Personal Finance Advice

Google has started two new referral programs. One is for their for their adsense textads which will pay $100 to you when anyone signs up with your referral when the person who signs up generates $100 in adsense revenue. In other words, when the person receives his or her first check from adsense, you also [...]

The above headline isn’t by anyway a means an attempt to try and justify the lack of saving in the US, but to show that our neighbors up north are having their own money saving problems these days too. I found the following information on canadaeast.com: The study found that people no longer prioritize saving [...]

When I was in college, I worked at a local pastry shop part time in the evenings. 30 minutes before closing, we were told to mark all the items left over at 50% off and sell as much as we could. The reason was simple – anything that wasn’t sold was thrown away so it [...]

I have a new article up that explains that when you cut expenses, that doesn’t automatically result in you saving money. Saving money by cutting expenses is a two step process: 1) You cut the expenses and 2) You put the difference between what you were paying and what you’re now paying into a savings [...]

I am back from my short trip to the US and I had a few observations on my travels. With gas prices as high as they are, I guess I would expect people to slow down a bit to save on gas. Slowing down saves a lot of gas – that was the original reason [...]

I have always had a simple policy when it comes to lending money to friends. Any money I lend I never expect to see back. I give it and leave it at that. If the person happens to pay the money back, then that’s a bonus. I feel that this ensures that the friendship will [...]

Almost everyone I talk to about grocery store loyalty cards say that they save them a bunch of money. So how do you resolve this with a widely quoted article by Katy McLaughlin of The Wall Street Journal that was written Jan 21, 2003. According to the article, consumers generally spend more money by shopping [...]

I just found out I was quoted in Budget Living Magazine in their October 2005 issue (page 70) for a story about saving money on groceries. The article title is Browse The Aisles and Bag $168 which gives shopping tips to save money. Although I was interviewed on a lot of different subjects, the only [...]

One of the easiest ways to save money is to simply call the company and ask for a better price. This is especially easy when it comes to services that are offering deep discounts to try and lure you away from their competitors. One of the best ways to do this is to use your [...]

If you haven’t figured it our yet, the place to get the best interest rates on your savings is now over the Internet. There are a number of online banks that offer rates much higher than you are likely to get at your local bank. Two of the more popular of these are ING and [...]

The people affected by Hurricane Katrina will see first hand the downside of taking equity out of their homes in the coming year. Where many might have been able to break even had they left their equity alone, a good number will now be facing foreclosure at the very least and possibly bankruptcy. While mortgage [...]

With gas prices hovering around $3 a gallon and expected to go higher in at least the short term, everyone has someone to blame (isn’t that the American way?) Fortune.com has a decent article putting some perspective into some of the myths people have about the high gas prices. These include the common belief that [...]

With Hurricane Rita bearing down on the gulf coast, money.com is reporting that gas prices may spike to $5 a gallon. The near-term problem isn’t that there is a lack of oil being produced, but a lack of oil refining capability. Hurricane Katrina damaged this capability in Louisiana and Mississippi and Hurricane Rita looks like [...]