My wife and I were neighborhood-shopping this weekend and ran across a yard sale Sunday evening. A bit of an unusual time to hold a yard sale but the weather was perfect. This yard sale had three Steelcase Protege® chairs for sale when we got there. My wife tried one of them out and it … Read more
Our daughter was invited to her first outside-of-the-family birthday party this weekend. The party had a Mad Hatter Tea Party theme and the entertainer — dressed to the nines as the Queen of Hearts — had costumes available for each of the children. Our daughter dressed up as a butterfly, complete with wings. Needless to … Read more
I signed up for ReviewMe a while back. The first review I turned down because it wasn’t really on topic for this blog. This list of 118 ways to save money in college, though, is right on topic for a personal finance blog, and it’s quite good, so I’m more than happy to do this … Read more
A bit of an exchange on a couple of great financial blogs. Make Love, Not Debt questions whether it’s worth it to hire out a laundry service (at $648 per year) to save 54 hours of laundry-doing during that year, rather than spend $360 less but spend the 54 hours. Blueprint for Financial Prosperity pipes … Read more
Just this weekend we bought a Garmin GPS receiver using Buy It Now on eBay. We saw one in the store and after checking online we found that we could get a much better deal there, and decided that we could wait to get one online. EBay is a great site to find fair market … Read more
I felt a little bit like a wet blanket earlier. My wife called up yesterday to ask me about GPS receivers (actually, if she could get one). She and her parents got into geocaching. I was really glad that she called me (we try to discuss any reasonably major purchases). There were a couple of … Read more
I was looking into how pawn shops operated, just to satisfy my curiosity. Ran across an interesting fact: “Pop goes the weasel” is about pawnbroking. “Pop” is another word for pawn, and “weasel” could be either a bobbin, or Cockney rhyming slang for a coat. The idea is that the spinner would “pop” his “weasel” … Read more
Or at least how to pay an appropriate amount for an item: Research any advertised big-ticket items. Know what they should cost new or used so that you don’t overbid once the chant starts. Check out the goods beforehand. Once the auction starts, things will move fast and the item you want could be sold … Read more