Personal Finance Advice

The decision not to purchase a car for the time being has been made. While there would not be a problem getting one financially, the question was does it really make sense at this point (the cost of purchasing it and maintaining it vs how much use it would get) While this will certainly make [...]

A bit more news came in on the wealth coins that are out there. I received notice that wealth coin #10 arrived in Sams Valley, Oregon: I was on vacation when it came and my family were all curious what in the world had come from Japan!! I appreciate being a part of this fun [...]

One of the first things I’ve been wanting to do since returning to the the US is get a good Internet connection deal. I found one – Comcast Cable Internet for $19.95 a month for the first six months (of course, I’ll negotiate for the best deal I can using junk mail when the introductory [...]

One of the pleasures (sarcasm dripping) I get to do being back in the US is see all the wonderful TV I have been missing while in Japan. There are all kinds of shows that I have never seen or heard of while in Japan, so these may be well known to you, but all [...]

I’ve been opening my mail that had been saved for me in the US and among all the junk mail, I found coupons for 30 2-liter bottles of any coke product. These were the result of a game that Coke ran for the winter Olympics where you could get 3 free tries a day with [...]

I’m back in the good old US at this moment and will spend most of this day trying to catch up not being online the last 2 days. Then I also have to figure out – how to get all the things I need to get back into the swing of things out here including [...]

It’s back to the US tomorrow, so I took my change jar to the bank and had the coins counted – and now have an extra $270 in my wallet. One of the nice things about coin jars in Japan is that the coins range in worth from a penny to about $5 which makes [...]

I’m not a big fan of cyber begging for a couple of reasons: 1) There is rarely any way to tell if the story being told to get money from you is true or not and 2) It doesn’t address the problem of why the person needs the money in the first place (If you’re [...]

Concept: Purchase a prepaid gas card for a specified number of gallons at a set price to hedge against future increases in gas prices (not currently live, but it’s a concept Gulf has announced and is working on) Will You Save Money?: Yes** Comments: As noted above, this gas saving opportunity is still in the [...]

Now I’m not usually into the celebrity gossip scene, but I thought it was interesting that one of the first things that Angela Jolie and Brad Pitt did upon deciding a name for their new child was to go out and register a bunch of name domain names including shilohjolie, shilohjoliepitt, shilohpitt, shilohnouvelpitt, shilohnouveljolie, and [...]

When it comes to finding where your money goes, you’d likely be surprised at the large number of things that seem to have absolutely nothing to do with money that actually end up being a fairly large drain on your wallet. Even after writing about personal finances all this time, I still find things that [...]

Besides having a houseful of Hello Kitty, we’re also slowly collecting a houseful of real kitties. Our latest member arrived today when my wife found a stray kitten sticking out of a water drain pipe of a cement wall next to a busy street. With no mom around and constant traffic only a few feet [...]

Concept: To attract more customers, some gas stations offer coupons that will take a certain amount off of each gallon of gas. Will You Save Money?: Yes** Comments: Much like gas stations sometimes have discount days, some stations offer coupons to attract new customers. These coupons are usually not national campaigns, but local gas station [...]

Concept: By driving around looking for the best price, you’ll save money. Will You Save Money?: No** Comments: This is one of those false savings situations. People believe that they are saving money because they are paying less for the price of gas. On the surface this makes sense, but they fail to take into [...]

Concept: To attract more customers, some gas stations offer “discount days” where they lower the price well below the competition for a single day. This sometimes is done on a regular schedule (certain days each month) or sometimes random without advanced notice. Will You Save Money?: Yes** Comments: While you can use the Internet to [...]

Some updates on the wealth coins and where they are these days. Wealth coin #3 made it’s way from Hollywood, CA from Liz up the coast to Cashmere, WA where David from Blogography has taken possession of it and has the right idea when it comes to these coins: Now… before all the nut-jobs out [...]