One of the great benefits to shopping online is the various coupon, rebate and dollar-back programs available. If you click through a link, or use a coupon code, your savings can be substantial. In addition, you get all the myriad benefits of shopping online – no children to drag through stores, no gas costs to get there and back, and no hassle of dealing with crowds.

So, once you’re convinced to shop online, where can you find the savings? There are several ways to save money online. Let’s start with coupons.

Coupons

This is a fairly standard. Go to one of the coupon sites (many will be provided below) and look for the store you want to shop with, or search by category, depending on your needs. Be sure to click “apply” when you enter the coupon during checkout.

Although in the early days of online shopping, coupon codes were plentiful and generous (frequently you could find $10 off a $10 purchase with free shipping), good coupons these days are hard to find. Some stores (like Lands’ End) rarely offer coupons while others (L.L. Bean) often offer free shipping on any size order. When you order, or even if you don’t order, be sure to sign up with the website either by registering or signing up for coupons. These direct-email coupons are often some of the best you’ll ever find.

Here are some excellent coupon sites to get you started:

MyBargainBuddy.com — Here, a mom compiles good deals and coupon codes for you. Some of the best deals need no coupon at all, but if there’s a good deal and a coupon to go with it, all the better.

FatWallet.com — Lots of codes here along with active message boards where other deals can be found.

MyCoupons.com — The most beneficial part of this site are the message boards, which are alive with the sound of people saving money. Check out the posts that have stickies on them at the start of each forum – there are often some good links to printable coupons here for favorites like Toys R Us and Chuck e Cheese.

One note: If you are looking for a code for a certain store, don’t assume that if it’s not available at one website, it doesn’t exist. There are different codes at different sites. Visit several coupon sites before giving up hope that a code does in fact exist for that store.

Rebates

Here’s how the big daddy of online rebate programs works. Go to Ebates.com and sign up for an account. There’s a sign up bonus of $5, so you already have a free $5 coming to you. Then, when you go shopping, check Ebates before heading directly to an online store. Even if you have a coupon from another site, click through the store link on the Ebates page for more savings.

Let’s say you choose a new jacket from Kohls and you have a $10 off a $75 purchase. Great. Keeping the coupon code in hand, you head to Ebates and find Kohls among the list of stores. This store offers 2% back, so you click through the Kohls link on the Ebates page, and make your purchase. Not only do you benefit from the coupon code you applied, but also got an extra 2% back on your purchase. Not a bad deal. Ebates will send money to your Paypal account or send you a check.

Points

Not everyone knows about the various point programs available, but since you can earn points without doing any shopping, the points programs are worth knowing.

Visit MyPoints.com and sign up for an account. My Points will send emails (sometimes daily, sometimes several in one day). You click a link in the mail and automatically get 5 points. Sign up for an offer or make a purchase through that link and earn even more points, from hundreds to thousands of points per offer.

My Points is most useful, however, when you’re shopping online. It’s like Ebates in that you click through a link on the My Points site, and you get points for your purchase. Most stores offer a certain number of points (2 to 4 on average) per dollar spent. Once you have at least 1,000 points, you can redeem the points for gift certificates for restaurants, gas, travel and clothing.

You can’t use Ebates and My Points in the same purchase, so if a store is linked through both Ebates and My Points, you have to decide which is the better deal for you. Whenever possible, try to combine a coupon code with the My Points or Ebates deal.

If you’ve got Microsoft Excel (or just about any other popular spreadsheet program) running on your computer, you can use its FV function to forecast the future value of your Roth IRA or Roth 401(k).

The FV function calculates the future value of an investment given its interest rate, the number of payments, the payment, the present value of the investment, and, optionally, the type-of-annuity switch.  (More about the type-of-annuity switch a little later.)

The function uses the following syntax:

=FV(rate,nper,pmt,pv,type)

This little pretty complicated, I grant you. But suppose you want to calculate the future value of an individual retirement account that’s already got $20,000 in it and to which you are contributing $400-a-month. Further suppose that you want to know the account balance—its future value—in 25 years and that you expect to earn 10% annual interest.

To calculate the future value of the individual retirement account in this case using the FV function, you enter the following into a worksheet cell:

=FV(10%/12,25*12,-400,-20000,0)

The function returns the value 771872.26—roughly $772,000 dollars.

