Giving children solid grounding in money management is crucial. Budgeting, saving, frugality, and financial planning are important components of living on one’s own and taking responsibility. It’s unlikely that personal finance skills will be taught in school to any appreciable degree, so it’s up to parents to do this. We give our daughter an allowance. … Read more
I don’t hang out at money.stackexchange as much as I used to. No hard feelings, though: I’m glad to see that the site finally made it out of the 3+ year beta purgatory it was stuck in. They even sent me a cute little green piggy bank for being one of the more active users … Read more
In yesterday’s post on bargains and baselines, I talked about some of the reasons we got an Amazon rewards card, even though we had another one. This prompted a great question from The Wallet Doctor: I like your strategy on the Amazon card versus your usually 1% cash back card. I’ve thought about going for … Read more
A colleague whom I respect a great deal talked with me at the end of last week. He has a way of breaking complex things down into very simple, but profound, terms. He was explaining how a particular process works, and he appealed to my science background. He talked about the concepts of ground, and … Read more
Discount cigarette stores are one of the more popular types of businesses to come into our county these days. I think our county has at least five of them now, which for a county of less than 30,000 people seems a bit high. Two friends of mine have already expressed that we have too many … Read more
We really, really like us some Amazon. For convenience, time savings, speed — and most of all cost — Amazon has a ton to offer. Some of the groceries we get are a bit pricey because common ingredients don’t agree with some family members. Often, Amazon comes through with the right products at a good … Read more
A few weekends ago, we went to a community yard sale at the YMCA. One of the tables there had a number of children’s books from the 19th century that were in excellent shape. Our nine-year-old daughter likes little things — little baskets and boxes with lots of little compartments, little figurines, etc. These books … Read more
It was a bit bittersweet for us this weekend. Our daughter went to a friend’s birthday party sleepover, and for the first time she showed absolutely no reaction whatsoever to my wife leaving for the evening. She was just fine, thank you very much. It was a Frozen party. With lots of Frozen decorations. Think: … Read more