Personal Finance Advice

My team didn’t win on Super Bowl Sunday, but that wasn’t the biggest controversy. In hindsight, I guess I should have seen something like this coming when it comes to my sister. I spent the day with my dad at his house as he threw a Super Bowl party for a bunch of his friends. [...]

This time of year there are lots of tips about how to save money on Valentine’s Day. Advice abounds about ways to show your love for free and alternative gift ideas such as coupons for kid-free days and taking over your partner’s chores for a weekend. While all of these are very valid ways to [...]

My current house sitting job ends tomorrow, so a good part of the day was spent cleaning the place to make it look better on their return. Washing, vacuuming, cleaning and all that fun stuff. While doing all that, I began to reflect what I was able to do the first month. The only major [...]

This past Christmas I gave many gifts. None of them were dramatically expensive, but my family really enjoys the gift exchange and I enjoy finding the perfect gifts for each person. The hunt is almost as much fun as the actual gift exchange. This year, though, one of my recipients stumped me. When I asked, [...]

Reality set in today as I received my monthly health insurance bill: a painful $485. That will be nearly $6,000 a year out of the $17,000 budget or about one-third of all the money I have. This makes it very easy to understand why most people on a minimum wage simply choose to go without [...]

If there were ever a reward for people who somehow seem to embarrass themselves on an ongoing basis, I would certainly be in the running to receive it. I kept up that tradition with flying colors today. I usually take showers a bit late. My normal routine is to get up in the morning and [...]

We all have financial goals. Maybe you want to retire early, travel more, pay down debt, or save more money. Having goals is what drives us forward and keeps us from staying in the same place. Unfortunately, many of us haven’t really articulated our goals. We carry them around in our heads as vague notions. [...]

If you want to get ahead financially, one of the most important questions you can ask yourself is, “What do I need?” It seems like such a simple question, one where the answers should be immediately obvious. You need food, shelter, clothing, and maybe transportation. Everything else is really a want, in some form or [...]

Why is it that when there is something wrong with a car, whatever seems to be wrong with it miraculously resolves itself the minute that you bring the car in to get repaired? Today was the last day I had before I needed to head back up north to house sit, so I thought I [...]

With the end of the current house sitting job, I have three days before the next one begins. Since I’ve managed to not have to pay anything for lodging so far this month, I figured that I should try to make that the case for the entire month. The plan was to go to visit [...]

Like most people, I sometimes find myself complaining about money or “stuff.” Sometimes I get frustrated by work and money issues, or when there’s something I want that I can’t afford, either immediately or ever. There will always be people with more than me, vacations I can’t take, things I can’t own, repairs that have [...]

Have you been out of work for awhile? Maybe it’s been one year, maybe it’s been five, or maybe it’s been ten or fifteen years. The longer you’re out of work, whether because of the bad economy or personal choices, the harder it is to get your resume past recruiters. Most recruiters see so many [...]

This might sound a little strange, but I’m finding that if I want to save money and reduce my costs as part of this minimum wage challenge, one of the best ways to do that is to do more than people expect (it’s also a great way to get more business and earn more money). [...]

Click image to enlarge or print here (pdf) If you’re looking for a great way to start saving money right now that will net you over $1300 in 1 year, we’ve put together an easy system which offers a good amount of flexibility to give you the greatest chance of success. This is a hybrid [...]

If you haven’t noticed yet, I love the outdoors. One of the things that I wanted to make sure while attempting this minimum wage challenge was that I still got outdoors on a regular basis. With January 21 being a free entrance day to all national parks (and after the failed attempt to go out [...]

Most of us have brands and products that we prefer over others. Maybe we prefer the taste or we’ve found that Product A works better than Product B. Sometimes our loyalty is rooted in the prestige a brand confers upon us or because it’s what we grew up with. Whatever the reason, we all have [...]

Despite my sister insisting that going out for coffee isn’t a real date, I had plans to meet a friend of a friend who was supposedly “perfect” for me at a local coffee shop. I had a few reservations about this, but decided that there was no harm in trying to prove my sister wrong [...]

I’ve spent the past couple of weeks listening to the bitter complaints over the “loss” of the two percent Social Security tax holiday. In case you’ve missed it (or you aren’t from the U.S. and didn’t follow our “fiscal cliff” debacle), here’s the gist: Two years ago our politicians reduced the Social Security tax rate [...]

Apparently, my thoughts of going to a coffee shop or hiking don’t qualify as a “real date” according to my sister. While I realize this is just another attempt by her to try to get me to spend more money in the minimum wage challenge, it did get me thinking about how one does go [...]

As I previously noted, I like to leave places in better shape than when I arrived, so I spent most of the morning vacuuming and cleaning up the house where I had been house sitting. I consider myself a fairly neat person, but it’s amazing how dirty a place can get with two dogs running [...]