John Anderson, a brilliant mathematician and one of my favorite professors at college, had quite a way with words as well. On one of my papers I made a silly algebra error (I think it was equating the sum of the squares with the square of the sum) and he wrote, “Obviously, this is a … Read more
I saw a heartening post over in the SavingAdvice.com forums this week. A couple has extra money that they want either to put toward debt (nearly $4000/month in two mortgages for their Los Angeles home) or put in savings. This kind of thinking seems very uncommon. The skinny on their loans: Mortgage one – 30 … Read more
Since our current riding lawn mower is dying a slow death and the grass is getting a little taller, we stepped up the pace looking for another one. We checked out a number of options. Do we get: an upgrade to the one we have one similar to the one we have one that will … Read more
This post at SBC really hits the mark. His view on Wal-Mart’s advertising campaign for the self-checkout line — “Fast! Easy! Fun!” — is accurate. I’ve done it only a few times (not at Wal-Mart, but at other stores like Home Depot and Giant), and self-checkout is a pain in the spleen. It isn’t fast. … Read more
After church on Sunday we drove past a garage sale. It was the tail end of it, so the sellers were packing the stuff up. They have a 2-year-old daughter and were selling some of her clothes. (The 2-year-old, not really understanding what was going on, kept taking her stuff back — especially her Dora … Read more
The AP reported on rising gas prices, saying that the average price of gasoline in the US is now $2.50. With $3 gas a possibility by summer. Between my wife and I, we go through about 25 gallons of gas a week, so $2.50 gas would be about $250/month and $3 gas would cost about … Read more
I’ll go to quite some length to be frugal. $50 worth of bathroom tissue if it’s a really good price. Picking up change off the ground. Fixing the riding lawn mower, again. I questioned this one: Those little packets of coffee that the hotel gives you? The ones that might brew four cups of coffee … Read more
We had bring-a-dish-to-share lunch at church this week. Attendance was a little thin, probably because of March Madness, so most of the spaghetti we cooked came home with us. We just refrigerated the pot that we cooked, which had a little sauce mixed in to about 1 1/2 pounds. I had bought a number of … Read more