Discount cigarette stores are one of the more popular types of businesses to come into our county these days. I think our county has at least five of them now, which for a county of less than 30,000 people seems a bit high. Two friends of mine have already expressed that we have too many … Read more
It was a bit bittersweet for us this weekend. Our daughter went to a friend’s birthday party sleepover, and for the first time she showed absolutely no reaction whatsoever to my wife leaving for the evening. She was just fine, thank you very much. It was a Frozen party. With lots of Frozen decorations. Think: … Read more
Odds are good that you’ve heard of NBC’s Million Second Quiz, which is about half over now. If you haven’t, the premise is simple: The quiz is a million seconds long. You earn money by sitting in the Money Chair. You get into the Money Chair by beating the person in the Money Chair at … Read more
Lots of homeowners are behind on their mortgages. The recent melee began a few years ago, as the follow-up to a period of high house prices and the issuance of many back-loaded loans with questionable underwriting to people who had marginal means to repay. The percentage of mortgage holders in the US who are at … Read more
Flexo over at Consumerism Commentary recently posted that frugality is bad for the economy. Among similar statements, he says: “The primary tenets of frugality work well within an individual’s personal finance philosophy, but once the concept becomes a movement that spreads to a greater population and businesses, the economy can’t move.” If we look back … Read more
I read on MSN today about cash mobs. If you’ve heard of flash mobs — either the violent or the artistic kind — then it’s very similar to that. The idea behind cash mobs is to give a booster shot to local businesses. The cash mobs organize and descend on a particular local business to … Read more
The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), with the Federal National Mortgage Association (“Fannie Mae”) and the (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation) (“Freddie Mac”), today announced a number of changes to the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) designed to increase the number of borrowers eligible for refinancing at-risk home mortgages. One of the big deals of … Read more
This article on the NPR Planet Money blog discusses the projected federal budget deficit as compared to the maximum deficit reduction discussed in recent debt-ceiling negotiations. If we cut to the chase, there is a $9 trillion shortfall over the next ten years. The most stringent deficit reduction measures discussed don’t even come close to … Read more
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