Personal Finance Advice

I try to read a lot of newspapers. I read the New York Times and several other papers online and I subscribe to the print versions of the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and our local paper, The Orlando Sentinel. Of course, life often intervenes and prevents me from getting through all of [...]

I know a lot of people who were asking if it’s possible to live on a single income before the proverbial excrement hit the rotary device, economically speaking. I imagine there are a great many people who are worried about losing their job and are now asking themselves if their household can live on one [...]

Going out to eat can be an expensive endeavor and even though it’s generally cheaper to eat fast food, even that can get expensive if you are feeding more than one person. While it seems that the days of getting a complete fast food meal (sandwich, side and drink) for under $4 are gone, [...]

I frequently encounter people who don’t use coupons because they feel like it isn’t worth their time. If you’ve run the numbers and found this to be the case, I respect that. Coupon use, like all areas of personal finance, is a personal choice and not everyone will find it beneficial or to their liking. [...]

I’ve recently discovered the joy of belonging to a special club that gives you discounts at restaurants of half off (and sometimes more). I want to share this saving opportunity with those who are not yet aware so they can save money at restaurants too. It doesn’t cost anything to join and it’s not [...]

Some people think using a coupon in public is even more embarrassing than, say, accidentally walking into the wrong restroom. I have done both, and I assure you — the latter is far more embarrassing! Here’s why I am not the least bit embarrassed by coupons:
Companies make coupons available; why shouldn’t [...]

The other day my husband and I went to a specific grocery store that we don’t normally shop at to pick up some ice-cream that was on sale. Normally this particular kind of ice-cream (my husband’s absolute favorite) is at least $4 for a half gallon — and that’s on sale. But this [...]

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 [...]

The other day someone mentioned to my husband something about the fact that I always find the best deals and I always have a coupon for something. That’s actually a pretty true statement. I can sniff out a coupon a mile away. It’s almost like a game for me — to see if I can [...]

In recent weeks I’ve seen reports flying around the Internet that some Wal-Mart stores are accepting only ten coupons or less per transaction. For a heavy coupon user like me, this is bad news. I had hoped that perhaps it was just one or two stores that were doing this but, unfortunately, this policy has [...]

As a child, I went grocery shopping with my adult sister at a store that didn’t exist in my hometown. When she checked out, the cashier gave her a number of stamps based on how much she had spent, and she discovered that she had enough saved to treat me to a toy chosen [...]

Some people are “pound wise and penny foolish.” That is, they focus their savings efforts only on big items while letting small amounts of money slip through their fingers. Having tallied up my “penny savings” from last year, I can tell you that small amounts of money can quickly add up to big savings.
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