A handful of things to note: To convert the 10% annual interest to a monthly interest rate, the formula divides the annual interest rate by 12. Similarly, to convert the 25-year term to a term in months, the formula multiplies 25 by 12.

Also, notice that the monthly payment and initial present values show as negative amounts because they represent cash outflows. And the function returns the future value amount as a positive value because it reflects a cash inflow you ultimately receive.

That 0 at the end of the function is the type-of-annuity switch. If you set the type-of-annuity switch to 1, Excel assumes payments occur at the beginning of the period (month in this case), following the annuity due convention. If you set the annuity switch to 0 or you omit the argument, Excel assumes payments occur at the end of the period following the ordinary annuity convention.

In many cases, having a credit card is down right necessary. Any more buying gas involves using a credit card at the pump which saves time and effort. And because a credit card always delivers a report to you at the end of the month in statement, it’s an easy way to keep track of how you are spending your money.

The problem comes when you spend more on the credit card than you can repay. Unfortunately, credit card companies are not there to keep you from living beyond your means. If you make your payments on time and are a responsible credit card owner, they will keep increasing your credit limit so you can charge all you want. But when the debt level on those credit cards becomes a debt you carry from month to month, that is when credit card debt can get out of control.

You don’t need to be told that good financial management is the key to keeping your credit card debt problem at bay. But sometimes the bills stack up and circumstances beyond your control call on you to use that extra credit and you end up with a credit card bill that is becoming uncontrollable. That is when you have to turn to alternate methods to build a route out of debt and back to a firm financial footing.

One of the real culprits of getting out of debt to the credit cards you own are the high interest rates that are often charged to service that debt. If you have to pay 15%, 20% or more for a large credit card debt, the amount you pay in that actually brings down the principle is so small that the time when you can expect to be debt free is far into the future.

So the first step is to move that debt to a credit vehicle that is more manageable. There are a number of ways to do this using resources you may already have at your disposal. Many turn to a second mortgage on their home. By working with your mortgage company, they can advance you another loan based on the amount of equity you have in your house and that interest rate can be capped at a reasonable level so you can pay down that debt and not keep fighting that ever rising interest rate problem.

You can also look at your life insurance to see if you can draw a loan against that accumulated value. If you have been paying on it for many years, a life insurance policy that carries value such as a whole life policy may have enough equity that you can use that money to leverage your debt and retire the credit card debt entirely. You may still have to face a regular payment to pay off the life insurance loan but it is manageable and something you can budget against which puts the control back in your hands.

A third option is to use a professional debt consolidation company. This is yet another credit resource who will be making money from the loan via interest. But this kind of agency is not a credit card company so they will just loan you enough to retire your debt and then work with you to work down that debt while living within your means otherwise.

Once you select the right route out of debt you are going to use, it’s important you do not let that credit card debt climb up again. Learning good budget skills and working to keep your lifestyle within your means is crucial to not only getting out of debt but staying that way. But with good money management, a responsible debt consolation plan working for you and a mature approach to your finances, you can see daylight on getting out of debt once and for all.

There are some general guidelines you can use to pick which balance transfers to even consider in the first lace for moving your debt. It is worth your while to be a wise consumer and chose a credit agency carefully because it is a competitive market and, as with anything else, there are good guys and bad guys out there. Some guidelines to take into consideration are…

§ If you can do business with a company that you already have accounts with, that’s better. Not only do you have a history of how they treat their customers, it will not affect your credit score to just use an account you already have established.
§ When moving your debt to an offer for a lower interest rate, make it is not an offer with an expiration date. Some very low interest rate offers are only for a few months which really don’t do you that much good. Better take 3-4% for the life of the loan than zero percent for three months.
§ Keep your eyes open for transfer fees. These hidden charges can take all of the value out of a seemingly good offer. If they say there are no transfer charges, make sure that’s the truth. Read all of the fine print of any offer whether it’s from a new credit source or someone you have worked with for a while.
§ Only respond to offers you get in writing. Stay away from phone solicitors or email offers. There are more scams than respectable offers done this way.

Also keep an eye on the credit ceilings of the offers you are getting. If the offer is to use an existing credit account, you should know how much credit they can offer you and how close you are to using that credit up. But it is of no value to you to go through the trouble of arranging a balance transfer to try to capture a lower interest rate only to find that they could only accommodate a small amount of the needed funds.

