Personal Finance Advice

Recently my all-in-one printer/scanner/copier experienced a malfunction. During the initialization process, the print head moves around a bit, dancing a noisy little jig, and then the light on the scanner head illuminates, and the head moves out a few inches from its “home.” After a moment or two, the scanner head does its own jig [...]

If you want to make a little extra money and you have a talent, you can give busking a try. Busking is performing in streets, train stations, or subways for money. You put on your show and you leave a hat, jar, or some other container out for the public to drop money in if [...]

Sitting here at my computer, late on a Saturday night, I am thinking about one thing — frozen treats, whether ice cream or gelato or frozen yogurt. About fifteen hours ago, I told my wife that if we did nothing else today, we needed to go out for a frozen treat. If I had to [...]

People often want to know how they can make more money. Beyond the standard answers of sell your stuff, take a part time job, do online surveys, or other ideas, there is one way that a lot of people don’t consider: Become more versatile. While there are some professions that reward specialists with high pay [...]

I have a friend who is incredibly picky, to the detriment of her finances. She demands certain brands of every food and personal product she buys. Even if another brand is cheaper, she won’t buy it. She demands specific features in her cars. On vacation, her hotel room must have certain views and specific amenities. [...]

As some of my more regular readers may recall, I also write a literary criticism column for Bibliobuffet. I have a long standing love of books and I would gladly give up my television before I would give up my library. Admittedly, I would miss the Jack Benny Show, Fringe and Survivor but if something [...]

It’s not news that you can make money by becoming a medical research subject. There are ads in most major papers, on TV and the Internet recruiting people with various conditions to try new drugs and therapies. These can be good ways to make money if you qualify and if you aren’t worried about the [...]

The question of whether to write “See ID” on your credit cards instead of signing them comes up a lot in financial circles. The idea is that, by writing, “See ID” on your card instead of signing it, you are encouraging retailers to check your ID to make sure your card isn’t being used fraudulently. [...]

Now that the kids are in school and the back to school shopping is done, it’s time to think about the next big spending event: Christmas. Christmas is a little less than four months away. It’s time to take action now so that you have the money you need for Christmas shopping. It’s also time [...]

I am sure that everyone who has ever tried to reduce their budget, whether it be to accommodate for a reduced income, or to help with debt reduction, has been told or read about cutting their utility bills. You may or may not have actually been able to shave money from your bills, but hopefully [...]

If you want to save or have a lot of money, you may have to choose your mate carefully. While love is fine and even great, there are plenty of people who enter into marriage in the full knowledge of exactly how it will help (or hurt) them financially. While it may sound cold, it’s [...]

Managing a household is a full time job and it requires a lot of skill, patience and vision to do it well. Those of you who manage your households know what I am talking about. Unless you are organized and focused, waste is almost inevitable. Keeping the house well stocked with necessaries, dealing with vendors [...]

Just about every time we go on vacation, someone gets sick. I think it’s because we’re all off our normal routines and we’re exposed to a lot more people. We eat food that we don’t normally eat, we stay out later and get less sleep, we’re around large crowds of germy people, and we are [...]

One of the best ways to save money is also the hardest. You have to cultivate patience. In today’s world that moves so fast and where everything is about having and doing things right now, patience is hard to find and even harder to apply. Every day new things are coming out that we want. [...]

Yesterday I went grocery shopping. When the woman in line behind me noticed my stack of coupons, she jokingly suggested to her husband that they might want to move to a different line. I laughed and exchanged pleasantries with the couple while the cashier rang up my purchases. When everything had been rung up, my [...]

When you think of panhandling, you probably think of the homeless and the desperate. It would never be something that a white collar professional would engage in. Would it? If you think the answer is, “No,” here’s a story for you. There is a man who panhandles near my office and I walk past him [...]

We all love our stuff. We like our clothes, our knick knacks, and our DVD’s. We like our photographs, saved letters, mementos of our childhood (or our children’s childhoods), and the stuff we inherit from others. As much as we like stuff, there are many problems with stuff, ranging from the money it costs to [...]

By Karen Norling Eight months ago, my husband, Jim, lost his engineering job at GE Health care here in Ohio. In all those eight months –after dozens and dozens of resumes “snail-mailed” and emailed — not one company has called him for an interview. Not one company has called me for an interview either, despite [...]

I’ll admit, right at the beginning of this post, that I may be looking at things in a stereotypical manner. I realize that everyone has different reasons for noticing certain things, but I ran into a situation the other day that made me think. I was in the local Applebee’s and the two women in [...]

I have recently read a number of articles about the businesses which are being hit the hardest by the current downturn in US and well as the global economy. This got me thinking about the businesses that should be affected, even though apparently some of them aren’t. Giant Gas Guzzling SUVs: Not only are they [...]