Personal Finance Advice

I have a friend who is into Star Wars. I mean really into Star Wars. He has every release of the movies going back to VHS. He has the trading cards, all of the books, the toys going back to the 1970's when he was a child, the collectible glasses given away by fast food restaurants, and much, much more. In addition, he goes to the conventions and gatherings around the world. Star Wars is his li [...]

I knew that there would be hiccups from time to time in the minimum wage challenge. It would be wonderful if spending was something that could always be prepared for and anticipated, but the reality is that unexpected costs will present themselves from time to time, and a decision what to do will have to be made. One of those situations happened to me today. My car has been running fine, bu [...]

It was a pretty uneventful day in regard to spending since most of the day was spent catching up on the things I had put off while on the three day trip. When it comes to the minimum wage challenge, uneventful spending days are days to be celebrated. It wasn't a no spend day, however, since I did finally go to the hospital to get blood drawn to have my vitamin D levels tested again. All I neede [...]

Sometimes, when the weather isn't pretty, it's tempting to go out and do something that's going to cost you money. The movies, a restaurant, a bar, a trip to the mall or the bookstore. All of these offer some relief from being trapped inside your house. But if you're trying to save money, you need to find activities that aren't going to cost you any money. Or, if you must spend money, you need [...]

After the recent house sitting gig and the amount of money I saved during that time, I decided that a short trip was in order even while on the minimum wage challenge. I opted to head to Redwood National Park to visit one of those places that is so special that I put it on my list to visit again when I had the chance. It had been a few years since I had been to Fern Canyon and I wanted to get ther [...]

Work travel has been completely insane over the last three weeks.  So many little hearings that I thought would cancel and in-person meetings that I thought would not be needed have indeed gone forward.  I've been all over the map this go around.  From SA to Corpus to South Texas back to SA to Austin back to Corpus with stops in tiny towns along the way.  Due to scheduling issues some of that has [...]

There are a lot of places to get small, free samples online, but is it possible to get bigger and more expensive items for free? There are actually quite a few places that you can get free stuff that's still in perfectly good shape or needs only minor repairs. Before you go out and spend money to buy something new , you might want to check out these options to see if you can get it for free fi [...]

We enjoy camping in our RV. As a result, I spend a lot of time on RV-related message boards. This week I saw a sad story. A family wanted to get into the camping lifestyle, so they went to the local dealer to see what they could or should get. They planned on towing the camper with a minivan. After looking at the van and noting that the towing capacity was 3,500 pounds, the dealer smooth talke [...]

As predicted, eight of the last nine days have been no-spend-days as I continue to house sit and work on my writing. This has been great news for the minimum wage challenge. As mentioned before, I had everything that I really needed which gave me the opportunity to save a bit of money, although it made for pretty boring writing. One would think that this situation would keep me out of trouble, [...]

When it comes to doing laundry, there are a lot of little things that you can do to save money. There are ways to save money while using both the washer and the dryer, and there are also a number of gadgets that you can purchase that can help to reduce the costs of doing laundry. Below are some of those gadgets that are worth considering to help you save even more money when you do laundry: Wo [...]