Personal Finance Advice

There are a lot of different ways to aquire free plants and even unusual ways depending on how adventurous you are. Another sneaky way to acquire free plants is to throw a Garden Party.
No, not the big hat, posh refreshment type of Garden Party, but a party to increase the size of your garden. Grab [...]

By S Shugars, special to pfadvice
Conventional wisdom says that paying to have your groceries delivered to your door is a waste of money. I have to disagree with this assessment. I have found that having my groceries delivered has saved me far more time and money than I could have ever done by shopping [...]

When you make financial decisions, there are times when you’d like to have others take a look at the decisions you have made and give their honest opinion on whether or not they think you’re on the right track. That is exactly what the writer of this email was looking for:
I earn approximately $77k and [...]

Is The Stock Market Really Going Up Or Is The Dollar Simply Worth Less?: There has been a lot in the news lately about the stock market finally reaching the heights where it once was. This is good news, unless you look at it from the perspective of the dollar. Then, all of [...]

No doubt you have heard of the Two-Income Trap. I think a major issue that is often overlooked with the Two-Income Trap are taxes. I come from a situation where when it came down to having kids and wanting a spouse home, we never saw much of a loss going down to one income because [...]

There are a lot of people who don’t like credit cards for a variety of reasons. I am not one of those people. In fact, there are a lot of great reasons why I love my credit cards. These are the top five:
I Fly Free: One of the credit cards that I [...]

When you come into some extra money and have debts to pay off, it can sometimes be confusing which ones you should tackle first. I often receive emails like this one asking for advice on which debts should be paid off first:
I’m currently $70,000.00 in debt with credit cards. I also have a mortgage [...]

The $200 Kitchen: How much have you spent on all the things in your kitchen? Probably a lot more than you needed to. According to this article, “$200 can equip a basic kitchen that will be adequate for just about any task, and $300 can equip one quite well.” It includes a list of [...]

Ever wonder why guys pay more for auto insurance than women? Insurance companies do risk analysis on different groups to determine if they are more likely to have an insurance claim than other groups. This video cuts it down to the basics with a lot of humor thrown in.
Warning: There is some adult language in [...]

If you have not visited your local library in awhile, you might want to make a trip there to check out all the activities and services they offer these days. The library now offers a whole lot more than just books and it’s a perfect place to save yourself a bundle of money each year. [...]

In order to justify expensive purchases, many people, including plenty of otherwise very intelligent folks, like to refer to certain types of spending sprees as “investments.” Luckily for me, from the time I was about four years old, my father took any opportunity he could to tell me that anything that loses value after you [...]

One of the most difficult situations that any couple can come across in is money issues if they look at finances in a very different light. Most people don’t realize this until after they have married, but it is certainly something that should be discussed well before that time. In doing so you [...]

Reduce Junk Mail In 5 Easy Steps: If you hate junk mail as much as the next person and don’t use it to negotiate better deals, then there really isn’t any reason to have it delivered. Sitting Pretty gives five good steps to take to help reduce the amount of junk that arrives in [...]

I have been searching the web for months, looking for ways to measure my financial progress, and have come up pretty empty handed. By merely looking at my peers and neighbors there is no doubt we are far ahead of the curve. On the other hand, when compared to some people in the financial forums [...]

Eyeglasses and/or contacts are a necessity for most of us — a necessity that can be quite expensive. It doesn’t have to be that way. With a bit of research and time, there are plenty of ways to cut the costs associated with eye care. Here are some tips for keeping your vision care costs [...]

Sometimes a situation arises when you must make a decision on whether to use money that you had earmarked for a specific event for something other than its intended purpose. These financial decisions can be some of the hardest to make and is one that I recently received from a reader who wanted to [...]

Things I Learned Working From Home: Being someone who works at home myself, I could relate to this post very well. If you are thinking of striking it out on your own and working from home in the future, this is a good list to look over with the added benefit of a [...]

I have always viewed credit cards as a financial tool. So it came as a bit of surprise when I realized that for many people credit cards are just as much a fashion statement as they are a financial tool. This truly hit home this weekend.
I was talking with a lady who has 17 [...]

By M Butler, special to pfadvice
I don’t own a car. I found myself in a desperate situation where I was not able to meet all of the payment obligations that I had and I was slowly drowning in debt. I needed to do something drastic and my decision was to get rid of my car. [...]

When you have the opportunity to give a little money back, it’s often hard to decide where exactly you should donate the money. That is a question which came by e-mail after I posted the article about tips from a fundraiser:
I recently came into some unexpected money and I would like to donate about [...]