This might have been one of my easily confused money terms, but I didn’t think of it back then. Inflation and rising prices are often used interchangeably but they’re not the same thing. Inflation is an increase in the money supply, or put another way, a dilution of its value. (Or put even more cynically, … Read more
Jim tweeted this question a little while ago (I expanded his text a bit with his permission because I’m not limited to 140 characters here): “Why do people love stories about people paying off thousands in credit card debt? Why is there no love for people who don’t have debt to begin with? It’s disappointing.” … Read more
Free Money Finance has had it with Wal-Mart. On the Saturday before Memorial Day, there was one manned checkout lane open, and that cashier was told only to accept customers with ten or fewer items. Everyone else had to wait in line for one of only four self-service checkout stations, all four of which were … Read more
I got wind of this chatting with some of my colleagues today. One of them referred to his truck as “worthless” because dealers around here were refusing them as trade-ins. (I was the gas-sipper of the bunch with my Corolla.) Predictably, car dealers are getting a lot of SUVs and trucks as trade-ins, and some … Read more
Free Money Finance posted a question from a reader who’s paying on a house that’s now worth less than what’s owed on it. The reader is upside-down on his mortgage, but the mortgage is a 30-year fixed-rate, and he paid 20% down. It wasn’t a teaser loan by any stretch, and it didn’t really sound … Read more
PfBlueprint caught this AP article on CNN regarding the rising cost of minting Lincoln cents and a fairly short-timeline legislative push to revise the composition of the Lincoln cent and the Jefferson nickel to something more cost-effective. Both coins now cost more to mint than their face value. On top of that, the nickel’s metal … Read more