When I entered college, I wanted to get a career that I would be able to help others out and help them have a better standard of life.  I could’ve chose many different careers such as being a doctor, a scientist, or a researcher.  As it turned out, none of these career paths really interested me and in the end I decided to become a debt counselor.

I figured that this would be a good choice of careers since everyone has and uses money and debt will be an issue for many people.  I also like the fact that the job put me in a position where I could give people options instead of them just having to go bankrupt.

Right now I’m mainly deal with helping people through providing poor credit debt consolidation loans and teaching them how to implement debt diet plans.  This is just one aspect of my job and in this instance I am more of a solutions provider to them.

I also work in a teaching capacity as a teacher class on how to reduce credit card debt.  This is one of the most rewarding parts of my job is when you see the sparkle in the eye of your students when they understand what you are talking about and realizing at that point that you are changing lives.

All I can say is that I love my job and the fact that I’m able to help many people with my talents and knowledge.

I would have to say that from a financial perspective, most of my adult life has been great.  I have had a good career, bought a nice home, and even socked away some money for my retirement.  In fact, everything was going to plan until I became sick.

At that point things changed.  Our savings quickly dried up and we started to use the credit available to us to keep us afloat.  But as we all know, living on credit eventually can become a problem, and that is exactly what happened to us.

By the time I was better, our debt load was too much to handle.  We just about file for bankruptcy, but someone suggested to us that we should look into debt consolidation loans and see if that would help.

We applied and were approved, and we were able to keep up with the loan payments.  We still have about a year left before we are free and clear, but thankfully, we didn’t have to go bankrupt.  I will feel much better once we are out of the rut we dug for ourselves.

My wife and I have finally decided to market our line of chain mail jewelry online.  We thought that this would be a logical step for us since we have had very good response here in our hometown.

But our problem was going to be to find a payment processor.  The big problem for us is that our credit history isn’t perfect, and places like our bank wouldn’t want us as a customer.  I find that this type of discrimination really sucks as it limits our options to do anything besides work.

I knew there had to be an option for people like us, so I looked online to see what I could find.  It turns out that there are many high risk offshore merchant accounts available for business owners like myself, so that we could accept credit card payments.

The one that we signed up with even offered free shopping cart software - so we are getting that setup right now.

Aunt Martha was the greatest person I have ever known. She was actually my great aunt; the sister of my grandmother. She had never married and had children of her own and so she had devoted her whole life to her nieces and nephews. She was always the favorite of all of them.

When mom had me, she was single and had little money. She was going to give me up for adoption in order to give me a better life, but Aunt Martha talked her out of it, convincing mom to move in with her so that she could help out with me. She became like my second mother and we were always very close.

When she passed away, I was devastated. I did not know what I would do without her. We found out that she had left child trust funds for both me and my brother, stating that she wanted us to buy a house and go to college. It was so like her to do something like that and that is why I miss her so much. She found a way to encourage us to reach our full potential even after she had passed away.

There is nothing more frustrating or embarrassing than going to a store, waiting in line, and then having problems with your credit card.  Irrespective of whether or not there is problems with your account, people just look at you like some sort of criminal and you feel ashamed when your credit card transaction doesn’t go through.

I recently had that experience at a store where I bought a few hundred dollars worth of groceries.  It took awhile to get to the front of the line, and when I went to pay, the terminal said credit card processing error.

All I could think is “Great, now what”.  I had to leave my food and go phone the credit card company.  When I talked to the friendly customer service representative, I was told that it was just a glitch with the system and that everything would be fine the next time I used it.

Though it did work after that, it is hard sometimes to deal with the embarrassment that goes along with having problems with your credit card - but I guess that is life, right?

My wife is an avid quilter and she has wanted to sell her quilts online for a long time.  She is tried selling them on auction sites with little success and figures that she would do better if she had a storefront of her own.

So we have been looking to find a company that offers a shopping cart system and integrated Internet merchant accounts so that we don’t have to deal with too many companies.

We’ve had some difficulty finding a company that offers a one-stop solution at a reasonable rate.  Thankfully, the Internet allows us to shop around (even if it takes time) and find what we are looking for.

We have found one merchant account provider that we are going to contact to confirm that they can supply us with the services we need to get her business off the ground.  It will be nice for her to make some money off her hobby instead of just having piles of quilts laying around our house.

The next time you take a trip to your bank, take a look at the number of pamphlets on their wall that provide you with financial information.  I never really thought of it until the other day when I was at the bank, staring at the pamphlets, and wondering how many trees needed to be chopped down to create them.

Being somewhat of an environmentalist, I thought that the number of pamphlets was overly excessive and that I should be able to find the same information online.

My search resulted in me finding a large number of low quality sites, and a couple of good ones.  Out of the bunch of sites I did find, I think Michael Dinich did the best job with his website, Your Money Matters.

I was particularly impressed with the daily article that was provided on the site regarding IRAs.  The article gave me the idea that I should take a closer look at my IRA plan and not just assume that everything is okay.  In fact, an hour after landing on the site, I was still there reading the many little tidbits of information found there.

I think from now on, I will be looking online for financial information instead of killing trees by getting pamphlets at my bank - it just seems like the right thing to do.