Archives for November 28, 2010

How Does 3 Become 13? New Credit Card Statements Could Confuse

New rules require credit card companies to print on monthly statements the amount you must pay each month in order to pay off your debt in 3 years (assuming you don’t make more charges and the interest rate doesn’t change–good luck with that!) But each month the credit card company recalculates the 3 year payment amount based on your current balance. If each month you pay what is printed on your statement that month, you may be surprised that in 3 years your balance will still be FAR from paid off!! If you want to pay off your entire debt in 3 years, you should pay what is listed on the very first statement you receive, and ignore the future (lower!) numbers.

Here is an example.The minimum payment calculation is based on an example minimum payment calculation method found on one of my credit cards. To see the details of the calculation, click the “Calculations” worksheet on the Excel file below. One notable item in the Calculations is that eventually you are forced to pay the minimum payment (since it is more than the 3 year payment amount would be). So paying the 3 year payment amount as printed each month can be thought of as a hybrid of paying the minimum payment and paying a bit more. Or as my friend Kristy Prattini noted, each statement extends the three years by another 30 days.

This payment assumes a $10,000 initial balance with an APR of 8.24%.

Payment Method Months to payoff Years to Payoff Total Interest Paid Remaining Balance after 3 years
Pay only the minimum payment 258 21.5 $5,008.15 $6,213.05
Pay 3 year payoff amount as listed each month 159 13.3 $2,723.33 $4,398.65
Pay 3 year payoff amount listed on FIRST statement 36 3.0 $1,320.98 $0.00

Download the Excel file I made and try it for yourself. Just change the two values on the “Summary Data” Sheet to the balance and interest rate you’d like to use. Click the “Calculations” sheet to see all the details.

My WordPress 3.0+ multi-site domain mapping with GoDaddy

I had absolutely no fun setting up domain mapping with my WordPress 3.0+ multi-site enabled site. I did a million things before it worked. Here’s what seems to be the final configuration that worked for me. This is provided pretty much so I can remember how to do this in future, and perhaps it will help you too.

My main site is http://gmichaelguy.com and I wanted http://gmichaelguy.com/adamandmichael to be mapped to the domain http://adamandmichael.com I have a Deluxe hosting account on GoDaddy with gmichaelguy.com as the primary domain.

  1. Create a new site on your WordPress multi-site enabled install. For me this was called adamandmichael
  2. Purchase the amazing Professional Domain Mapping plugin from the the miracle workers who also make http://wpmututorials.com/.
  3. Follow the instructions in the plugin. This means uploading two files and editing the wp-config file to make a sunrise.
  4. Configure your GoDaddy account. This is the part where everyone online had something different to say. This is what worked for me. If it doesn’t work for you, please do something else.
  5. Open your GoDaddy Hosting Dashboard. Here’s what mine looks like.
  6. My GoDaddy Hosting Dashboard
  7. Click on the Domains button in the top center of the Hosting Dashboard. Now add the secondary domain to your hosting account (this isn’t how you buy the domain. You have to do that before this.)  Set it to have the same root folder as your main account (My WordPress is installed in this same folder).

    Domain Manager

    Domain Manager

  8. I think this is all that was required on the GoDaddy site. But as I mentioned, I did a million things before this worked, and so some others thing I did might have actually been changed. I’m including here a listing of the DNS Records that are accessible under “Settings–>DNS Manager” in the Hosting Dashboard in the event something here needs to be changed manually.

    Hosting Dashboard DNS Manager link

  9. Look at the DNS Settings for both my primary and secondary domain name. Note they BOTH have an A-record matching the IP Address shown in my Hosting Dashboard. The wonderful @andrea_r was concerned that this IP address was NOT the one she was seeing in the lookup she was doing for my domain. This was indeed the correct IP address to use (and not the one @andrea_r was seeing. GoDaddy confirmed this for me as well).

    Primary Domain Zone File

    Secondary Domain Zone File

  10. Now go to your WordPress dashboard and map the domain using the installed plugin. Here’s what my dashboard looked like.

    WordPress Dashboard

  11. Then I took a shower, shaved, went for a walk, had lunch and came home. When I made it home, it all worked. Before I stopped to shower, none of it worked, and I was annoyed as hell. Perhaps it just needed time for all the DNS settings and such to propagate throughout the Internets.

I hope what I wrote here is helpful. If it’s not, sorry. Contact @andrea_r on twitter, send her lots of money and appreciation, and perhaps she can help better than this did! If you didn’t purchase her plugin as I suggested in Step 2, please consider donating money to her using the donation button on her website at http://wpmututorials.com/. She is helping you indirectly since she helped me, and this helped you!

This post is closed to comments because I really don’t have anything more to say or to offer. Good luck!