The other kind of balance transfer other than just moving debt from one credit card company to another is to move funds to a secured loan. A second mortgage is a secured loan because you are putting up your home equity as collateral. These types of loans are easier to get because you have something to put forward for it but you are taking a risk because of the security you are putting up.

Use the same sense of good common sense and examining the creditors when you choose a company to take out a secured loan. Two things you can over look that can come back to haunt you are early cancellation fees and variable interest rates. If you are putting up your home, you deserve to lock in the interest rate. And when you look at the final paperwork, look for those early pay off fees. If everything doesn’t look just right, don’t be afraid to get up and walk out. There are plenty of credit companies out there to deal with and you can find one who will do business fairly and honestly with you. You just have to have the patience to keep looking.

Some others feel that credit card debt counseling companies are just trying to make quick money by telling you the obvious i.e. by telling you something that is being advertised everywhere. However, the most important reason arises from the fact that not all credit card debt counseling companies are genuine and of those that are genuine, not all credit card debt counseling companies provide good advice.

So, choosing a proper credit card debt counseling company becomes a critical factor in determining the success of credit card debt counseling. Always go for a reputable credit card debt counseling company, even if their fee is a bit higher.

Remember that a proper credit card debt counseling can help you in not just eliminating your credit card debt, but eliminating your credit card debt in a way that is so cost effective as to more than offset the fee credit card debt counseling company is charging you. Moreover, proper credit card debt counseling can save you a lot of time and energy that you would have otherwise spend in studying all about credit card debt, gathering information about various credit card debt elimination measures and comparing these measures.

Further, these credit card debt counseling companies can present more than one solution to you from which you can choose whatever appeals the most to you. These credit card debt counseling agencies can also get your credit card debt settled much quicker than if you were trying to do it all by yourself (and without any credit card debt counseling).

Also, credit card debt counseling could bring to light things which you would not have been able to see e.g. risks with the approach you were thinking to adopt or a futuristic view of things. Moreover, a person who earns his/her bread by practicing credit card debt counseling as a profession, would know the tricks of the trade which no one else would even have an inkling to e.g. pitfalls of a particular debt consolidation offer, or advantages of another offer etc etc.

There is no doubt with regards to the benefits that credit card debt counseling can bring to you. However, you need to be careful and avoid the fraudsters and pick up someone who has a good reputation.

These promotions that you get for credit cards seem to be playing on just about every tactic they can find to get you to take out yet one more credit card. You would think that the fact that credit card debt is a virtual epidemic in this country would let the credit card companies know that its time to get on the side of the consumer to learn responsible use of credit. Instead they do all they can to get you to have more, not less, credit cards and use them as much as you can.

We need to be smart consumers because as much as credit card companies try to make credit cards seem fun and happy and like big toys in your wallet, they are not toys. We should never forget that a credit card is nothing more than a way for the credit company to extend to you dozens of small unsecured loans that they will create credit payments on the fly to enforce through your credit card bill that will include high interest rates and additional fees as they see fit.

This is not to say that having a credit card is not a good thing. Good credit is one of the real assets any responsible adult will use to help make life easier and to make the necessary purchases in life. And more and more credit is becoming the currency of choice replacing cash and checks as the preferred method for paying for gas, at restaurants and any more even at retail outlets and grocery stores.

While the spread of credit as actual currency is a fact of life for us, it is also a major move by the credit card companies to take over the economy and to make you even more dependent on them. So the best defense is to take charge of your credit card life and make sure that you are the boss of your credit cards, not the other way around.

The stupid credit card tricks can be really fun to look at and sometimes enticing. They will appeal to your sense of school pride by giving you a credit card in your college school colors. You can get credit cards that give donations to save the environment, help the poor or create a college fund for your kids. There are all kinds of premiums, cash back concepts, frequent flier miles and gifts and toys that credit card companies will fork over just to lure you into getting more credit cards and using them a lot.

