Personal Finance Advice

With this downturning economy, even governments are having a hard time. My own city is facing at least a $4 million dollar decrease in revenues, and my state is facing more than $140 million in shortfalls.
One alternative to getting out of the situation is to raise taxes, a solution that no one likes. Thus, the [...]

I have been out of work for a few months. At first, I enjoyed having a bit of stress free time. As I look back on the most tranquil times of my adult life, they were almost certainly the summer after I finished college, the summer after I finished my law degree and [...]

Baby boomers remember a time when airline travel was a luxury and a reason to dress up. But these days, does anyone look forward to flying? Passenger complaints have been increasing along with consumer activism and lobbying congress, but the myriad annoyances involved in taking a commercial flight aren’t expected to get better in the [...]

There’s a lot about our consumer culture that worries and, sometimes, shocks me. Sometimes things even worry me. Like this: Lately I’ve noticed that things are becoming substitutes for actual experiences. We’ve taken to buying rather than doing. I see this in every sector, but it seems to be extremely prevalent in the sporting goods/outdoors [...]

Dave Kansas of the Wall Street Journal has what I like to see in a capitalist economy: optimism. Talking about the year ahead, he described the stock market as looking “to the future, rather than the past.” Isn’t that exactly what we should do with our money? We save for the future, we plan for [...]

I went for a drive today. I did not go very far – just the distance of two subdivisions so that I could drop my son off at a friend’s house. I must have seen at least ten or twelve kids riding bicycles, roller blading and skateboarding. It was a beautiful [...]

There are those who get up and get things done and those who sit and complain. If you’re a get-r-done type of person, then you’re probably considering a second job to help you through financial problems.
Sometimes things are not always as easy as they should be, such is the case with a second job. While [...]

When you move into a new apartment, you will undoubtedly need or want some items that you didn’t have in your previous apartment. Every apartment has a different layout, different windows, different amounts of storage space, and other subtleties that can invoke the desire to buy something that solves a problem—whether it’s a new couch [...]

Children don’t usually learn money management skills in schools, but don’t think that means they don’t learn about money. Children are like sponges. They soak up everything they can at an early age, and learn much more than we’d like from example. This is why positive role modeling is so important. It’s also why you’re [...]

We all know that staying healthy saves us money. The healthier you are, the lower your insurance and medical expenses are likely to be. We are encouraged to eat right, exercise and sleep well in order to remain healthy. But one area that is often overlooked when we talk about the health/money relationship is keeping [...]

I have been walking regularly to many errands to save money on gas, wear-and-tear on the car, and to tamp down the urge to spend money on a gym membership. While an energizing and cleansing experience, these walks reveal unpleasant sights in my city: litter, leaves clogging street drains, and stray shopping carts.
These are not [...]

The business section of the Denver Post included a bit about Fannie Mae signing interim rental contracts with tenants of properties their landlords couldn’t pay for. What does this tell me? A renter doesn’t know the financial position of their landlords. It used to be that was a just fine arrangement, but maybe it [...]

Weekend reading is a round-up of personal finance and money related stories that caught the eye of our forum members this week:

WSJ Tries Blaming Economic Woes on People Being Frugal
Porn industry seeks federal bailout
If You Don’t Need It, It’s Not A Bargain At All
Lenders digging up more than your credit score [...]

The Washington Post recently ran an article that really hit home with me. The article detailed the high expense of day-care and cited cases of young children being left at home alone. It went on to explain that many middle and working class families are being forced to make some really tough decisions regarding childcare, [...]

When we pay so much money for plane tickets, why does the experience have to be so miserable? Well, maybe it doesn’t have to be. While this article won’t tell you how to maintain your sanity in a grounded plane for seven hours, it will give you some ideas for making the best of a [...]

My wife is a creature of habit – in a good way. She gets up at 5:30 am every day except Saturday so that she can enjoy a healthy breakfast of oatmeal (always from scratch — never instant!) and walnuts, along with a cup or two of her favorite coffee. For at least [...]

If you’re like me and you sell pretty much anything you don’t use anymore on eBay, then you do a lot of shipping. I hate to eat into my profit margin by paying for shipping supplies, though, so over the years I’ve found ways to minimize their cost. Whether you’re shipping things for your small [...]

I know someone who has been out of work for four or five months. (He had been a big-wig at a financial/investment firm and got laid off.) I greeted him the other day when we were both out raking leaves and asked how the job hunt was going.
“It’s been hard. I can’t find anything,” he [...]

In the current economy with layoffs, downsizing, and the flat-out lost job, there are a lot of professionals hoofing the street for a job as well as skilled laborers and unskilled workers. If all you’ve ever done is something as specific as, say, Title Insurance, how do you get the job at something “less” [...]

Sunday, December 28, 2008, was a black day. I needed advice from a real person regarding my iPod. My younger son needed software for his iPod. My wife had returns to make at Old Navy and The Gap. My older son needed something to do. Thus the stars were aligned for [...]