Personal Finance Advice

Lehighton Night at Dorney Park was a highlight of each year when I was a young teenager. For $5 anyone in my small town (Lehighton) could buy an advance ticket for evening admission to the amusement park just over 25 miles away. Not only could a carload of my friends and I enjoy the rides [...]

Personal finance isn’t about money. Well, it is about money in the sense that it’s not about music or biology or hockey, but it’s not only about money. Having strong personal finance skills usually does mean that you will have more money than your peers, but the benefits of honing your personal finance skills go [...]

“Instead of using coupons, I buy things on sale” is a statement I hear often from people who think I waste my time clipping coupons. My response is, “Why not do both? If you use the coupons for things that are on sale, you can save even more.” In most cases, the “instead of” excuse [...]

My church is part of a denomination whose doctrinal statement reads in part, “Nonconformity calls us to reject the world’s unrestrained materialism, its sensualism, and its self-centeredness. Rather we seek to express the values of God’s kingdom by a lifestyle of modesty and simplicity.” Nevertheless, in the eight and a half years I have been [...]

It seems everything is taxable — even coupons! I never questioned the small print on the coupons I use, at least not the part about the customer paying sales tax. (I don’t understand why a manufacturer can say a coupon shouldn’t be doubled when it’s the retailer that makes a doubling offer, but that’s not [...]

Anyone who is seriously considering stay-at-home parenting is likely to have done the math. Most potential stay-at-home parents know how much they will have to cut their expenses to live on less than two full salaries. They have considered the financial effects of forgoing several years of career experience, and they are even likely to [...]

The boxes were gone. My three-year-old was crestfallen. He had looked forward to his regular job of returning the plastic bags from last week’s grocery shopping trip to the recycling boxes just inside the store. But the boxes are no longer there; an employee told us that the store had discontinued its recycling. “You know [...]

Depending on where you live, you may see copies of Christian business directories, the most well known of which is The Shepherd’s Guide, in businesses around town. Though the stated purpose of such directories is couched in loftier terms, their basic goal is to promote businesses owned by Christians to Christian customers, encouraging people to [...]

Printing invitations, photos, shipping labels, and other paper items from a home computer is one do-it-yourself activity many people erroneously adopt in an effort to save money. While printing from home rather than buying in a store can save money in some cases, it may actually cost more in others. Those who believe they are [...]

Just in case you have spotted me checking out all the library books I can find by Walter Wick, best known as co-creator of the I Spy books, I have a confession to make: they’re not really for my kids. I did check out the first one for my son, but while I learned he [...]

Pennies made the news this month, as they now cost more than their value to mint. (Nickels do, too.) These costs are blamed on the rising prices of the metals used to make the coins, so theoretically, you might be able to melt down a pile of coins and sell them for more than their [...]

My husband and I often remember prices differently: I think it was $5; he thinks it was $4. Turns out it was $4.99. The difference is how we view the cost — I automatically round up in my mind: $0.89 becomes $0.90, $1.46 becomes $1.50, $1288 becomes $1300. He tends to block out anything after [...]

Every saver knows the internal struggle with the “gimmie monster.” By sticking to our chosen saving strategies, most of us can win most of our bouts with him. But sometimes, the monster wins out too often. For some of us, spending is an addiction, and the gimmie monster devours all of our savings. If you [...]

“If Bill Gates saw $100 lying on the ground, it wouldn’t be worth his time to pick it up,” a friend told me once. She reasoned that he would make more during that time by doing something else. At an estimated salary of $4,000 per minute, every minute of the week, Gates would indeed be [...]

Trent Hamm at the Simple Dollar wrote a post in January about enjoying the free things in life. On a flight home, he found himself looking forward to taking a hot shower and spending time with his family. Once he realized that these things were free or nearly free, he started listing activities he enjoyed [...]

During the last Christmas season, Disney’s Club Penguin website allowed children who played its online games to donate their virtual earnings to help the environment, improve children’s health, or assist children in developing countries. Though players could use the coins to purchase virtual items to enhance the games, more than 2.5 million of them chose [...]

What I am about to say may be shocking to some in financially responsible circles: I use my credit cards more and more each year. Now, to make a disclaimer, I have never been tempted to rack up credit card debt and have only once failed to pay off the balance in full (a mistake [...]

Big companies pay big bucks for advertising because they know it works. If you have a small business — whether a hobby business that earns you a little mad money or a full-fledged company that employs several people — you know advertising works, too. But you might not have enough money to advertise in the [...]

One thing saving has in common with the rest of life is that opportunities are always changing. Economic conditions, companies’ offers and policies, tax laws, and personal financial situations are not static. As a result, the best ways to save today might not be the best ways to save tomorrow. The best savers don’t say, [...]

“Act now, and you may be able to pay less than you owe!” proclaims an ad for debt consolidation services. I’m all for paying off debts, but I was offended. Why should some people be allowed to pay less than they owe when others (like me) are habitually denying themselves things they want in order [...]