Personal Finance Advice

“Money was invented so we could know exactly how much we owe.” – Cullen Hightower

For those of you looking for a little reading beyond persona finances with the holidays now here may be interested in the Carnival of Christmas – while I do have an entry about money, most are far off the subject (as would be expected of a carnival of christmas;) . Enjoy!

In today’s investing environment, should we expect yearly double digit returns? I ask this because so many people use the 10% historical average that the S&P 500 has returned over its history when doing calculations on compound interest. While there are certainly individual stocks that will produce double digit returns in 2006, for the average [...]

Money magazine is looking for people living in New York to help and interview on the following subjects: Would your family like to purchase a big-ticket item this year — a big screen TV, a new car? Have you not gotten around to choosing a guardian for your kids? Do you need help getting out [...]

I know, Christmas hasn’t even arrived, but if you want to make next Christmas a lot less hectic, it’s worthwhile to take a few minutes and go through the areas that caused problems or extra spending this Christmas while they are fresh in your mind. Since retail stores usually have limited storage space, they want [...]

“He is richest who is content with the least.” – Socrates

We have had a problem with our Internet connection for the last 6 months. Most of the time it works, but there would be periods where it would go out for hours, even days, and we couldn’t gain access. It was frustrating to no end, especially since my job is essentially being on the Internet. [...]

I’m preparing the $20 challenge for 2006. Last year Nate challenged me to try and make $5,000 in 6 months in my spare time beginning with only $20 and that was how the challenge was born. While I only made it to $1,300 and (then stopped when we decided to try and make this my [...]

I submitted to a number of carnivals this past week, something that I haven’t done for a couple of weeks becasue I’d been working on some other goals. The carnivals always give a nice variety of reading on the subject and well worth the look if you have some extra time: The Carnival of Education [...]

With the holiday season also comes a lot of opportunities to get 0% financing on a variety of high ticket items. While these can be great ways to save money if you were planning to purchase the item anyway, they come with pitfalls for many others. It’s important to remember it isn’t a deal no [...]

“A man has one hundred dollars and you leave him with two dollars, that’s subtraction.” – Mae West

Bank of America is apologizing to customers for a system error that kept direct deposits from showing up in their accounts. If you’re a Bank of America customer and this has affected you, mark it down in your calendar or someplace else where you can easily remember and reference it. Why? Because you know that [...]

Earlier I argued that the best investment that the majority of people can make is learning how to save money and referred to it as Ugly Duckling Investing. The reasons I see saving as such an important investment is because: Low Risk: Saving money money is an extremely low risk investment to make. While it [...]

When I made the post about credit card condoms earlier, I received a couple of emails telling me basically it was a “stupid gimmick” that was of little use. While it may appear to be so to some and certainly isn’t for everyone, for some people it does actually work. An email I received today: [...]

This is our latest in the series of sat sites we’re putting together: frugalgardening.com. Although this one isn’t completely done, I’m making it live because it will be built over a period of time. The sections have been broken down into months thus far with the first four finished (January – April. I actually wanted [...]

I came across an article in usatoday about the city of San Francisco renting Christmas Trees. The trees aren’t your typical Christmas evergreen, but a variety of different trees that will be taken from your house and planted after the holiday season. The program is being marketed as an environmentally friendly way to celebrate Christmas [...]

It is more important than ever to play by the rules with your credit card as punitive rates (punitive rates are those charged when you miss a payment, go over your credit limit, have your credit score deteriorate, etc and are also tied to universal default – that is if you miss a payment on [...]

I mentioned a few days ago that I would need to do some financial juggling this month. With the half way mark here, the current income only confirms what I had talked about previously. Looking at the first half numbers, we’re going to come in about $500 below what we did last month – maybe [...]

The Consumer Price Index came in at a -0.6% for the month of November – the biggest monthly decrease in 56 years – mainly due to a large drop in gasoline prices. I wrote about just this scenario when I thought that purchasing I-bonds during this six month period was not a sound investment. While [...]

I came across an interesting article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that claims that for Latino and African-American minorities, lack of saving is a cultural issue: The notion of a planned retirement is relatively new for African-Americans and Hispanics who grew up expecting to help pay for the needs of extended family – particularly older [...]