The mortgage company makes even more money when they sign you up for those twice monthly payment schedules. My MC sent me a letter about that and the enrollment fee was also $300. But the two payments added up to more than my present monthly payment. Their explanation was that a partial payment resulted in 14 days additional interest being added to the total monthly payment. But that plan isn't designed for someone who can afford to make their monthly payments. It's designed for folks who are on fixed income, have all of their bills coming out of their accounts on the first of the month and don't have enough to cover the one big one (the mortgage) all at once. For some people it can be a Godsend. However, you do (they do) wind up paying more over the long haul. The mortgage company doesn't want you to pay off your loan early, because they make money on the interest that you pay. Likewise they cannot tell you not to send additional principle with your monthly payment. This information is in your original loan documents, but if you don't understand them yourself, get a lawyer to explain it to you. Your bank actually may have someone who will look at it and explain it to you free of charge. And yes I do all of my banking and bill paying on line. All the banks' on line bill paying systems are similar, so it's actually not difficult to change banks if you get better service from one than another. The best thing about paying bills on line is that they post on the date that you specify when you send the payment. If you mail a check, you never know precisely when it arrived, all you will have is the cancellation date stamped on the back when the mortgage company posted it. When you mail a check, the mortgage company can claim they didn't get it by the due date and charge a late payment penalty. Banks and mortgage companies routinely post debits in the morning and credits in the afternoon. So if your account has $100 on Monday, then you make a deposit of $50 Monday afyternoon, you won't have a balance of $150 until Tuesday afternoon. But if you leave the bank and go pay your light bill for $101 on Monday afternoon, your check will bounce on Tuesday morning. Then you owe the bank the $25 overdraft fee on top of everything else. So what I can't figure out is if banks are supposed to be so good at managing money, making money and gouging money out of Jane Q. Public, why are Janes tax dollars being used to bail out the @#(*&@# BANKS?????????? I think if a business is such a poor manager of their assets that they go broke, why would we want to help them stay in business? It's the taxpayers money that they have squandered to get where they are right now, why does the government want to give them some more? OK, I'm hot about this bailout program and while the President is a compelling speaker, I'm not convinced that this is going to help the country at all. And using tax dollars to shore up private business is wrong. Maybe I'll start a business that will provide a service to every American politician: An Iron-Clad Guarantee to Go to Heaven. They only cost the individual politician 1k and then he/she can do anything they want to for the rest of their lives becuase they know they will spend eternity sitting on a cloud. This is an essential business to America because right now there are only 7 politicians in heaven, and none of them are Americans. We want our politicians to be represented in heaven, so I figure they all need one of these guarantees. So if Congress grants me 1.2 billion dollars, I will issue enough guarantees to cover all our major politicians and many of the minor ones. I might even be able to cover some of the ones who are in prison right now. Course I'm going to need a bonus (like the big bank bosses got) and a nice hotel to live in (like Dallas mayor wants to build) and a corporate jet (at least as good as the one Lee Iaococa has) in order to complete my mission. Yeah, I figure 1.2 billion should cover it. But first I'm going to register myself as a minister of a church (that would be the church of IDM) so I don't have to pay any taxes anymore.

