JIM'S MONEY MI-5

As some of you may know I am a huge Dave Ramsey fan.
www.daveramsey.com Dave stresses debt repayment and saving. These questions were inspired by him.

1. What are your thoughts on the use of credit cards?

Have them? Yes. Use them? Yes. Owe on them? Yes. Hate them. Oh, yes!

2. When it is time to get a new car will you buy new, used or lease and why?

If I had it my way, and could afford, I would buy a new car. With one exception, all of my recent cars have been used cars with 100,000+ miles on them. I am nervous about driving them, and always afraid that they are going to break down. I want a new car (or at least fairly new) so that I can be reasonably sure that it will get me where I'm going. While I understand the savings involved in buying used, I'm really tired of the used, used, used vehicles.

3. Tell us something major in your life you saved up for and if you had to do it again would you save up for it or do it differently?

I don't know that I ever bought a big ticket item that even needed saving for. I have bought Christmas presents on layaway, and that's nice, but layaway is a thing of the past for the most part. When I bought my flute/piccolo set, I saved for about half of it, and charged the balance. We usually buy big-ticket items with our income-tax refunds.

4. If you had to watch your pennies a lot tell us one guilty pleasure you would not curb spending on?

High-speed internet.

5. What do you think your retirement will look like financially and will you be ready?

Who knows? Because of answer #1, I'm not saving for retirement now. I know. Bad. I had a fairly good retirement plan when I worked for Jim, but I used $10K for the downpayment on the house, and I used the rest to pay off credit card debt when Dwane left MBNA. (We took a 50% cut in salary, and needed to get rid of the payments.) I'm praying that the rapture will happen before retirement.