I want to both cringe and laugh uncontrollably when I hear someone tell me how “high” their credit score is. I put the word high in quotes because it is a completely subjective term. Most people start getting pretty proud around the 700 mark, and once they breach 800 it seems they want to shout their score from the roof tops. Sorry to burst your bubble peeps, but your credit score doesn’t make you cool.

If you don’t know how your credit score is calculated you can catch up by skimming this post I wrote about it.

I honestly have no idea what my credit score is. I’ve never checked it. I use to have student loans and a car payment, and I currently have recurring credit card accounts. I have a pretty good track record of making my payments on time so I’m gonna take a shot in the dark and assume I have a pretty okay score.

Do you know what the primary purpose is of your credit score? It tells lenders how likely you are to make your payments on time and pay back all that you borrowed. The higher your score, the better rates you get. Pretty straightforward stuff.

But what if you don’t like borrowing money? What if you are going to pay cash for your next car? What if you don’t care what the interest rate is on your Credit Card because you pay the bill in full each month? Hmmmm, suddenly your credit score becomes exponentially less important.

Instead of thinking you are super cool for having a high credit score, maybe you should be asking yourself why you even care? Are you really that excited about being deemed “qualified” to take on more debt?

Don’t get me wrong. I know the difference between a 6% interest rate and a 4% interest rate on a mortgage will save you tens of thousands of dollars over the life of the loan. I’m not at all trying to say people shouldn’t care about paying their bills on time, of course everyone should do their best to be fiscally responsible. But instead of manipulating my spending habits in hopes of them having a positive impact on my credit score (by doing things like taking on a car loan), I’d much rather pay cash and not even have to worry about it.

Long story short: I will NEVER, EVER, EVER put myself in further debt just for the sake of improving my score. And personally, I don’t think you should either.

We’ve allowed the credit score to become far too important in the way we evaluate one’s character (people can actually get denied employment because of a poor score). So today I take a stand and say “Bite me FICO score!” I’m not changing a darn thing.

Are you with me!?  Do you know people who appear to be pretty proud of themselves for having “great” credit? Do those people make you want to cry inside? Do you care about your credit score?

I have two investment vehicles established for retirement, My Roth IRA and my 401K. I don’t play favorites with these two accounts and if it was within my control, I would contribute to them equally (unfortunately the federal government puts a cap on Roth contributions). If you follow my net worth updates at all, you’ll notice both accounts perform pretty similarly. When my Roth goes up, so does my 401K. When my Roth goes down, my 401K follows suit (although to a lesser degree since the employer match helps mitigate my losses).

Don’t tell Girl Ninja, but I am madly, deeply, and passionately in love with my retirement accounts. If all goes according to plan, they will literally make me a millionaire. Ah yes, one day I’ll be sipping a non-alcoholic strawberry daiquiri on the beaches of the Washington coast with my beautiful wife (can’t travel too far otherwise we won’t stay millionaires very long).

Am I the only person kind of excited about being super old?

Even though I have equal affection for my two retirement accounts, if the you-know-what hits the fan, I’d definitely treat them differently. That my friends is called a double standard.

Girl Ninja and I have saved up some pretty serious cash over the last year and a half, so barring some major medical catastrophe, we shouldn’t have a need to dip in to our emergency fund. One day, however, we will have bought a home and Girl Ninja will likely be a full-time mom. In a few years, we probably won’t have the cash reserves we have now.

So what happens if an emergency comes along that exceeds what we have set aside (currently $10,000) for rainy days? I’ll tell you what. I’d raid my Roth IRA like a college student raids his parent’s fridge.

I like to think of my Roth as a quasi-savings account. You put money in to it (with after tax dollars) and can take those contributions out at any time without penalty. That perk alone makes it the freakin’ Swiss Army knife of the financial sector. It combines a savings account, retirement account, and emergency fund in to one sexy product. Tell me that doesn’t get you all hot-and-bothered?!!? If I pulled my from my 401K, however, we’d be faced with tax obligations AND a ten percent early withdrawal penalty. Definitely not sexy.

Have you ever thought about treating a Roth IRA like a quasi-savings account? If needed, would you pull from a Roth or 401k first? Anyone else want to make sweet, sweet financial love to their Roth IRA?

p.s. don’t pull from your retirement accounts for things like new cars, kitchen renovations, or buying a house. The point of saving for retirement is saving for retirement, not buying shiny things that give you artificial happiness.

Let’s get right to the point today shall we? I go out of my way to ensure my personal finances are significantly more complicated than they should be. In fact, I’d even go as far as to say that I sleep better at night because of it. No, I haven’t lost all my marbles, I just hate the idea of automating my finances.

I know I’m probably in the minority here, seeing that numerous personal finance blogs preach the wonders of automating your finances. I won’t try to convince you my way is better (even though it is), but allow me to at least explain myself further. First, I’ll list off all of the regular recurring payments I have each month.

