Personal Finance Advice

This idea was a simple “add one and one together” and you have a creative job with little to no start-up costs where you can make quite a bit of money. In fact, this would be an excellent part-time job or a fantastic job for any high school / college students this summer. I’m really [...]

I purchased a stick of Mennen Speed Stick deodorant the other day and after using it a few days began to get a rash under my arms. This was a bit surprising to me since I have used their products for years and have never had this problem with any of their other scents. I [...]

I mentioned the other day that people don’t walk in the suburbs. I learned today that there is a very good reason for this. If you walk in the suburbs, you’re likely to get killed. I seriously was almost hit by two cars today not because they couldn’t see me, but because they didn’t even [...]

Nate and I have decided we need a digital video camera to record our first meeting in Las Vegas coming up soon, so this week I need to do some research on purchasing a good quality digital video camera. Since I know practically nothing in this area, the first step is to ask family and [...]

It was a pretty quick start to the week and had a few surprises for me. The blog went down for about an hour because two of my posts made it to the front page of Digg.com (Creative Job – Commute Helper and 50% Off Cable TV Bill which sent an avalanche of visitors to [...]

Concept: If you purchase a certain amount of food from a grocery store, you receive a coupon for for a specific amount off per gallon of gas at an affiliated gas station in the area. Will You Save Money?: Yes** Comments: This is a good promotion for grocery stores to bring in more people and [...]

I went to the movies for the first time I have in years. If you think ticket prices in the US are expensive, they are better than the prices in Japan which are about $18 a piece (although they are catching up quickly). That $18, however, doesn’t guarantee you a seat – if the show [...]

It’s been over 100 degrees here the past couple of days and in an effort to reduce the amount of smog in the air, they had a Spare The Air day today. This meant that a lot of the public transportation systems in the San Francisco Bay Area were free today…which meant of course that [...]

I came across an interesting promotion that General Motors (GM) is offering for certain model cars to residents in California and Florida – $1.99 a gallon gas for the first year. The part of the promotion that caught my eye is that there is no cap on how many miles you can drive. When I [...]

Received word that our dog died yesterday. It isn’t a surprise as he has been sick for quite awhile now, but that doesn’t make the event any less sad. Like all the other pets we have, he was a stray rescued on the street. We were heading home one evening from my wife’s parent’s house [...]

Sometimes I’m amazed at the creativity of some people who earn a good living filling needs that anyone could do. I was at a gathering today when I struck up a conversation with a man who described his job as a “commute helper.” “OK, what exactly is a commute helper?” I asked “I help people [...]

Concept: To attract more customers to their wholesale clubs, more are being built with gas stations being part of the wholesale club. Will You Save Money?: Yes** Comments: Due to their size, warehouse clubs can purchase gas on on par with other large gas retailers. Since the cost structure of the warehouse clubs is less [...]

Concept: When gas prices rise, there are certain sectors of the travel industry which can feel the effect with a slowdown in their business. To try and counteract this, they sometimes offer gas vouchers to entice customers to travel even with the higher gas prices. Will You Save Money?: Yes** Comments: Gas vouchers tend to [...]

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve decided to pass on getting a car for now which means when I go out, I either walk or ride my bike. I took a short walk to the bank today and it is quite obvious that people don’t walk in the suburbs. This is a huge change since there [...]

I had my first experience with an electronic check today which was a bit different than I remember things. I went to pay for some things I was purchasing and decided to pay for them with a check. Normally, they take your check, place it in the cash drawer and you’re off with your stuff, [...]

Here is a challenge that I’m going to be trying now that I’m back from Japan. Flash, who manages our Grocery Coupon Guide, gets amazing savings with coupons. The type of savings that you hear about in disbelief on the TV – like $300 worth of groceries for $27. It’s pretty amazing stuff, but my [...]

I don’t know why people don’t like to call the different companies that give them services to try and get a better price, but there are a lot of people out there. My mom is one of them. I wrote last September that we shaved my mom’s cable bill from $65 to $39.95 a month [...]

The decision was made a few days ago that when looking at all the information, there was really no need for a car at this moment. While that has seemed strange to some of our friends and will cause some inconvenience, we think that the savings will be well worth any inconveniences involved (we haven’t [...]

Comcast Internet access is driving me crazy because their “simple set-up” has been anything but thus far. I went to pick up the modem and other stuff from a nearby office yesterday and spent over an hour there as they tried to figure out my order from the call center (it seems that the call [...]

I can tell I’ve been out of the US for awhile – there are just a crazy number of paid programming shows on TV these days. There also seems to be a huge number of “money making” paid programming advertisements on TV. What this tells me: 1) That these paid programming commercials make money (if [...]