this debt in order to function the way I want to function as a contributing member of the economy. Sending off about $3,000 each month to student loan companies is not fun and it’s not easy, but it has to be done so I can redirect that money to other uses (i.e. buying a home, a new car, investing more, etc.) sooner rather than later.

I try to lessen the impact of sending away so much money each month by being hyper-involved with my finances to the point where I check and recheck them at least twice each day. In fact, I budget out my expenses – including these bimonthly student loan payments – at least three months in advance (yes, my expenses are currently budgeted through the end of August 2010). I take a conservative stance on my budgeting because I know that unexpected expenses will likely pop up from time to time and I have to be able to handle them. I have my finances all organized in a multi-sheet Excel Workbook that I designed which tracks money in and money out all the way down to the penny.

It’s pretty cool, actually.

Another way that I try to lessen the blow of sending away this money is by trying to find ways to either generate more income or reduce expenses. Pretty basic stuff, right? Over the last few years, the three biggest monthly expenses that I’ve had are these student loan payments, monthly rent payments, and charitable donations. I’ve given you a bunch of updates on the student loan payments and I have to pay my rent every month (more on how housing affects the ability to repay student loans in my next student loan update), but I thought I’d spend a paragraph or two talking about how my student loan repayment schedule impacts my charitable donations.

Since I started this repayment plan, I’ve knocked back my charitable donations considerably. In fact, I selected four charitable organizations that I am going to focus on sending my donations to each year: my Church – St. Jerome’s Church in West Long Branch, the Sigma Pi Educational Foundation, Monmouth University’s Athletics Department (specifically, the basketball team), and the Monmouth County SPCA. I have different reasons for choosing each of these organizations. I donate to my Church because I believe in tithing to the extent that you can (I can’t really donate as much as I’d like because of my student loan debt). I donate to the Sigma Pi Educational Foundation because I believe in its mission and, as a board member, I am obligated to donate a certain amount every year. I donate to Monmouth University’s Athletics Department because I am impressed that the school managed to get that Multipurpose Activity Center built and I enjoy going to the home basketball games. And finally, I donate to the Monmouth County SPCA because that’s where I adopted one of my family’s pugs – Odie.

The difference between my donations on the repayment plan versus before I went on the repayment plan is that I used to send money to these (and other) charitable organizations whenever I had an extra $50 or $100 in my monthly budget. For this year, I’ve laid out certain dollar amount goals that I’d like to reach in terms of donating to each of these organizations. I’m going to knock them down one at a time (I’ve already made my budgeted donation for this year to one of these groups).

It’s all about budgeting and, in my case, it’s all about creating an extreme budget and sticking to it.

In May 2006, I graduated from Rutgers University with a Masters Degree and $120,720 in student loan debt. I currently owe $84 thousand, which breaks down to $29 thousand owed to the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority and $55 thousand owed to the United States Department of Education. Follow my student loan repayment story on JerseySmarts.com.