It’s often said that the lottery is a tax on people who can’t do math. It’s virtually guaranteed that you’ll lose money playing the lottery regularly, because the more you buy, the closer you’ll be statistically to the intended winning probabilities (i.e., losing more than winning). Even casting lottery tickets as an investment is flawed; … Read more
I received a question in a comment on one of my more popular posts that describes how to figure out how much gold jewelry is worth. Here’s the question: What is the dollar worth of an 18″, 14-karat, 14.38 gram weight gold chain? No formulas please. Before working out the answer, it’s important first to … Read more
When it’s time to cut back on family expenditures, a prime place to start is with the food budget. Once the “easy” savings are implemented — first by eating out a lot less, then by buying store brand or bulk, and then by preparing meals more from scratch — then it becomes more of challenge … Read more
Some of my wife’s Facebook friends posted some pictures the bumper-to-bumper traffic into the local mall / retail area today. It’s definitely not the best time to run in and out of stores for a few things, being a week before Christmas and all that. So we stopped at our local antique mall this afternoon. … Read more
It’s that time of year again when the only thing that’s stretched tighter than our budget is our nerves. Christmas shopping can put a huge financial strain on the average family, but it’s even worse if you are the one pegged to cook the Christmas family dinner. It’s natural to want to put on a … Read more
Seriously. If you have to subscribe to your fire department, there really is no reason not to. This method of paying for fire service in advance — a bit like paying Triple A for their services — has gotten recent national attention due to the aftermath of the dark side of this arrangement: no pay, … Read more
A couple of weeks ago we had dinner with a friend visiting from Hawaii. We had a $100 Visa gift card in hand to put a big dent into the bill. We were confused when the card came back declined. At first we checked the balance on the card because we thought that they had … Read more
Stores online and offline are fighting tooth and nail for your money this holiday season. The deals are far from over, of course. If you’re planning to save yourself a whole boatload of stress and buy most (all?) of your gifts online this holiday season, then I hope that you’ve become well-acquainted with rebate portals … Read more