Welcome to How I Save Money. I took the Bills IQ quiz to see what I knew about my bills and Credit card debt and I got an overall score of 82% which is a B . A low B at that. I barely scraped the B rating and this upsets me very much because I thought I had a better handle on my finances, even though I do not make a lot of money.

The Bills IQ site gives you a quiz and you pick the best answer as it relates to your current situation. The site then gives you a score and after that you can review some tips on how to better manage your credit and get a better life score.

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I just signed up for the 5% cash back program for July-September with my Discover card to save money on gas. With the Discover card you can get 5% cash back year round , but every three months a different category is featured.

In July-September, the featured categories are Gas and Hotels but I do not have any plans to be using hotels in the foreseeable future. I will be doing a lot of driving since I have to take my mother to her chemotherapy sessions and her lab work sessions and they are during separate weeks.

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I was looking at the pack of credit cards that I have and I was thinking about the ways I went about getting them. I really only looked to see if there was an annual fee and if there was none then I applied. This was in the early stages of my life with credit cards, before I really thought about what I was doing.

I found a site that makes it a bit easier to find the card that is right for you, because you can preselect the feature that is most important to you. If you want 0% interest then you click on that category and up pops a list of cards that have that rate.

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Welcome to How I Save Money and tracking of income and expenses for the month.

Income for the month to date: $907.67

Expenses for the month to date: $2703.78

Net effect: -$1796.11

I received $101.47 income from the ads that run on this blog so that money has really helped me. I realize that it is not in the league of ProBlogger or John Chow but to me it is still great. I would like to get more so I just need to keep working on this blog and providing better content so I can get more readers.

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I am always talking about using my cash back credit cards in order to save money on the purchases I make. If you travel frequently then you might want to take a look at credit card deals with miles in addition to those that pay cash back.

With so many rewards out there it can be difficult to find the right card for you.  I found a site that helps you to choose the best card for your needs. It not only lists the bonus miles you get on sign up but it also tells you the primary airline each card applies to so that you can easily find out if your miles will count for the rewards.

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Here is the state of my credit card accounts at How I Save Money.

You all know that I was TOTALLY ignorant about the use of credit cards and credit scores when I started and made some REALLY bad decisions .

I ended up with a large number of credit cards and carried balances on all of them for a LONG time.

A good deal of the credit card debt that I have was from paying my way through school. I was totally broke and put EVERYTHING on the credit cards…from books and tuition to bread.

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