Personal Finance Advice

Are you overwhelmed and horrified by the prices you’ve been quoted to provide food and drinks for your wedding guests? It doesn’t have to be that way. Here are some options to keep food and drink costs within your wedding budget. Choose a wedding venue that lets you choose the caterer: Many wedding reception sites [...]

If you’re someone who doesn’t have the time or sufficient knowledge of the tax code to prepare your own tax returns, you might be wondering how to find a quality professional to do your taxes. After all, just because someone will accept money in exchange for preparing a tax return doesn’t make them good at [...]

In the midst of a recession, it’s easy to feel like things will never get better. The news is filled with reports of layoffs and stock market declines, the atmosphere at work is somber, and talk about the economy even makes its way into the TV shows you watch to get away from it all. [...]

In this economy, many of us probably can’t afford to take a summer vacation like we’re used to. But if there’s a trip you can’t avoid in your future (like an out-of-town wedding or a family reunion), there are things you can do to minimize the cost of your trip no matter where you’re going. [...]

After following sales and coupons religiously for several months, I’ve started to get a sense of the best prices for various items. The best way to get these prices is to use the Coupon Mom method of combining a store’s loyalty card discount with sales and coupons. However, over the last several months, it has [...]

The only thing I used to do to save money on groceries was to make a list before each shopping trip and stick to a monthly grocery budget. I didn’t use coupons because I figured I saved more money by purchasing store brands (preferably store brands on sale) and shopping at discount stores and farmers [...]

If you’re trying to scale back your spending and live within your means or just save a little more each month, how do you determine reasonable spending amounts for each category of spending in your life like food, clothes, and transportation? Well, there are several government standards that you can use as a guideline. The [...]

If you can’t afford the luxury of a professional crew of organizers and designers to organize your clutter and maximize your space, that doesn’t mean you have to keep living in chaos. Those of us on a budget still have plenty of options for getting organized. All you need to get started is some time [...]

Though there have been reports that credit card rewards programs are being scaled back and there don’t seem to be as many great signup bonuses these days, there is one signup bonus that is being heavily advertised that you may want to check out. Discover is offering a $100 Cashback Bonus when you make $500 [...]

Knowing what to do when you first graduate isn’t easy. There’s so much at stake: paying off student loans, choosing a geographic location you’ll enjoy, starting your career off on the right foot-how do you know what jobs to spend your time and energy applying for, when to accept an offer, and when to keep [...]

For all the time and expense involved and for all the talk about how a college degree will help you land a job and make a higher salary, there sure are a lot of important things that many college curriculum don’t teach you about how to excel in the working world. Here are a few [...]

When you’re a young adult preparing for a working world that you haven’t yet experienced, knowing what to expect is difficult. Here are a number of things I wish I had known about work when I was 20 that would have gotten me off to a better start. Why learn these lessons the hard way [...]

I wrote earlier how to minimize shipping costs of by purchasing a digital scale, skipping the post office, avoiding Stamps.com’s printable stamps, buying old stamps from eBay, and using free online tools. Here are six more ways to keep your shipping costs down. Take advantage of free USPS supplies: If you’re sending items via USPS [...]

The first time I went to the 99-cent store was about four years ago. I went primarily out of curiosity, and I was pretty creeped out. I was mostly interested in looking at the food, and it seemed like everything they sold was one letter off from the brand name item: Rice Krispis, Milk-e-way, you [...]

Do you love your job? Do you wish you did? Your mantra may be, “there’s a reason they call it work,” but you don’t have to trudge through your weekdays forever if you don’t want to. The first step to landing your dream job is getting rid of the negative thoughts that are preventing you [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

You’ve already heard that owning a home can be a great way to build wealth and financial security and that there’s this mysterious thing called “pride of ownership” that makes it enjoyable to mow your lawn even when it’s 100 degrees outside. But the seemingly small benefits of living in a house that’s all yours [...]