Personal Finance Advice

When many people today think of frugality they think of a life filled with deprivation and sacrifice. They think of people who are living on the fringe of society; people who make all their own clothes, eschew modern technology, aren’t knowledgeable about popular culture, and mail-order worms for their compost heaps. While some frugal people [...]

Personal finance isn’t about money. Well, it is about money in the sense that it’s not about music or biology or hockey, but it’s not only about money. Having strong personal finance skills usually does mean that you will have more money than your peers, but the benefits of honing your personal finance skills go [...]

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that gas prices are soaring sky high. As a result, many people are rushing out to trade in their older, larger, inefficient cars for newer smaller, more efficient models. But is this rush to trade really necessary, or even a good thing? Certainly if you’re driving [...]

I love my blue jeans. They’re a pain to find and when I do, I pay top dollar for something that fits and isn’t too fashionable. I then wear them till they’re holding on by mere threads. I do get good use out of my jeans, but the price I end up paying after a [...]

Weekend reading is a round-up of personal finance reading that has caught our eye that may be of interest to you: Discussions From The Forums These are threads started this past week within the forums which have created quite a bit of discussion: Can I afford this house? Am I the only one? just wondering [...]

I’m a huge fan of daylight savings time. I hate the long dark winters and get excited when we make the transition to longer days. But beyond my joy at more daylight, the transition to daylight savings time also saves me money. When we moved to the longer period of daylight savings time last year, [...]

“Instead of using coupons, I buy things on sale” is a statement I hear often from people who think I waste my time clipping coupons. My response is, “Why not do both? If you use the coupons for things that are on sale, you can save even more.” In most cases, the “instead of” excuse [...]

“No interest and no payments for an entire year!” This statement can stop people in their tracks when shopping and often times is the deciding factor on a particular purchase. But this statement can be a dangerous one if you aren’t careful. No interest = no worries, right? Not exactly. I personally have taken advantage [...]

My church is part of a denomination whose doctrinal statement reads in part, “Nonconformity calls us to reject the world’s unrestrained materialism, its sensualism, and its self-centeredness. Rather we seek to express the values of God’s kingdom by a lifestyle of modesty and simplicity.” Nevertheless, in the eight and a half years I have been [...]

This week I got sucked into jury duty. The last time I did it I was very young and didn’t really care about giving up a whole day to sit in a courtroom for just a few dollars. Heck, at that age they could have given me anything and I would have thought it a [...]

It seems everything is taxable — even coupons! I never questioned the small print on the coupons I use, at least not the part about the customer paying sales tax. (I don’t understand why a manufacturer can say a coupon shouldn’t be doubled when it’s the retailer that makes a doubling offer, but that’s not [...]

Weekend reading is a round-up of personal finance reading that has caught our eye that may be of interest to you: Discussions From The Forums These are threads started this past week within the forums which have created quite a bit of discussion: Is This is What Americans Consider Sacrifice These Days? Stay at home [...]

When setting up and running a household budget, the most important thing is that it works for you and your household. There are many good systems and practices that people may recommend, but the ultimate test of such a system is how and if it actually works in your personal finances. My husband and I [...]

A neighbor recently announced that she was getting serious about getting out of debt and saving for her family’s future. “Good for you,” I said and meant it, right up until she started detailing her plan for becoming more frugal. “We need to start staying home more,” she said. “We waste too much money eating [...]

Anyone who is seriously considering stay-at-home parenting is likely to have done the math. Most potential stay-at-home parents know how much they will have to cut their expenses to live on less than two full salaries. They have considered the financial effects of forgoing several years of career experience, and they are even likely to [...]

Most people are probably painfully aware that gas prices have been rapidly increasing over the last couple of years (and especially months), thus also increasing the costs of any items needing to be delivered from anywhere, the most common being groceries. Many people are feeling the crunch in their budgets as they find themselves having [...]

Even though I don’t watch a lot of television I, like everyone else, have had to look into converting my TV to digital so I can continue to receive my local networks after February 2009. While I don’t watch much, I do like to be able to see the news or PBS every now and [...]

I recently discovered a new website that has a wealth of information about saving money on fuel. I’m pretty sure the website itself isn’t new, but it’s new to me and it might be new to you too. The website is Fueleconomy.gov and it run by the US Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection [...]

Weekend reading is a round-up of personal finance reading that has caught our eye that may be of interest to you: Blog Contest Winners Each month we run a fun blog contest among the savingadvice member bloggers. These are the three winners entries for March: What public school can teach you about money What a [...]

The boxes were gone. My three-year-old was crestfallen. He had looked forward to his regular job of returning the plastic bags from last week’s grocery shopping trip to the recycling boxes just inside the store. But the boxes are no longer there; an employee told us that the store had discontinued its recycling. “You know [...]