To put it bluntly, you and I need to learn not to be suckers for these deals. We can laugh at the stupid tricks they try to use. But if a credit card company is going to try to trick you into getting a card or using one, they are not doing business honestly with you. You want a credit card company that deals straight with you. They should offer fair rates that don’t change at the drop of a hat. They should sustain a reasonable credit limit and not always be jacking it up to try to get you to buy more stuff on the card. And they should have good customer service and be ready to renegotiate your relationship with them so you are getting good value from their service, not just paying for a bunch of toys and frills that do you no good whatsoever.

By keeping in mind what a credit card company actually does and that credit cards are mature adult tools, not games or toys, we can keep in perspective how to use our credit cards and how to keep from abusing credit which will lead to the nightmare of credit card debt.

The other day I heard a guy tell his story about how he went on his mission to eliminate his credit card debt. He started with reading the advice on various websites and trying various search engines and he was astonished at the number of results he got.

One night he was so tired that he typed in ‘card com credit debt en language site’. After he typed ‘card com credit debt en language site’, he realized that he had made a slight typing mistake in typing ‘card com credit debt en language site’.

His actual intention behind typing ‘card com credit debt en language site’ was to search for only English sites (.com sites only) that offered credit card debt related advice. His search amused him even more when he found that ‘card com credit debt en language site’ did actually get him some results. Though the search engine did recommend changing the ‘en’ to ‘in’, there were still some results for ‘card com credit debt en language site’.

He just went on to search for ‘card com credit debt en language site’ as just one term. For ‘card com credit debt en language site’ as a single term, he got lesser results than he had got for ‘card com credit debt en language site’ typed in without quotes. He wondered, if a lot of people were making similar searches as he was doing on ‘card com credit debt en language site’ i.e. using random terms with a bit of mistyping.

He went on to typing ‘card com credit debt en language site’ on some other search engines, just to check that. Soon, it kind of became a research (and fun) of different kind i.e. searching for ‘card com credit debt en language site’ and checking if ‘card com credit debt en language site’ actually meant something.

He thought that it was a bit unusual to have some other people too that were searching for or using the same term ‘card com credit debt en language site’ (especially such a long term as ‘card com credit debt en language site’). When ‘card com credit debt en language site’ was used without quotes, the search for ‘card com credit debt en language site’ did yield some useful yields.

So he went on to examine these results that were returned for ‘card com credit debt en language site’. However, that was just the fun part of it and he soon went off to sleep.

Yes, he did have a laugh with his friends the next day.

1. Recognize the problem
2. Define the problem
3. Propose solutions
4. Identify risks and costs
5. Select the best solution
6. Implement the solution.

This process always works because there is no room for emotions, excuses or procrastination. You step from the first phase to the last in prompt fashion and the problem becomes solved.

Many times when it comes to credit card debt, people don’t like to recognize the problem. In 12 step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous, the first step is always to just recognize that you have a problem. And this is very often the biggest obstacle for someone who is seeing their credit card debt begin to take over their lives.

The credit card companies are no help. They like nothing more than to do all they can to make you incur more and more debt. It isn’t necessarily that they are evil but this is how they make a living. The money from the interest you pay on your credit card debt goes to pay for the houses, meals, college educations and fancy cars of many credit card company executives. That alone should make you want to pull the plug on this grand scam called credit card debt.

Let’s call a spade a spade. Credit card debt is a loan that you don’t have to fill out any more paperwork than just to get the card. Once you have it, the credit card companies are thrilled to jack up your credit limit to where you can buy more and more and more all the while your interest rate creeps up too. Before long the debt level is huge and you are sending them hundreds of dollars and a big part of that payment is the interest.

Interest is money that doesn’t buy anything. It is money the credit card company gets for doing nothing more than housing your debt. If we could get perspective on credit card debt, we would see that there is no rational explanation why one credit card can charge 5% interest and another one charge 25% interest. The credit card companies owe us no explanation of what that money goes for.

It’s not like when you buy a loaf of bread that may cost one dollar for one kind of bread but three dollars for another kind of bread. In those cases you can easily see that the higher priced bread is of higher quality, tastes better or is more nutritious than the cheap bread. You literally get more for your money. When a credit card company charges you a higher rate of interest, there is no increased value for what they give you. They don’t give you anything. If a credit card company raises your interest rate from 10% to 20%, you don’t get twice as much good service or any kind of product for that extra money that are taking out of your product.

