My apologies in advance on the poor lighting. Still working on that…

When you’re in debt and you have managed to save a bit of money, by far the best investment the majority of people can make is to put it toward credit card debt. First, the interest rate that is being paid on the […]

I’ve stated before that I’m not a big gift card fan, and this is especially true of the bank branded gift cards. It seems that they are getting more complaints as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has issued a number of guidelines to banks on misleading customers with gift cards. One […]

I’ve talked about this quite a bit before. - the fact that saving money is a two step process and that paying less for something doesn’t necessarily mean that you have saved money.
After you have found a way to cut an expense, you actually have to place the difference between what you were […]

I took notice that over the last couple of months a lot of personal finance writers have had the blogoversaries. As I sometimes do, after reading about one of these (I can’t remember exactly which one which is a shame because I would really like to thank that person) I went in and did a […]

Do you have a reward debit card? If so, there is a TV production company that would like to interview you for a report they are putting together on debit reward cards. Julie McCoy, who is a TV news producer with NewsProNet contacted me in hopes I could help her find someone to interview:
The story […]

There is nothing that gives me more pleasure than seeing someone take a new technology and use it to their advantage to save money - especially when it is done creatively and produces painless savings. I came across a woman who has done this brilliantly using Prosper.com to lower the amount she was paying on […]

Is it just me, or are holiday decorations going out earlier and earlier than they have in the past. I walked into a drug store today to see them placing up three aisles of Halloween goods. It’s hard for me to tell since I’ve been in Japan for a time and usually miss all this […]

I’ve had several people ask me how Nate and I have built our blog community. For those who are not familiar, we also run the SavingAdvice.com website where we have an area where we have a personal finance blog community we call Real People, Real Finances. We recently passed the 100 blog mark for those […]

If you are looking for some basic (but free) personal finance materials, Visa is giving away a number of informational items fro free from their Practical Money Skills site:
Free Solar Powered Calculator
PMSFL Teachers Guide W/2PK CD - a 2-CD classroom educations set which includes lesson plans, worksheets, calculators and games to help […]

I mentioned earlier that the IRS was planning to allow taxpayers to designate their refund to several accounts rather than just one beginning next year. The IRS just released a sample copy of IRS Form 8888 which will allow you to do this and they are requesting public comment on this new split refund form […]

For those that regularly read personal financial blogs, magazines or other sources, the vast majority of the information in this video series will be fairly basic. One of the things about saving money is that most people already know how to do most of it, they just don’t take the time to break old habits […]

If you had any doubt that you could use your instincts to predict virtually any future event and make money, that doubt should quickly be fading. HedgeStreet, an online futures market which is government regulated has launched “hurricane contracts” to speculate on the damage they will cause.
There are two types of hurricane speculation in […]

Here is an interesting site that I came across today. The name of it is FareCast and it uses an algorithm to predict the future prices of airline tickets to the destination where you want to go so you know whether it makes more sense to purchase them now or to wait to buy them. […]

A short introduction to my painless saving philosophy:

As you can see, I’m still trying to get the hang of this video stuff. Some things I learned:
No more videos at night - I look like a stalker of some type. Hopefully daylight will bring a bit more light to it.
Definitely need to learn how […]

I had an interesting question emailed to me the other day:
What in your opinion are the most important skill sets to have in order to be successful with your personal finances? Is it essential to be organized or to not like shopping? Are there skills that can’t be learned that are essential to stay out […]

This is my first video attempt with my new digital video camera. Since my main concern was whether or not I could 1) take the video 2) upload the video to my computer 3) edit the video and 4) upload the video to youtube, having it relate to personal finance wasn’t factored into it too […]

This little find comes courtesy of the savviest young one you’re likely to meet. With the cost of college textbooks now costing approximately $900 a year, finding ways to save on them is a top priority for a lot of students. A company called Freeload Press has come up with a innovative way to slash […]

I was contacted by a friend that was having trouble with a collection agency regarding a very old debt she had. In fact, the debt was over 9 years old so she assumed that it was long history, but all of a sudden it appeared in her credit report as a recent debt. She couldn’t […]

I finally purchased a video camera which I hope to use quite a bit in the months to come. I went against my normal shopping habits on this one and I hope that will ultimately be for the better in the long run. Usually when I shop for something, I do a lot of research, […]

For those of you who have not been watching the news lately, Northwest Airlines handed out a booklet to their employees who were going to be laid off including a section called “101 Ways To Save Money” - the airline employees responded by protesting the list as offensive:
“This is disgraceful that somebody at Northwest Airlines […]