Personal Finance Advice

I hate Valentine’s Day. It’s not because I’m not a romantic. I am (but don’t tell anyone). I hate it because it’s a holiday that makes a lot of people feel badly about themselves because of what they may not have on a particular day of the year. It’s worse than trying to keep up [...]

I love the Super Bowl, but probably not why you think. For me, the Super Bowl is a great time to do activities on a weekend without the crowds. It is a great day to go skiing as you have the slopes basically to yourself and none of the long lift lines for a winter [...]

One of the most important life lessons that we can all learn is to seriously listen to and consider the advice from those who have more experience than we do. When it comes to the end of our life, most of us are going to have some regrets. A nurse, Bronnie Ware, who spent years [...]

I spent last week in Las Vegas visiting with an old friend. Besides catching up, I also planned to visit a number of timeshare presentations to write a series about what you can expect if you attend the timeshare presentations to get the freebies and the type of manipulation that occurs (and in the process [...]

You are using far too much of far too many things and you probably don’t even realize it. Most of it is simply out of habit although a good portion of it has it’s roots in commercials. No matter what the cause, becoming aware that you may be needlessly wasting money by using too much [...]

This Week’s Money Tip: Visiting Las Vegas for a few days to see a friend made it readily apparent that hotels here have found a wonderful way to make their hotel prices seem much less expensive than they really are. Hidden fees come in all shapes in sizes. Most people are aware of the hidden [...]

One of the things that makes getting ones finances in order difficult is the assumption that pleasure costs money. The truth is that it really doesn’t have to. The more that you enjoy the simple pleasures in life that don’t cost anything, the easier it is to get yourself out of the consumer mindset that [...]

I used to have a bad TV habit. A really bad TV habit. There were the daily prime-time shows during the week that I began watching as soon as I got home, and then sports the entire weekend. It never occurred to me that there could be a life without TV. It was just the [...]

One of the biggest fallacies with personal finances is that there is a single way to (beyond the basic foundation of spending less than you earn) approach them. There are so many extenuating circumstances for each person that what may make perfect sense for me doesn’t make any sense at all for others. If you [...]

I must admit that I wish I had more artistic talent. When there is an art piece that catches my eye, I can stare at it for hours wondering how the artist was able to visualize the final piece from the raw materials she decided to use. I also must admit that I have a [...]

Most people that have decided to take control of their finances and reduce their debt have come across at least one of the various debt snowball methods. Basically, creating a debt snowball is a way to arrange one’s debt so as to tackle a single debt at a time (to more efficiently pay off the [...]

There are a lot of people collecting pennies these days. Not just any pennies. They are collecting pennies that date before 1982 and plan on making a lot of money on them. These people are penny hoarders and they have a plan. Penny hoarders are only interested in the pre-1982 pennies because these pennies are [...]

For anyone trying to get out of debt, the debt snowball method has become the choice of many to tackle their debt. This shouldn’t be a surprise as it is a straightforward and easy to follow method that works. While the basics are the same, there are a variety of different debt snowball approaches that [...]

When it comes to getting life insurance, most of us tend to shy away from really thinking about why we need it. It doesn’t matter whether you fall into the low risk or high risk life insurance category, we’d all rather ignore the reason that it’s purchased in the first place. For this reason, most [...]

When most people think about New Year financial resolutions, they think about tackling those difficult issues that they know that they should be doing, but have been avoiding because they know working on them is going to take time, effort and probably a little pain. Get rid of the credit card debt. Reduce costs. Make [...]

I was in Las Vegas this past week and wandered into the Wynn Hotel and Casino I was just in time for them to open their new “high roller” slot machine section, apparently the week before Christmas is one of the slowest weeks in Las Vegas so a lot of the casinos use this time [...]

I do have a credit card and I use it for a lot of my travel expenses because it provides me with a lot of advantages. I also use cash a lot just because I developed the habit when I lived in Japan and almost all transactions there were done in cash. There are still [...]

I walked out to get my mail yesterday to find an unexpected check in the mail. Of course, I am always thrilled when I get unexpected checks in the mail. Usually they are for rebates that I forgot about and simply mean a few extra bucks in my pocket, but I am never one to [...]

I’ve always kept my eyes open and to the ground when I walk and the result is that I usually find at least $100 dollars a year. There’s a lot of money at your feet if you are willing to look, and some people take this looking seriously. In fact, for them the streets are [...]

Most people only consider the cost of cigarettes when they calculate how much smoking is costing them. It’s easy to calculate this cost as you know exactly how much you are handing over in cash for each pack of cigarettes you purchase. The truth, however, is that the cost of cigarettes is only a small [...]