windfall Archives - The Silicon Underground

The Debt Tsunami is a gimmick, but it probably doesn’t matter

Dave Farquhar — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 19:13:11 +0000

I saw some people passionately advocating both for and against a new method of paying off debt: The “Debt Tsumani,” which focuses on paying off debt in the order of its emotional impact on you. As someone who paid off

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Don’t let debt cripple you

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 11:17:05 +0000

Sometimes people ask me for help with their finances. And I’ve seen the effects that debt can have on people. I believe having no debt is best. Having debt that you’re paying off is second-best. Festering debt, however, is crippling.

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A late adopter’s survival guide to Facebook: Part 2 of 3

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 23:05:37 +0000

This is part 2 in my series of observations about avoiding potential pitfalls in Facebook. What do your updates say about you? It’s hard to know who’s watching you, and how your updates could potentially come back to haunt you.

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Wouldn’t you agree, more income is the answer?

Dave Farquhar — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 00:39:34 +0000

So a friend of a friend came over the other night, pitching a pyramid scheme. He just told me he'd started a business. I figured (and kind of hoped) he wanted to sell me handyman services. Actually he wanted to get me out of debt.

"But I have no debt," I said. He told me I needed to keep an open mind.

I remember the last time someone told me that. It was two Mormon missionaries. To be nice, my wife and I let him keep talking.

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Running a marathon with no plan

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 02:21:17 +0000

Yesterday I commented on a popular financial blog about using a debt snowball to pay off debt. Another commenter said she would never use such "psychological aids" or some other derisive name, if she ever found herself in debt.

I commented back, saying she could call it whatever she wanted, but I'd call it what it is: a plan. And if you're going to pay off debt, you either need a plan, or some phenomenal luck.

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Nickel and dime your way to prosperity

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 15 Feb 2005 23:53:02 +0000

An old friend and I have been talking a lot about debt elimination these past few weeks. With any luck, both of us will be completely debt-free by age 45 at the very most, and probably sooner.

The trick is to dump as much money as possible into debt retirement. As recently as November, the interest on my Honda Civic was costing me $1.40 a day. Think what you could do with that $540 a year you're paying in needless interest.

The challenge is finding the money to use to retire debt.

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A nice Labor Day.

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 04 Sep 2001 14:03:51 +0000

Yesterday was nice. I got up late, then bummed around all day. I did a couple of loads of laundry, and I put a different hard drive in my Duron-750. Then I ignored my e-mail, ignored the site for the most part, and installed Wintendo (er, Windows Me) and Baseball Mogul. Around 6 I went out and bought a CD changer. My old 25-disc Pioneer died around Christmas time and I never got around to replacing it until now.

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