Then how can they get away with it? They do it because they can get away with it and there’s no indication that any governmental body is going to make them stop. They get away with it because we don’t get outraged and drop them when they cheat us like that. And they get away with it because credit card debt is a jail cell and we can’t get out.

The purpose of this discussion is to get us to step one of the problem solving process. It is to make us aware that we are being had and to make you good and outraged. If you are outraged that you have a problem, then you can move on to step two and there and four and look for a solution and then do whatever it takes to make that solution happen. And when you do that, you are well on your way to springing open the door of the jail cell of credit card debt and walking away a free man or woman, hopefully never to go into that jail again.

1. Control your urge to spend: The first thing to do for credit card debt elimination is to control your expenditures. Here we are talking about the payments you make using your credit card. Remember that the main reason being your getting into credit card debt is uncontrolled expenditures using your credit card. So if you are really serious about credit card debt elimination, this is one thing that will help in credit card debt elimination by preventing accumulation of further debt. Here is what you can do to control your expenditures:
a. You need to stay away from attractive offers that are put-up by various shops and stores. Don’t buy anything that you don’t really-really need. After all you are looking for credit card debt elimination not supplementation.
b. Leave your credit card at home. If you really-really need something, then you can fetch your credit card from your house. This will prevent you from yielding to the too-attractive-to-resist sale offers (that are actually there all the year round). This credit card debt elimination technique, again, works on the principal of ‘prevention is better than cure’. This will prevent unplanned expenses from happening.
c. Prepare a monthly budget and stick to it. This is really a very important credit card debt elimination measure. This budget will form the basis of your credit card debt elimination plan. So if you deviate from your budget, your credit card debt elimination plan will go for a toss.

2. Debt consolidation: Debt consolidation or moving from high APR credit cards to a low APR one is generally the first step (the first reactive step) for credit card debt elimination. Here are a few things that you need to do:
a. Do not go for the first balance offer you come across. Analyse various offers and choose the one that best suits you. This will be an important thing on you credit card debt elimination plan. Initial APR, Initial APR period and standard Apr, all need to be considered.
b. Read the fine print on the balance transfer offer and check the terms and conditions on these. These might affect your overall credit card debt elimination plan.
c. Compare other benefits e.g. rebates, reward points, etc, before you actually decide to go for one of the offers.

Credit card debt elimination is about proper planning and discipline. So make your credit card debt elimination plan and stick to it.

The only problem with this system is sometimes its easy to look at the family budget as “mom’s problem” or the problem of whoever it is that takes care of paying the bills. So when a serious problem comes up like an explosion of credit card bills, mom can get pretty overwhelmed especially if there is no way to curb credit card spending so there can always be enough on hand to pay those bills off.

This is where taking on the challenge of beating high credit card debt has to be everybody’s job. For starters, everyone needs to know the limits on spending. It does no good if the person who does the budget knows exactly how much everyone can spend on food, entertainment and new things but nobody else follows those rules. If the other spouse and the kids are out on the town on a spending spree, that is going to overwhelm the budget.

So if that is one of the sources of credit card abuse in your family, its time for the family to get together and have a discussion. Each member of the family must understand that there is such a thing as fiscal responsibility and if credit card abuse is done by any one member of the family, the privilege of that credit card is going to be taken away.

But the family unit can really become a powerful force for change when it comes to taking on a mountain sized credit card debt. It will take some skill to present the challenge to the family that defeating this foe must be a family job and everybody has to get into the act. But if you do get everybody in on the challenge and take it on as a big adventure, not only will it bring about a lot of family unity, it can be a lot of fun too.

The attack plan must be seen as just that, an aggressive attack on the credit card problem that can threaten the family’s financial safety. That is cutting costs. Have everyone in the family come up with one way to save money each week. It might be as simple as turning off their lights before leaving for school or as ambitious as giving up cable TV or cutting in half the amount of times they have to go to the movies. If each person can contribute one big cost savings a week, that sense of accomplishment and self esteem for pitching in to win this war with credit card debt will pay off.

In the same way, if each member can think of ways to increase income, that can really help the budget out. It might mean the kids picking up more chores so dad and mom can work second jobs for a little while. It might even mean that the kids will do some chores or take part time jobs and add a little to the budget from what they make. But whatever the contribution, if everybody gets into the act, the family can win against credit card debt. And that is a worthwhile family project.