Most of us are in debt of some form or another. While debt is never a good thing, sometimes it’s just necessary such as mortgages, cars, school etc. Planning to get rid of your debt can seem very daunting. If you have a lot of it, you probably feel that you have no money to spare and no way to pay it off. There is a technique that you may be able to use to help get you on your way…snowballing.

Snowballing debt is how a lot of people get into trouble. Perhaps they take on more debt to pay off other debts and so on until there is so much debt that there is no escape. However, we can use the same snowball analogy in a positive way. Lets take on the instance where a family has a mortgage, a car loan, a school loan and a couple credit cards. The good kind of debt snowballing says to examine your loans and look to find a balance between the debt that is easiest to pay off and the one that has the highest interest with pay off ease taking priority. Once you have found that first debt, take every extra penny you have to pay that debt off. Continue to make payments on your other debt, but don’t go out of your way to do anything extra.

Lets say you typically spend about $200 a month on that first debt. Maybe with an extra $100 a month towards it, you can get it paid off in about 4-5 months. After that first debt, lets say your second debt typically costs you about $400 a month. Well now instead of just having that extra $100 to help it out, you need to take the extra $100 plus the $200 you were paying off the first debt with and put it towards this debt. Once this debt is paid off you now have $700 plus your normal payout for the third debt and so on.

With debts such as car loans, it’s good to pay them off, but make sure to store a little bit of cash in savings in the case that you need a new car. While you can pay off the car loan, eventually you will need another car. Hopefully by that time you will be well on your way to debt free and have some savings to pay for that car with cash, or a very small short term loan.

Lunch is one of my favorite parts of my day. It marks the end of the morning and the half way point of my day. By lunch time my stomach is screaming at me to feed it so I am happy to oblige. Lunch is also typically a meal in which I am not constrained by the tastes and preferences of other family members. During the week I eat what I want when I want as do many people out there. The one thing I almost never do however is eat out.

I typically live life in a pretty healthy way. I try to eat those foods that are good for me and help me to stay in shape. When I do eat out I try to stick to chicken and healthy sides. If I do have some french fries I always order the smallest size or share with my family. Trying to keep up with this nutritional plan is pretty good motivation for not eating out, however even if you aren’t concerned about the nutritional values consider the amount of money you spend every year on eating out.

Lets say you eat out lunch every day. when I was a kid that usually meant $3 to $4 dollars a meal. Nowadays if you eat at a fast food restaurant you are looking at around $7 a meal and for restaurants with wait staff around $10 – $15 dollars a meal. Even if we stick with the lower end of $7 a meal you are looking at $35 dollars a week. For my family of 3 that is roughly equivalent to 1/3 of our weekly grocery bill. Ok so $35 a week doesn’t make you stop and think, well that $35 a week comes out to around to $157 a month. Multiply x 2 for your spouse and you have a whole additional car payment to put unhealthy food into your bodies 5 days a week. Ok maybe I am not being fair about the unhealthy thing. Maybe you eat at Subway, however the cost is still growing. OK, so over the course of a year if you eat out 5 times a week at $7 a meal (remember that is on the low end), you are spending $1820 a year eating out, and that is not counting your spouses meals if they are doing the same.

So here is the big question I have for you….

How many of you dads out there want that new 42 inch LCD TV at $1500 but figure you can’t afford it? How about that trip to Disneyland that will run you around $1600?

I know I know, in the real world, it’s unrealistic to bring your lunch every day. Co-workers probably want to go out and that is fine but here are some suggestions. Treat yourself one a week. By going once a week you will only be spending around $500 a year on lunches at restaurants. This will still save you around $1300 a year. Also, encourage your coworkers to brown bag it as well and enjoy each others company in the break room or outside if it’s a nice day. I also realize that bringing lunch can cost money as well. Try to stick to leftovers and simple lunches like sandwiches. I’ve also found that Zip Lock Zip and Steam Bagsare a great way to cook up some of that frozen chicken at the office. Remember all the estimates we have made were based on the low amount of $7 a lunch. In reality you spend much more eating out. Take the numbers I present here to heart even knowing it will still cost you some money to bring your lunch.

You may be surprised that by cutting down on your daily trips to the fast food joint you may just feel better as well. You will have more money in your pocket as well so you can enjoy some of the finer things in life.

Today the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit 10,000 again after dropping to around 6500 earlier this year. If your a dad, there is a good chance you work or someone in your house works. With work comes money which is used to pay bills and other expenses. Since money is a part of our daily lives it’s hard not to have come across news about the stock market. Most of us use our money to help take care of our family and maybe invest a little in a savings account, 401k or something similar. Many people do not know how the money you invest grows. In many cases, your money is put into the stock market in which it either grows or as with most of us lately, goes away. Some will actually invest directly in the market by purchasing and selling stocks. For the rest of us, we just hear this number or phase about the Dow Jones Industrial Average being up or down. We all know that higher is better, but what does that number actually mean?

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is an average. Pretty shocking right? Well it’s more than an average, it is actually an indicator of how large corporations are doing in the US. Each share of stock reprents a portion of a company. If you buy a share of stock, you own a portion of that company. At any particular time, that share is worth an amount; maybe it’s $2, maybe it’s $100. Like any average you add up a sum and divide it by the number of components. Well in this case you are adding up the sum of the stock prices of 30 major companies, chosen by some financial gurus. It used to be the case that you would divide by the number of companies. (Originally there were 12 companies, so you would divide by 12 to get your result)

DJIA = Sum of Stock prices / Number of Companies

The DJIA is now calculated a little differently. Instead of dividing by 30, the sum of the stock prices is divided by another number. The Dow Jones Industrial Divisor prevents large fluctuations when stocks split, dividends are paid out, or other changes in stock. For example if a stock is trading at $50 per share and the company does a 2 for 1 split, each share is now worth only $25. In this case the divisor is adjusted since the value of the company didn’t go down, it just divided up into more pieces. The current divisor is 0.132319125, so for every $1 change in stock price, the DJIA is changed by 7.56 points.

DJIA = Sum of Stock prices / Dow Jones Industrial Divisor (0.132319125)

So given the above explanation, you math gurus out there will yell saying it’s not an average because you are dividing by a fraction, which therefore causes the number to increase. To that I say, you are correct, terminology typically isn’t worth a penny.