Maybe you’ve heard about the US Federal Debt crossing the $10 trillion mark. This is a huge number. At one point I heard someone say that physicists were better than average about attaching value to really big or really small numbers, so here’s my crack at it. I’ll let you be the judge. $10 trillion … Read more
Resoling your shoes. Patching a pair of jeans. Repairing a clothes dryer. Doing regular maintenance on your vehicle. Making things go a little further. Making do a little longer. Making things last. Dr. Thomas Stanley, late author of The Millionaire Mind, found that economically-productive households were more likely to “extend the lifecycle” on possessions like … Read more
Pretty much any good personal finance resource you run across will talk about this: Spend less than you earn. All this means is that your expenses (everything that leaves your wallet) are less than your income (everything that enters your wallet). If you’re spending more than you bring in, you’ll have to borrow the difference. … Read more
Millions of people in the US are feeling at least a little pain as the market whipsaws and home values go down. The people feeling the most pain now have more mortgage debt than they can handle, the inability to refinance that debt, perhaps a lot of credit card debt, and maybe even unemployment. People … Read more
I felt like we dodged a bullet tonight. I was checking balances on some of my accounts and I loaded up the balance on our primary checking account. I knew it was going to be low. We had had a couple of big expenses (a six-month car insurance premium and a replaced central air system) … Read more
A reader e-mailed me with this question: I have just read your article on coin accumulation and I was hoping that you could help me. My father recently died and left me in total 3146 British coins and 83 varied coins. I want to know how best to sell them and if I could make … Read more
This trick is becoming a mainstay at Food Lion. The big banner in the front window will say: DiGiorno’s Pizza — 5 for $3.99 each It took me a second to catch the "each" but $3.99 still is a pretty good price for DiGiorno’s. The details of the deal were unusually complicated. Not complicated in … Read more
Commenter "jnwcmr" asked on my post on how to turn an accumulation into a collection: I have an “accumulation” of coins and banknotes from around the world, and I’d like to organize them. I’d appreciate an email on where to get plastic protector sheets for them, and maybe a pointer to some tips for newbie … Read more