Personal Finance Advice

My wife and I will do just about anything for each other. We have a great relationship and complement each other’s strengths. I fold the laundry. She puts it away. I do the grocery shopping. She puts the groceries away. I clean the bathrooms while she does the floors.
I [...]

If you celebrate Christmas, chances are good that you decorate a Christmas tree. Whatever other decorations, ornaments and other seasonal reminders with which you adorn your home, your Christmas tree is probably the focal point. You may decorate your tree on Christmas Eve, as one of my neighbours used to do, or you [...]

I recently mentioned Martha, my trash-exploring next door neighbor when I was a child. Martha always found creative ways to make money, whether it was through her yard sales, plant sales or barn-based general store. She made money on her crafts and her preserves. If she touched it, she found a way [...]

When I was a boy, tipping in a restaurant was always a discretionary expense. As a general rule, one was expected to tip 15% of the pre-tax bill as long as good service and good food was delivered. I lived in a state with a 5% meals tax so calculating the tip for [...]

I grew up in a small town to the North of Boston, Massachusetts. When I was very young, it was the epitome of a quiet New England town with hundreds of years of history. My family lived next door to Martha and Dick T., a delightful couple who were somewhat older than [...]

Baking Soda is a versatile, environmentally friendly and inexpensive product that belongs not only with your baking ingredients but in a lot of places throughout your house. Baking soda – sodium bicarbonate if you are a chemist – is a leavening agent, hence its use in baking, but it is also useful as [...]

I try to read a lot of newspapers. I read the New York Times and several other papers online and I subscribe to the print versions of the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and our local paper, The Orlando Sentinel. Of course, life often intervenes and prevents me from getting through all of [...]

Have you ever noticed that if you are going to feel guilty about a purchase, you will usually feel guilty about making the purchase? You know how it is. You wander into a store and see something that you really want but do not really need. It may cost $1 or $10 [...]

Once upon a time, we did not have giant landfills full of refuse from all of our disposable conveniences. We relied on reusable items to fulfill our daily needs and we found ways to prolong the utility and longevity of what we owned. Americans were frugal by nature. After WWII, however, our [...]

When I was growing up in the 60’s and 70’s, it seemed that everyone except my parents were members of the American Automobile Association (AAA). Roadside assistance was the great appeal, especially in the days before cell phones. I recall being quite jealous of the silver and red AAA stickers that my friends [...]

There are many modern conveniences which we may not truly need but which remain quite useful. I would be lost without my computer, or the internet, or my television or a host of other gadgets and services. I value each of these things and use them every day, even though they may add [...]

I was chatting with a neighbor – Mike — over the weekend. Mike’s daughter is a senior in high school and looking at a lot of different colleges. Mike is a successful dentist but he is still worried about the economy and the costs of putting his daughter through school, even though he [...]

There have been many articles published which address ways to save money at the grocery store. For the most part, I believe that most of us already know how to save money at the grocery store.
There are even more articles and books published on our relationship with food. Whether you want to lose weight [...]

If you own a home, you probably already know that maintaining it costs a lot more than you expected it would when you bought it. Even if you are not living in the first home that you bought, every house I have known has cost me more time and money than I anticipated. [...]

What Do You Call a Bus Full of Lawyers Going Over a Cliff? A Good Start…
America has an interesting love affair with lawyers. On the one hand, television shows about lawyers capture our interest year after year. On the other hand, in daily life I cannot think of any profession that is criticized [...]

A love of music can be an expensive love. Over the past four decades, I have watched my 8 track tape, vinyl LP and compact disc collections become varying degrees of obsolete. In the case of the eight track tape, I rejoiced in its demise. In the case of the vinyl LP [...]

If you have kids, you have probably endured seasons of organized youth sports. Baseball, basketball, football, hockey, lacrosse, swimming, volleyball – the list of options for kids is seemingly endless and can keep them occupied from January to December. If your kid wants to play a lot of different sports, it can [...]

I am a frugal shopper. I clip coupons, look for sales and comparison shop. Whether I am shopping for groceries or furniture or a car, I want to get the best deal I can get. I enjoy being a smart shopper and I take pride in it. If you are reading [...]

Most of us recall what Ben Franklin told us in his Almanack. “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” In various forms, that proverb actually preceded Old Ben by about 300 years. The fact that we still quote it today tells us that it still [...]

Planning an effective date is both an art and a science. It is a science because successful planning requires both an understanding of your partner and an understanding of where you are in your relationship. It is an art because it must be creative and at times innovative. Moreover, a successful date must [...]