Perhaps you heard today about the mom in Washington state who was Facebook-shamed after being asked to leave a restaurant where her children, ages one and three, were being messy and loud. The restaurant owner, Lorraine MacDuff of Rainy Days Caffe, had pictures posted of the messy carpet on the restaurant’s Facebook page, with a … Read more
Saw this story on MSN Money about a pizza delivery guy who delivered 85 pizzas, costing $1,453.95. He received a $10 tip. A friend of the driver then posts a picture of the receipt on Reddit, and the 15 minutes of fame begins. The article points out that the tip is less than 1% of … Read more
Eating out is a common budget-buster. A meal at a restaurant can cost easily several times what a meal prepared at home would cost. And don’t get me started on the 1,000%-plus markup on sodas! If dining out is killing your budget, then a simple way to begin bringing the problem under control is to … Read more
(Note: This is a very old post. I posted this in 2004, before Mighty Bargain Hunter had moved to the WordPress platform. So now, a blast from the past, gently rebooted …) Restaurant dining for the price of a tip! I hope that the title caught your attention. Conventional frugal practice does wonders with the … Read more
It’s that time of year again when the only thing that’s stretched tighter than our budget is our nerves. Christmas shopping can put a huge financial strain on the average family, but it’s even worse if you are the one pegged to cook the Christmas family dinner. It’s natural to want to put on a … Read more
A couple of weeks ago we had dinner with a friend visiting from Hawaii. We had a $100 Visa gift card in hand to put a big dent into the bill. We were confused when the card came back declined. At first we checked the balance on the card because we thought that they had … Read more
One big advantage of tracking the categories of personal spending is that you can see where the weak spots are — categories that have grown a little too big for their britches and are ripe for cutting down to size. As I pile through a year’s worth of financial statements in time for taxes, in … Read more
Chief Family Officer and I go waaaay back: we both started blogging in 2005. She, being the consummate CFO, has been far more regular with monitoring her routines than I have. (By contrast, if you were to count the number of times I start something up on here, and then never hear about it again, … Read more