Can anyone else make an online payment for me?
Your relative in the US could buy a pre-paid Visa (aka Visa gift card) and give you the numbers on that to pay.  They're available for purchase at many grocery/convenience stores.  In most (all??) cases there'll be a fee of a several dollars charged in addition to the face value of the card. The biggest headache I can think of would be that pre-paid cards are generally only available in $25/50/100 increments; unless the current SAT price matches one of the standard increments they'll have to buy the next card size up and then get the remaining money off it in a separate transaction.  A grocery store would be one of the easier places for your relative to do this because cashiers there are used to splitting transactions across multiple payment sources (something not true at most other types of business) due to regularly processing transactions partially paid for via welfare benefits.
"I agree it seems insulting to pay the credit reporting agencies, but I have no choice at this point. I'd rather pay the small fee per each of them, to freeze accounts, then have thousands stolen. My husband has excellent credit and also we have a rather substantial savings account, that his info could give ""would be"" identity thieves access too.  This whole situation is messed up, and unacceptable! For one, no one EVER gave these credit reporting agencies access to their info, it's just a ""give in"" being born here. And for two, no one asked for their information to be kept in insecure databases. Higher standards need to be implemented.  My poor 72 year old father is outraged when I tell him his info is online. He says, ""I don't use the Internet!!! How can it be there?!?!"" (Poor old soul lol)  I just said, ""well dad, it is, whether you use it, or like it or not. It's there""  I just need to make sure we are taking the correct steps to protect ourselves. Honestly, I am not finance savvy. This is why I'm asking here in this sub. Thank you for responding, and thanks to anyone else who may offer any advice.  I'm not terrified, but I'm definitely miffed..." "There's enough places that directly accept BitCoin today that, call it whatever you want, it looks, walks, and quacks like a duck.  And for transfers between two people that use different native currencies, it works a hell of a lot *better* and cheaper than most existing solutions.  As for ""growing faster"", in eight years Bitcoin has gone from nonexistent to the 266th biggest ""company"" (in terms of market cap) in the *world*.  Though still technically smaller than them, it makes the likes of Microsoft, Apple, and Google all look like sloths by comparison.  To address ""trust"" - You're conflating ""trust of the issuer"" with ""trust of the bag-man"".  With USD, you need to trust the good faith of the US Treasury; while that is certainly a pretty good bet, with Bitcoin, you don't need to trust **anyone**, because there *is* no issuing authority (no, not even the core devs could magically create more bitcoins out of thin air).  That's different than, for example, trusting an online wallet or exchange with it, because then you have a third party holding your assets that *can* vanish to the Caymans overnight... But that wouldn't be any less true if you trusted USD to a random guy online.  All that said, I'm **still** not invested in it because, although I love me some high return high volatility, I *don't* like the high risk of governments making my assets illegal overnight (China and Russia have already done so, though *for now* it seems more a statement of official policy than a real crime they go after people for).  But as a medium of exchange - You *bet* I keep a small amount in my offline wallet for convenience!" &gt; You fully support the free market.  Yep  &gt;What the fuck is the point of having a job(s!) which don't support you?  Good question. I wouldn't work one and neither should anybody else. Thats how the market knows to raise wages or automate these jobs  &gt;I support ending corporate welfare.   Hey, we agree on something!  &gt;I think this country has the means to support anyone willing to work as hard as her to make sure she and her kids have the very basics.  Yet you failed to address my point. Ill make it easy for you. Do you think random worker should get more money because they have a kid? What about 2? 5? What if they have the kid after you already hired them for a lower wage?  &gt;Define value for me  usefulness of something. A piece of wood has a low value. A piece of wood I cut straight so its a board and can be used in construction has a higher value. A board in an area with few trees has a higher value. A board that is made from a superior wood has a higher value. The guy that collects wood has a low value. The guy that has the skills / tools to make wood into boards has a higher value. The guy that can transport boards to areas without wood has a value...etc  &gt;Not everyone worships money or the 'free' market.  ok?  &gt;But try and imagine you have her life.  Why? I wouldn't pump out kids when I make min wage. I wouldnt work the same dead end job for ever. I wouldnt make any of these awful choices. And if I did, I would expect anyone to be forced to help me. Charity is a thing, and one Im happy to participate in.  &gt;No life is not fair  She chose this life, whats not fair about consequences?  &gt;slavery wasn't fair  Yes, how does that apply here?  &gt;If you think it's ok for this to be how it is, we have nothing to speak further about.  Again, this is of her making, no one is forcing her to do anything   &gt;no I cannot come up with a number, congratulations.  