1. Rent- $1,175 (all utilities are rolled in to this one payment, including cable/internet)
2. Cell Phone- $60
3. Car/Renters Insurance- $180
4. Credit Card(s) – Varies depending on balance (usually around $1,500)
5. Charitable Contributions – 10% of gross income
6. Storage unit – $65 (storing our baby grand piano)

I may be forgetting one or two other bills, but for the most part I think that about covers it. I could theoretically set up an automatic withdrawal from my checking for each of these bills, allowing the companies access to my checking account. As the bill comes due, the company would pull the money from my checking account.

Now, I don’t know about you, but that totally freaks me out. Getting married and sharing a checking account with Girl Ninja was scary enough, I couldn’t imagine giving a bunch of random strangers access to my account as well.

I’ve read horror stories about people who thought they set up a $200/monthly payment and were shocked to find out $2,000 was withdrawn instead.

Or how about the person that had their car payment scheduled for the 8th of every month. Well it just so happened that on the night their account was to be debited, their bank was beefing up security protocols and restricted all customers accounts for a few hours. As a result, the payment never processed. But because it’s suppose to be automatic, you never think to check and make sure everything went smoothly. Thirty days later you are dealing with an angry Toyota representative hounding you for being one month past due.

No thanks. Automatic payments don’t sound worth it to me. To be perfectly honest, I actually enjoy manually paying my bills. It reminds me how much money comes in and out of our account each month, but more importantly it makes me want to continually shop around and make sure I’m getting the best deal possible. It essentially keeps me intimately involved in our personal finances. And I need not remind you, making love with money is my favorite kind of romance.

Do you automate your finances? Why or why not?

And now, as promised, The most comprehensive guide on “how to become debt free” ever written…

Spend less than you make.

-The end.

Girl Ninja and I have made multiple intentional decisions on how we can best reign in spending and control our costs. We don’t have cable, we rent a one bedroom apartment, and we try to buy as much stuff as we can on sale. We intentionally cut costs to save money.

Last night, however, I started thinking about all the ways I unintentionally save money. Turns out, I’m even more thrifty than I realized. Here are some ways I’ve unknowingly been saving some serious coin…

Alcohol:

I only know a handful of people like myself. People that hate alcohol. This is not a religious thing, but more a I-hate-the-way-it-tastes kind of thing. It amazes me how much some people wish I drank. I swear every time I go out someone is begging me to try their glass of wine, their beer, or their rum and coke, as though, my taste buds will suddenly do a 180 and be in alcohol heaven. I’ve done a lot of taste tasting over the years and the scale in which I use to describe alcoholic beverages ranges from “extremely disgusting to moderately disgusting”. I’m yet to find a drink I legitimately enjoy. Since I’ve never bought alcohol before, I don’t really know how much I’m saving. I’ll make a completely uneducated guess and assume most other 20-somethings probably drop between $30 and $200 a month on alcohol. Is that a good guess? How much do you spend?

Haircuts:

If you haven’t noticed in the various pictures I’ve posted over the years, my head is shaved. After my freshmen year of college I decided it was time to say goodbye to my long flowing locks and get the clippers out. That was seven years ago. I haven’t paid for a single haircut since. Prior to buzzing it all off, I was probably getting my hair cut once every two months. At $20/cut that works out to a total savings of $840 over the years. The only thing I miss about going to get my hair did, was the way the stylist would massage my scalp under hot water. Can I get an amen?!

Coffee:

I must have some extremely jacked up taste buds, cause not only do I hate the taste of alcohol, but the taste of coffee (or anything with coffee in it) makes me want to projectile vomit all over a white cat (I hate cats). Girl Ninja loves her some Starbucks. It’s a good thing I don’t, otherwise we’d probably be there every day. She does her best to minimize her “Tall non-fat vanilla latte” purchases, but probably averages two a week. If I was joining her each trip that would be an additional $7/week out of our pockets, or $364 over the course of a year. Extrapolate that over the last 10 years and we are talking THOUSANDS of dollars saved by not liking the flavor of coffee. Booya for sensitive taste buds. 

Video Games:

I may have to give up my man card for mentioning this one, but I don’t really get the point of video games. I played them in elementary and middle school, but by the time I got to high school I cared more about my outfit, girls, and sports then I did about what type of gun Lara Croft used. While video game consoles are reasonably priced (most around $200), the video games are a budget killer. At $40 to $80 a pop, I don’t know how gamers sustain themselves. Oh that’s right, they never go outside and they all live in their mother’s basements. Kidding….kind of. Thank goodness World Of Warcraft and NCAA Football ain’t my thing.

Okay now that I’ve pissed a bunch of video-gamers off, it’s time I step down and give you an opportunity to share some ways you’ve unintentionally saved some scrilla (that means money for the less cultured). Do you hate sweets? Never shave your armpits? Or do use public transportation? It might take a minute to think something up, but when you do drop a comment below.