Everyone and their brother have the perfect gift for you to buy for someone. (“Oh, of course! I’d love an electric nose-hair trimmer! How did you know?”) There’s no shortage of ideas, but there usually is a shortage of good ideas. As budgets tighten it’s important to maximize the value of every dollar spent, and … Read more
Frugality is quickly becoming a buzzword in America with people’s retirement dreams taking a bit of a detour into a ravine — and right before the holidays, too. How very inconsiderate. Here are a few tips and tricks for descroogifying what might be more modest holidays: Check out the library and paw through some December … Read more
(This is a guest post written by ABCs of Investing, a brand new site for novice investors which offers two short and simple investing posts per week. Feel free to subscribe to the feed.) The majority of investors use a financial advisor or broker to help with their investing planning. There is nothing wrong with … Read more
The “Big Three” automakers Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler, and the United Auto Workers union, traveled to Washington today to ask for a bailout. They asked collectively for $34 billion, but some estimates suggest that they would actually need almost four times that. Let’s just say that the banking committee wasn’t whipping out its checkbook. … Read more
We all need food, clothing, and shelter. Here are actionable tips to save money on these basic needs … We may think that we need a lot of things. We may think we need cable TV, our morning coffee and bagel, a couple of pints at the pub each Friday, or a really big house … Read more
My wife has wanted to move into town for quite some time so that she can be a little closer to friends and to our other activities. I’ve been reluctant to move for a few reasons. First, I think if we bought now, it would be like trying to catch a falling knife. Second, it … Read more
The surest way to work toward saving money each month is to reduce debt. Here are some ways to do that …. Being in debt simply means that at one point you borrowed money to fund some purchase, and are now paying it back over time. (For the purpose of this post, I’m not going … Read more
Income streams are important. If you have one, or more, consider yourself blessed. Make sure you protect them … If you’re like me, you have a job, and you also may have money invested and in savings. Your investments may have lost some, or a lot, of their value over the past months. But you … Read more