Personal Finance Advice

I’m terrible with coupons, but this week I managed to get get $45.48 worth of food for $3.50 — if you have a Safeway (or Safeway affiliated) grocery store near you, I will show you exactly how to do it. This week Safeway is offering Betty Crocker Fruit Roll-Ups for $1.00 each if you use [...]

There are a lot of myths when it comes to shopping, and one of the biggest is that women love to shop while men hate shopping. The truth, according to Lee Eisenberg, author of Shoptimism, is that men and women both love and hate to shop in about the same proportional numbers. The same is [...]

Aaron Patzer, the founder of Mint.com, thinks that for 20 and 30 year olds, the major savings problem is the cost of socially going out — dinners at restaurants, drinks with friends and the daily coffee at the local coffee shop. As we get older, the savings problem becomes one of trying to impress others [...]

There is a website that is encouraging people to make one of their New Year’s Resolutions be moving their money from the large banks to community banks. They use It’s A Wonderful Life to make their point: Here, one woman explains why she is making the change: Do you think that this is a good [...]

What a lot of people don’t realize is that there is a lot of research and planning to get you to spend more when you walk into a store. Lee Eisenberg,the author of “Shoptimism” says that the retail outlets are experts at playing on your emotions, your perceptions and your lack of critical reasoning. What [...]

If you know that you are going to have your car for a long time, buying parts with a lifetime warranty can make a lot of sense, even if those parts are more expensive than others that are available. That is a lesson that can be learned from Rachel and her car named Chariot. She [...]

Have you ever wondered why the look of fast food is always so much different in the ads than it is in reality? It’s because they hire professional food make-up artists to make the food look better than it ever could in real life. This is how the commercials and print ads fool you into [...]

I love this idea as a way to physical show what it’s like to earn minimum wage in the US today. Blake Fall-Conroy put together a machine that dispenses pennies and allows any person to work for minimum wage. The concept is simple. An individual cranks a handle on the machine and pennies drop out [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

When people find out that I’m a professional blogger, they either ask me what the hell that means or how is it possible to make enough money to live on by blogging. Many people seem to think that there must be some hidden secret to easy success that only a few know and that is [...]

I like to walk and when I walk, I am always on the lookout for coins. I don’t really consciously do this — it has become a habit over the years. What I do know is that most years I add over $100 to my savings (you would need to keep over $10,000 in your [...]

This is a series of Thai insurance commercials (subtitled in English) that will have tears rolling down your face. Make sure you don’t have any place to go where you can’t have red, puffy eyes before watching and make sure that you have plenty of tissues on hand: It’s always important to remember that the [...]

I have great admiration for all artist and one wish that I have is that I possessed more artistic talent. I’m amazed by the artwork that an artist is able to produce and wonder how each manages to get to the final stage from the humble beginning. While I’m impressed by all art, I’m especially [...]

I’m making an assumption that you really shouldn’t be reading this post because, well, you’re doing exactly what you shouldn’t be doing. If you were looking for specific information to help you with your finances, you should be reading about that topic rather than this post about why you shouldn’t be reading this post. One [...]

We are looking for someone in debt that is willing to blog about it. We recently purchased the Blogging Away Debt Blog and are looking for someone to take over the blogging from Tricia once she has paid off all her debt. Tricia will still be around blogging for awhile, so you would be blogging [...]