The credit card companies are smart business people. A local guy who wrote a book, "Financial Freedom Witout Sacrifice", says that we should teach a great deal more about common sense money management in schools ... but we don't. Have you ever heard the slogan on TV, " ... You deserve it!"? TV teaches us that our wirth is bound up in the stuff that we have. And they are totally nconcerned, now with the stuff that we bought last week - that's ancient history! The thing to do is *buy* - *now*! Remember - that was the first thing that Mr. Byush said, after 9 - 11. In fact, some say that there are some common characteristics between the management of TV programming relative to the commercials and hypnotism. The progams sure like to leave the suggestion in your mind that you need the product that they're shilling. How would you like to earn nearly 40% on your money? Guaranteed! If you have one of most store-issued "credit" cards ... the rate of interest that they charge is about 25 - 28%, on an annual basis. Most of the stuff that most of us buy on the card is not deductible. So we must pay for stuff bought in those stores with after-tax money. Divide 28% by 3, you get 9, then add the 9 to 28%, gives 37%. If you're in 25% marginal tax rate, 1/4 of your earnings goes to tax, so you divide 37% by 4, get about 9% going to tax, leaving 28% after-tax residue in hand to pay off he debt. If you always paid your credit card balance off in full each month before the due date, no interest fee. If you charge so much stuff on it that you can't pay it off before the due date, you must start paying those high intrerest rates. Hey, lookie ... you just gave yourself a guaranteed reduction in income, next year (unless you get a substantial raise)! Would you give even a second's thought to asking your boss to reduce the amount that the company pays you easch payday? But that's precisely the kind of boot in the tail that you just arranged for yourself. Trouble is - you probably didn't even notice it!! If you don't boss yur money (and learn how) ... it'll boss you!! Have yourself a great week. ole joyful

chisue - It may have become easier for Canadians but a few years ago it was a nightmare. That said (and I worked in a bank at one time) my boss in an M & A company used to just write U.S. $ on his Cdn. cheque and mail it off and it always cleared, but then I know that the Bank cleared it "by hand" - he was extremely well to do, which can make quite a difference as opposed to being a fee-paying middle class person. I remember before GardenWeb was taken over and I was going to join and pay the $15 US I think it was and the hoops I was going to have to go through - so I only looked at the "free" forums - wasn't worth buying a U.S. $ money order and paying the fee for that. Many Cdns. now have U.S. $ bank accounts so that might be helpful as well - we don't. And it used to be to get a U.S. $ credit card you had to have an address in the U.S. to have the statement delivered to. We are so similar yet when it comes to anything involving buying something ("shopping") we become international! Just ask any Cdn. ordering or trying to order something on-line from the U.S. - even if it is allowed, versus an American ordering from Canada. Big difference. By the way, I don't like PayPal - maybe because I almost signed up one day then changed my mind and even though it has been 5 years I keep getting e-mails regarding hacking into my account - spam of course - but rather alarming since I didn't even complete half of the application and of course did not submit it. It used to be that there was a bank in Wilmington, Delaware that could clear Cdn. cheques. When we were in NY last month I did see lots of TD Banks - we bank at TD in Toronto - but to do anything with my debit card I would have had to use the ATM machine - which thankfully had a PLUS sign - the way my day had been going I was expecting it not to. (I had just been trampled by a gaggle of teens who saw Jennifer Aniston and wanted to get to her.)

9 active cards may be a temptation, but the fact is that the credit companies look at how much of your available credit you've used up. So, say you have 10 cards that have a limit of $1000 each--total $10,000. You owe $800/card--total $8000. You pay off one card, so your total owed is now $7200. That's 72% of your credit limit. Now, if you cancel the card you just paid off, your total credit limit is $9000, and the $7200 is 80% of that. The percentage of unused credit has gone down. This makes you look like a worse credit risk than if you had left that card account open--even though you're improving your handling of money by paying off cards. Don't cancel any cards unless you're really a serious shopping addict and will spend the day buying on QVC using account numbers off your old statements out of the file cabinet. Instead, freeze them in a block of ice, put them under the mattress, even cut them up--just keep the accounts open. At least until you've gotten several cards paid off. I actually like Karla's system a lot. As an aside, i'm always surprised at how many cards my credit report shows i have. There are a couple of store cards that I haven't seen in years, but they're still on there. To say nothing of the fact that AMEX for some reason has me down as having had something like 5 cards, when I've only ever had 1 at a time. Go figure. They must have counted each time the acct number changed or something. So 9 cards isn't really too bizarre. To make it even more confusing, I've gotten 'adverse action' notices a couple of times (that's where they send a form letter saying that something in my credit made me get less than the absolute best deal). In the 'reasons' section, it said both that I had too many credit accounts and too few. Huh? WTF? Be sure before you start house-shopping to pull at least one copy of your credit report (DH's too), and pay the extra money for your credit score. Make sure you've gotten any errors handled.