Living for today - Planning for Tomorrow
I bought a large chunk of $1 gold coins from the US Mint today thanks to a suggestion by Nickel over at Five Cent Nickel. He mentioned that the Mint has a program going right now where you can buy the coins at face value and get free shipping. “Why bother?", you ask. Well, I used my American Express card and will receive cash back
I love reading articles like this partly because it gives me a window in to someone else’s finances but also because they often have good ideas that people can use RIGHT NOW to save money. In this article, Elisabeth Leamy helps the Gunn family from Oswego NY save over $58,000 (over time) by implementing simple changes to their spending patterns. Some of the top tips:
Last weekend we did something VERY out of character. We spent the weekend in downtown Seattle. We had a really good time and we don’t regret it, but I’ve still found myself thinking, “Yikes, that was expensive!â€. It all started when a friend of our daughter’s asked if she’d like to attend a Santa breakfast downtown at a very high end hotel. This friend’s parents
Here’s an interesting article that talks about a couple of new Broadcom chips that will be coming out in 2011 that will drastically reduce the price of smart phones. Today, people have to buy smart phones through a carrier (mostly) and pay a cost somewhere around $200 plus a steep monthly fee. It’s $200 because the carrier is subsidizing the price of the phone and
I was looking through our financial information this week and noticed that our college account for our 7 year old daughter is approaching $10,000. While that seemed like a decent balance for a 7 year old, I started looking at how much we’re really going to need when our daughter finishes high school. Unfortunately, it’s clear we aren’t saving enough. A conservative estimate is that
I took a few minutes to look around the Interwebs to see if I could find a consistent belief on where home prices are headed. While some people believe we are in an economic recovery and home prices will be heading up, it seems that just about the same amount of people think we have a ways to fall before we’ll see price stabilization. Yes,
There are some things that I hate spending money on. Christmas trees are probably right in the middle of that list. I’ve never really liked the idea of chopping down a tree, paying $40 for it and then putting it in the trash 30 days later. Years ago, my wife and I would look around for the cheapest tree lot we could find and try
While I normally don’t like to get caught up in the Black Friday shopping frenzy, I did take advantage of a sale on appliances at Lowes (online so I didn’t have to deal with the crowds). This wasn’t a spur of the moment, irrational purchase by any means. We started plumbing and wiring a spot in our lake house for a washer and dryer many
Every time my sister comes to visit, I can count on her being dressed in a sweater of some sort. By nature, she’s usually cold but she knows that we don’t keep the heat up too high at our house so she comes prepared. Actually, I don’t think we are very frugal when it comes to keeping the heat on during the winter. I have
Fascinating. I stumbled upon a chart that Gizmodo has from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing various jobs and the percentage of people in those jobs that have college degrees. Some of the more interesting ones: 13.74% of parking lot attendants have a bachelors degree 29.80% of flight attendants have bachelors degrees 24.61% of Amusement and recreation attendants have bachelors degrees (really????) 21.62% of Customer