Right because living wage and other emotionally charged verbiage is nonsensical.  &gt;Also the argument that a teenager doesn't need to be paid a living wage is ridiculous.  why?  &gt;It's the exact argument that's been used to under pay women.  Oh boy, this has be debunked so many times Im sad you still think this is a thing. If women were truly underpaid, why woudnt greedy corps hire only women?  &gt;Maybe empathizing on this scenario is beyond you.  I empathize with someone born with say a disability. You chose to do nothing with your life, no advancement, not trying, then have kids in the middle of this wreck, no you get little sympathy from me on that. "First, I'd like to congratulate you on your financial discipline in paying off your loans and living well within your means.  I have friends who make more than twice your salary with similar debt obligations, and they barely scrape by month to month. If we combine your student loan debt and unallocated income each month, we get about $1,350.  You say that $378 per month is the minimum payment for your loans, which have an average interest rate of about 3.5%.  Thus, you have about $1,350 a month to ""invest."" Making your loan payments is basically the same as investing with the same return as the loan interest rate, when it comes down to it.  An interest rate of 3.5% is...not great, all things considered, and barely above inflation.    However, that's a guaranteed return of 3.5%, more or less like a bond.  As noted previously, the stock market historically averages 10% before inflation over the long run. The US stock market is right around its historic high at this point (DJIA is at 20,700 today, April 6th, 2017 - historic high hit just over 21,000 on March 1, 2017).  Obviously, no one can predict the future, but I get the feeling that a market correction may be in order, especially depending on how things go in Washington in the next weeks or months.  If that's the case (again, we have no way of knowing if it is), you'd be foolish to invest heavily in any stocks at this point. What I would do, given your situation, is invest the $1,350/month in a ""portfolio"" that's 50/50 stocks and ""bonds,"" where the bonds here are your student loans.  Here, you have a guaranteed return of ~3.5% on the bond portion, and you can still hedge the other 50% on stocks continuing their run (and also benefiting from dividends, capital gains, etc. over time).  I would apply the extra loan payments to the highest-interest loan first, paying only the minimum to the others.  Once the highest-interest loan is paid off, move onto the next one. Once you have all your loans paid off, your portfolio will be pretty much 100% stocks, at which point you may want to add in some actual bonds (say a 90/10 or 80/20 split, depending on what you want).  I'm assuming you're pretty young, so you still have plenty of time to let the magic of compounding interest do its work, even if you happen to get into the market right before it drops (well, that, and the fact that you won't really have much invested anyway). Again, let me stress that neither I nor anyone else has any way of knowing what will happen with the market - I'm just stating my opinion and what my course of action would be if I were in your shoes." When you're selling something through a provider, like Craig's List or newspapers, the only thing that may limit your choices is the provider. They may refuse your post if it's against their rules or the law. But luckily they usually don't limit or enforce certain payment choices.  These private business providers have the right to do so if they want. You don't need to be their customer. They may state their terms for using the service and even refuse service (before any payment is made).  The fun part is that you may do so as well. Just remember to state your terms in your post so the prospective buyers are aware of them. I've found it best to put payment and delivery terms in separate lines so that they are easily noticeable, for example: Nice victorian handbasket with gold embroidery, only used once. Signed by the original author. Comes with a certificate of authenticity. No delivery, only cash payments. "Yes, so much for audit. We are audited yearly by one of big-4 and me being in IT Management was asked by the Auditors prove that ""the system will not allow to enter an order for a customer that does not exist."" ?!?!?!  As for finance, I was once asked to setup credit card processing of a new type of orders. Done and tested! I then asked them to tell me when they start accepting the new orders, because I need to setup a job to send the charges to the bank. They did not inform me and accepted orders for $100,000s. Suddenly, after a year they discovered that we do not get paid by the bank.   You would think that one of the basic jobs of accounting it to make sure Total Sales = Total Payments.   We had write off $100,000s because I can only charge customers for orders in the last 30 days, before their credit card authorizations expires." ACH, Paypal, Amazon Pay are all other options that can be used.  ACH is cheapest for the merchant but it is a bit of a pain for the customer to setup (aka adds friction to our sales process, which is *very* bad).  Paypal and Amazon Pay both cost a bit more than regular credit cards for the merchant.  Google Wallet is free but not available unless you are a sole proprietor or an individual, which is is useless for businesses.  So yeah, other options are either difficult or more expensive. There are different options here.  Either way, ensure that you have a paper trail of all your payments. When in doubt, speak to a lawyer, there are many who offer free consultations.