Personal Finance Advice

We don’t like to think about our parents getting older, facing illness, and their eventual deaths. We also don’t like to think about having to care for them and make financial decisions for them. It seems unnatural somehow. Parents care for us; it’s not supposed to be the other way around. But like it or [...]

Dan Ariely, a professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University, says that studies show that when people pay off loans, they pay off the small loans first rather than the loans with the highest interest rate. Studies also show that even when people have debt, they keep a lot of cash. Both of these in [...]

There is an image that the US has become an nation of shopaholics driven primarily by consumerism. Lee Eisenberg, the author of Shoptimism, believes that this is not truly the case. He sees that the average person still retains some of the frugality on which the US was founded and believes that most people that [...]

It’s not often that a company wants to give you money instead of relieve it from you on Black Friday, but that is exactly what ING is offering for today only. If you sign up for their Orange Electric checking account, they will give you $121. The $121 number comes from the amount the average [...]

I don’t have an iPhone (I don’t even have a cell phone, but that’s a whole other story), but if I did, I would definitely buy the Opportunity Cost of Money iPhone app. This iPhone app makes the cost of your purchases concrete. Basically, it’s an iPhone app where you list all of the things [...]

One of the biggest excuses that I hear for spending money you don’t have is that you might die tomorrow. “What if I’m hit by a bus tomorrow and I didn’t go on that vacation, or have that car, or own that bag?” The thinking is that it would be a shame to die without [...]

Here is an interesting question to ponder. Is the reason that Americans are such lousy savers due to the freedom that parents give to their kids as opposed to how children are raised in other countries? We aren’t told who we should marry, we aren’t told what job we should do, but we are also [...]

In the process of making out my Christmas card list for the year, I was struck by how many of our close friends are also debt free. I’ve never given it much thought, but there it was. We didn’t plan it this way, it just sort of evolved over the years. Like any sort of [...]

I’m always a little surprised at how much everything in our society is measured in terms of money. We measure our worth by our salaries, not by how much we love our work. We measure our remodeling projects by how much we can get back when we sell and not on how much we love [...]

I need to buy new sneakers today. I know this because when I took my dog for a walk this morning, the plastic heel guard in my right sneaker tore through the fabric cover and scratched my heel. More specifically, the abrasion continued for the full mile that I walked so that I was bleeding [...]

As we head into the holiday season and start looking for gifts to give to those hard to buy for people, gift cards stand out as easy gifts that everyone enjoys. But if you’re thinking of giving a pre-paid gift card that’s branded with a credit card logo, you might want to think of another [...]

Looking for inexpensive meals on a tight budget? Look no further than Great Depression Cooking with Clara where 94 year old Clara teaches the meals she made during the great depression (the videos were made from the time she was 91 – 94) while telling stories of the past. A great combination that will leave [...]

My last “real job” where I worked full-time for someone else was a mess. There was sexual harassment, bullying, unfair hours and demands, and all sorts of other foolishness going on. I was young and hadn’t yet saved up a large emergency fund, so leaving wasn’t possible unless I had another job lined up. Not [...]

Many of us find ourselves pressed for time and/or money, at least some of the time. And while it’s true that life can be harrying with it’s demands of cooking, cleaning, work, childcare, and maintenance chores, it’s also true that we bring some of those demands upon ourselves by doing way more than we need [...]

I am tired. I have been up for the past two nights until about 1 am trying to finish projects for clients and writing content for my website. I am also a bit under the weather, as I seem to have a sore throat and headache that just won’t go away. I can tell you [...]

Now that Halloween is over, the retailers have removed the gloves and stopped pretending like any other holiday matters. It’s now full speed ahead to Christmas. Usually I dread this time of year. I enjoy Christmas itself but I hate all the trappings that go along with it. I hate the marketing hype and the [...]

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the War to End All Wars finally drew to a close when the combatant nations signed an armistice to end the First World War. That event was commemorated for the first time on November 11, 1919. Over the years since, November [...]

One of the most common responses I get when people find out that I’m debt free is, “Well, that’s nice for you, but you probably have a huge income.” I’m not alone. Many of my debt free friends say that they get the same response. The assumption is that in order to live debt free [...]

While I’ve never been one to keep up with the Jones’, I’ve noticed a palpable sense of relief amongst many friends, acquaintances, and message board posters that the pressure to keep up, show off, and compete is off. At least for the moment. In the heyday of the 1990′s and early 2000′s, everything was about [...]

I drive an SUV that I purchased new in 2002. It has relatively low mileage but, after nearly eight years of hauling sports equipment for my kids and mulch for my garden, and after assorted spills while my kids negotiated who got to sit where, my car is not as pristine as it once was. [...]