Personal Finance Advice

I’ll be very interested to see how this equates to new traffic for my website. I mentioned earlier that I gave an interview to the Associated press for an article they were doing on gift cards. That article went live today and the first media to pick it up was msnbc. The links in the [...]

I received an email the other day asking me what I felt was the most difficult part of climbing out of credit card debt. While there are a number of issues that need to be addressed when tackling credit card debt, the habit of using the credit card when you really shouldn’t is a huge [...]

Business Week is reporting that hackers are going after home computers searching for online investment accounts and emptying them out when found. They are targeting people’s home computers because they are much less secure and most contain (84% as reported by the magazine) sensitive information needed to access the online brokerage accounts: Business Week reports [...]

“I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.” – Mark Twain

I’ll be combining this into a single post with Personal Finance Net Worth in future months, but had a request to rank the list from top to bottom and will do so here this time. This really doesn’t mean anything as all the these people are in totally different positions and not competing against each [...]

One thing that you don’t find much of in Japan is people begging for money. Even in the big cities, it’s the exception to the rule rather than the norm. I’m not sure exactly why. I imagine it’s a combination of both the law and social norms that don’t allow for it in most cases. [...]

“Beware of little expenses, a small leak will sink a great ship.” – Benjamin Franklin

I’m not big into conspiracy theories and don’t think the government would really find anything interesting about my spending habits or how I use the money I have, but I came across an article by Barton Gellmandid from the Washington Post on msnbc.com which made me feel a bit uneasy about access the government can [...]

“Don’t invest your money on the advice of a poor man.” – Spanish Proverb

Google has started two new referral programs. One is for their for their adsense textads which will pay $100 to you when anyone signs up with your referral when the person who signs up generates $100 in adsense revenue. In other words, when the person receives his or her first check from adsense, you also [...]

There are quite a few personal finance journals out there with the writers tracking their net worth for the world to see. Below are a few that I have run across. It seems that October was a mixed blessing with a number of bloggers losing net worth while a few made gains. Here is the [...]

“The rich man plans for tomorrow, the poor man for today.” – Chinese Proverb

Amazon has launched a new site called Amazon Mechanical Turk in Beta which pays you to do such things as look at photos. Why would someone do this? Basically the reasoning behind it is that computers can do a wide range of tasks more efficiently than humans can, but there are certain areas where humans [...]

Warning: If you’re a vegetarian or squeamish about food, you’ll probably want to skip this post. It’s never a good idea to make bets in a drunken stupor – financially or otherwise – but that is what I did with my friend who’s currently visiting some 15 years ago right after college. In an inebriated [...]

“What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.” – Bob Dylan

With the Federal Reserve raising their rates to 4%, ING Direct increased their interest rate from 3.4% to 3.5%. This is still a half point below Emigrant Direct which is offering an interest rate of 4.0%. I don’t think that Emigrant will be raising their interest rate with the Federal Reserve’s move and ING hasn’t [...]

“Lack of money is no obstacle. Lack of an idea is an obstacle.” – Ken Hakuta

I’m not sure if I should be writing about our major money saving travel within Japan secret or not. I guess I should begin this post with a warning that this isn’t a typical money saving option, but if you happen to be travelling in Japan and find yourself in a city that’s having a [...]

“With money in your pocket, you are wise and you are handsome and you sing well too.” – Yiddish Proverb

I received an email asking if I thought moving savings into I-Bonds was a good financial move at this time with the rates at 6.73%. My humble opinion is that it would not be a good move at this time. You need to be careful with this investment. While the 6.73% may look extremely enticing [...]