Personal Finance Advice

If you need to make a onetime purchase and you find a way to save a few dollars, it is a good thing. At the same time, if you are going to put a lot of effort into finding ways to save money, it is almost always going to be more beneficial to focus your [...]

If you ever face a medical crisis, you’ll be amazed at how quickly the bills mount up, even with great insurance. You could argue about whether insurers are inherently evil, coldhearted, or callous, but the bottom line is that insurers are businesses that want to get the most money they can out of you. Sometimes [...]

It’s been said that you get what you pay for. While there may be exceptions to that rule, it does often prove to be the case. Where quality matters, paying more for an item of higher quality can offer a better value than paying less for lesser quality. For example, I’ve learned through comments that [...]

If you’ve ever read a blog, magazine, or website, you’ve probably seen a stock image. These are photographs that someone has taken and sold on a royalty-free basis to the writer, publisher or designer. The photographer owns the rights to the image, so the buyer is not allowed to resell it. However, the buyer can [...]

An insurance company has recently been running a television commercial in which it notes that saving money is now a very popular topic of conversation. One incidental character in the commercial tells a friend that since he stopped buying lunch each day and started bringing lunch from home, he is putting fifty dollars each week [...]

We just bought some new living room furniture. Our old furniture was just that: Old. While it was still serviceable, it was no longer that comfortable. Yes, we could still sit on the couch, but the couch had lost a lot of its support and comfort. It was also no longer a great match for [...]

I just returned from a trip to my local grocery store. The store manager, who has been with the company for thirty years, was at the front of the store greeting customers. The employees who have been working there for the past ten years smiled and said hello as I walked by them. Indeed, most [...]

A lot of times when you go shopping on vacation, it isn’t only those on the trip with you that you’re shopping for. You’ll probably want to get something for your friends, classmates, and family members who are back home. But how do you shop for other people plus yourself without breaking the bank? There [...]

My parents are getting older. Dad will be 83 in a few months. Mom will be 72. Dad suffered a fall a couple of months ago and, although he has recovered, a full recovery was in doubt for quite a while. He is also close to being deaf and can hear only with the help [...]

Plastic bags of all descriptions make up more of our budgets than we would like. Sandwich bags, storage bags, trash bags, and yard waste bags all contribute to our monthly spending. However, I have a friend who claims to have spent nothing on storage or trash bags for over two years. How does she do [...]

There are a lot of different levels of friendship. There is the guy in the cubicle next to you at work who you don’t really like all that much, but who you still introduce to your significant other as your friend because you don’t want to create awkwardness at work. There is the guy you [...]

One thing that has saved me a ton of money over the years is the fact that I am very ad-averse. Not only do I try to keep as much advertising as possible out of my life, when I do see an ad I don’t buy into the sales pitch. Advertising seems to have the [...]

I very much enjoyed a recent Saving Advice column that considered the etiquette of having a yard sale. The writer made several excellent points about how a seller should approach a yard sale and what can and should be sold at yard sales. It occurs to me, however, that a yard sale really should only [...]

If you travel with kids, you’re likely to have a bout of the “gimmies” at some point during your vacation. Your kids are likely to want everything they see and you’ll be trying to stick to your budget. How can you manage the “gimmies” while still allowing your kids to have some shopping fun? Buy [...]

It was not that long ago that a young person could find a job and expect to keep that job until he retired. Experience was rewarded. Seniority was respected. Pensions were offered. And at the end of a long career, employers expressed their gratitude. Those days are gone and it is now exceedingly rare to [...]

Last year was the year the I finally decided I’d had enough of my lawn. The grass only grew in certain places, no matter how much we watered or which grass breeds we tried. We tried everything to get a lush, green lawn. We fertilized, tested the soil, watered, planted grass breeds indigenous to our [...]

Over the course of a lifetime, you will have many occasions to purchase living things. If you own a home, there will be landscaping that might require plants. Wherever you live, you might want houseplants. Perhaps you want a pet, whether that means a dog or a canary or a horse. If you know your [...]

Last year I finally caved in to my baser urges and bought a Wii. I also bought the Wii Fit and balance board to go with it so I could get a little fun exercise on bad weather days. I’ve loved the Wii and bought all kinds of games for it. In my opinion, it [...]

I write a lot about things that I can eliminate in order to save money, but I am actually to the point where I really have nothing else that I particularly want to eliminate from my life or my household. There are some things that are just too important to my daily pleasure and, although [...]

Many of my friends and family members are single. Some by choice, some because they haven’t yet met the right person, and others are divorced or widowed. With very few exceptions, they turn to shopping to fill a void in their lives. They aren’t comfortable being alone, so hitting the mall allows them to get [...]