Yesterday we spent a wonderful New Year’s with great friends. They’re the kind of friends that you can enjoy sharing time with, without the need to put on appearances or impress. It’s incredibly relaxing. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that we scored some great Mr. Rebates savings with our purchases at The Disney … Read more
Free Money Finance regularly posts questions that are e-mailed to him by his readers, with the intent of having other readers offer advice. Recently a reader asked about refinancing a mortgage that is currently under water (meaning that more is owed than the house is currently worth). Here’s the skinny: $225,000 is owed against a … Read more
Who wants to be a millionaire? Well, J. Money does, for one. Not only does he have his own millionaire club with a swanky gold leafy discus logo … but he’s crunched the numbers and he thinks that it can happen on just five bucks a day. Granted, that’s $5 a day for 40 years, … Read more
Cutting costs anywhere that makes sense adds to that budgetary cushion that can be used to pay off debt, add to an emergency fund, save for college, or anything else. One fairly easy way to do this is to reduce, or eliminate, trips to the vending machines down the hall. The markup in our building … Read more
OK, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, especially when I’m about to talk about ketchup. I went grocery shopping with my wife last night, and in the condiment section, shockingly, I found various brands of ketchup. The store brand came in a number of sizes. Here are two of them: 20 ounces for $1.79 … Read more
This economic downturn hasn’t been kind to a lot of people. Jobs that haven’t been taken away from people have had their hours cut, their workload increased, or their cost of living allowances taken away. Jobs that people used to be able to count on are on very fragile ground. If this US Debt Clock … Read more
Sun’s Financial Diary reported that the 2010 contribution limit for 401(k) accounts will remain at $16,500. The announcement came from the IRS Thursday. There had been speculation that the contribution limit could be reduced in light of a decreasing CPI (and, indeed, the CPI is down from a year ago.) Sun ends the post with … Read more
No Credit Needed is taking his oldest daughter (ten years old) to open her first savings account. He and his family have been free of consumer debt for over three and a half years now and this is a milestone in how he’s educating his children in wise money management. Trips to the bank will … Read more