Since I was named the executor of her estate, it is my responsibility to carry out the wishes of her will.  It isn’t the best situation to be in because of the grief that I am feeling, but mother thought I would be up to it, so I will do it to the best of my ability.

Her will stated that everything that she owned was to be sold and the money divided between us four kids.  For the most part I knew that it was going to be relatively easy, but I wasn’t too sure about my mother’s jewelry collection.

She had quite an extensive collection, and I wasn’t sure about how to sell the gold jewelry for a reasonable price.  Truth be told, I had no idea what the value was of any of her jewelry.

I am going down to a store in town tomorrow to get the collection of jewelry appraised so I have an idea of what it is worth and then I’ll have to find a buyer.  I didn’t realize that being an executor was going to be so much work.

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1. Reduce your monthly debt payment. When you settle your credit card debt, you negotiate a monthly payment that you can actually afford to make. This means that you will be able to save money each month compared to what you were spending before on your debt.
2. Reduce your total debt payment. You will also reduce the total amount of money that you owe on the debt. This clearly saves you money.

These two methods of saving you money are enhanced by the other financial benefits of settling your debt. For example, you may get a lower interest rate. This further reduces the total amount of debt that you pay which saves you money in the long run.

Additionally, you should know that taking control of your debt is the first step towards taking control of your finances. This step allows you to get on track with saving and budgeting. This could be part of a bigger picture in which you learn to save money in a lot of new ways.

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Do Spend Money on Your Cat For:

• Medical expenses. You don’t want to get cheap when it comes to good medical care for your cat.
• Cat toys. If you pay for great cat toys up front then they’ll last a long time and you’ll save money over the course of your cat’s lifetime.
• Cat food. The cheap stuff is usually bad for your cat so invest some money here.

Don’t Spend Too Much Money on Your Cat When Buying:

• Cat furniture. You can get really great premium cat furniture including cat trees and kitty condos for a good price if you’re willing to shop around and look for the best deals.
• Pet insurance. Don’t go overboard spending money to insure your cat.
• Cat care. You can find really great pet sitters who will care for your cat and you don’t have to pay a lot. The best way to keep this cheap is to swap pet care with a cat-owning friend as needed.

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When you seek out people to loan money for your life insurance, you will undoubtedly end up with a bunch of different offers. Depending upon your net worth and what you are looking for in a loan, a different number of premium financing life insurance lenders will come to your aid. So how do you tell them apart? The first and most important thing to do when trying to tell these offers apart from one another is to look at their flexibility in terms of what you can do with the loan. Can it be extended? How long is the term on the loan? What are they looking for in terms of premium payment? The companies that offer more flexibility for you are the ones that you need to have your eye on.

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Both teachers and students need to find ways to save money on their classroom supplies. That’s because both groups need supplies for the classroom and neither group is likely to be earning very much money in order to afford those supplies.

Here are some tips for saving money on teacher supplies or student supplies:

• Re-use / recycle whatever you can. Many of the things that you need for school will be needed from year to year so try to make everything last as long as possible.
• Buy used. Other people may think that they don’t need to re-use their own items themselves so you can get those items from them for a relatively low cost. Used textbooks are a great example of this.
• Buy at a discount. There are many different discount supplies available which you can purchase if you do comparison shopping and take your time in finding the bargains.
• Make what you can. There are a lot of school supplies that you can make yourself from things that you already have around the home. Book covers are a commonly-seen example of this.

Be smart about buying things for school so that you don’t spend more money than you need to. There will be some things that cost a lot of money but many things can be bought cheaply or found around the home.

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The article reports that part of the problem is that Congress is trying to alter the bailout legislation as submitted by the Bush administration.  Democratic leaders in Congress want the bailout plan to put limits on what these banks can pay their CEOs.  Makes sense to me — our tax dollars shouldn’t go toward making disgustingly rich men even more disgustingly rich.

What I think is interesting is that the article mentions how the futures market has had an impact on oil prices, which spiked even while everything else dropped.  I wonder what this means for people who focus on day trading futures?  Is futures trading a safer bet right now?  Or are those involved in futures signals taking the same hits as everyone else?

It’s interesting how things that you wouldn’t think would be so important make lasting impacts on Wall Street!

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