Personal Finance Advice

Something has struck me as very odd over the years. I have mostly lived my life with great disdain for car dealers. As someone who was well taught how to shop for used cars from private parties, I never really considered going to the dealership for an overpriced car as an option.
My husband, on [...]

Co-signing on a loan is not something to undertake lightly. The reason that people need you to co-sign is because they have some issues with their credit or otherwise there would be no need for you to do so. And even if they have the best intentions to pay, sometimes things don’t work out as [...]

We all know that walking has health rewards, but it can have financial rewards as well. Here are ten financial reasons you should consider walking:
It’s free. This is the most obvious reason. You have to pay to own or rent a car, hop a bus, or ride the subway. Airplanes, helicopters, yachts, [...]

When it comes time to get a new car there are always a lot of questions that arise since it is a purchase that isn’t done very often. This reader wants to know whether or not she should get a new or used car plus some questions about how to get the best deal:
I will [...]

You may not know this, but your credit card provides a lot of additional services in addition to letting you postpone payment on purchases and earn cash back or frequent flyer miles. One of these services is rental car collision insurance. Car rental companies will always try to sell you insurance options that can add [...]

Most people assume that there is no way to reduce the cost of their commute, but there are a number of alternatives worth considering. Here are 10 ideas that can help you reduce the amount you spend commuting:
Get up earlier: If you can learn to leave an hour or two earlier, you’ll miss the majority [...]

If you’re looking to save money on gas with the rising prices, you probably have already heard most of the steps you can take to save money on gas. There are, however, a number of myths where people think they are saving gas when they probably aren’t. Here are four of them presented by CBS [...]

Cars can cause a lot of unexpected expenses when they get older and start to break down more and it is not often easy to know when a car should be traded in for a newer model. This reader wanted to know opinions on how one can tell when it’s time to get rid of [...]

Ever wonder why guys pay more for auto insurance than women? Insurance companies do risk analysis on different groups to determine if they are more likely to have an insurance claim than other groups. This video cuts it down to the basics with a lot of humor thrown in.
Warning: There is some adult language in [...]

In order to justify expensive purchases, many people, including plenty of otherwise very intelligent folks, like to refer to certain types of spending sprees as “investments.” Luckily for me, from the time I was about four years old, my father took any opportunity he could to tell me that anything that loses value after you [...]

By M Butler, special to pfadvice
I don’t own a car. I found myself in a desperate situation where I was not able to meet all of the payment obligations that I had and I was slowly drowning in debt. I needed to do something drastic and my decision was to get rid of my car. [...]

When shopping for a used car you can take two very different routes. In my younger years with much less cash I always bought used from a private party. But you can also find some pretty good deals at the dealer as well.
When shopping for a used car you could start with your newspaper, or [...]

You probably don’t realize it, but you drive much more than you need to. You get into your car much more often than you should, but there’s a simple way that you can make sure that you only drive when you need to — by paying yourself a small fee every time you get into [...]

A friend of mine, whom I generally agree with on all matters financial, does have one belief that I have to disagree with. He thinks that once a car surpasses 100,000 miles or so, the costs of having to repeatedly fix the vehicle aren’t worth it, and that it makes more sense to trade in [...]

If you like cars, these are always great promotions because not only do you have an excuse to go test drive a car, you get paid to do it. Many car dealers give away free gift cards to get you into their dealership and test drive a car. Currently Mazda is offering a free $15 [...]

Last June I wrote a piece about a $1.99 a gallon gas promotion that GM was doing for certain vehicles. Basically, the program capped the cost of gas at $1.99 a gallon for the year for those who purchased the qualified vehicles. It seemed like a nice promotion if you were in the market for [...]

I was a personal taxi today for my dad and his wife who were flying off to New York. Instead of paying $100 to get driven to the airport, I was asked to do the honors and in return, I get their car for the week while they’re gone.
It works out well for everyone [...]

Stopped to fill up the car today. Most days my dad won’t go out of his way to purchase gas at Costco versus the local gas station because it is only a few cents less and the distance negates any savings at the pump. The last couple of days, however, there has been a larger [...]

I stumbled across this extremely well built Hybrid vs Standard car calculator that allows you to compare the lifetime cost of a hybrid vehicle to a conventional vehicle you may want to buy. With so much information out there saying that hybrids don’t save you money due to higher costs, you can put in two [...]

I always like finding new ways to look at numbers when it comes to personal finances (yes, I’m a geek in that way). It was with this in mind that I read an article over at Mises.org about how the expansion of monetary policy has had a significant impact on the prices that we pay [...]