I’m a Turbotax user. I have been for at least 5 years. Yes, I stayed with them during their whole “spyware program” episode a couple years ago. I was mad at them, but I just uninstalled everything after I was done with my taxes. I think they’ve learned their lesson on that. Anyway, Costco has Turbotax Deluxe (which works for most people unless you have
Earthquake Insurance
You know, I’ve got a lot of insurance. I’ve got auto insurance, homeowners insurance and life insurance. While that seems like a lot of insurance, I don’t have earthquake insurance. For those of you living in the midwest, you probably are saying to yourself, “yeah, so what”. Well, as much as I’d like to say that too, I have to face the fact that we
New Brakes!
One of the benefits to having grown up around cars and working in our family auto parts business for many years is the ability to work on my own cars when I choose to. Well, today I had to put new brakes on my Toyota truck. I’ve known that it was coming and planned ahead. First, I called around to get prices for a brake
Dinner Anyone?
Last night my wife and I went out to dinner. A couple months ago, I was given a $100 gift card to Morton’s steak house in Seattle. I’d never been there so we were looking forward to going. I’d heard that it was somewhat expensive but figured the $100 would get us a decent meal. We arrived downtown about 5:45 and pulled up to the
Trip to Disneyland
We are thinking about taking a trip to Disneyland in March. I’ve looked around and the best deal I seem to be able to find is directly through Alaskaair.com. Total price: $1200 (includes airfare, hotel, park tickets, airport shuttle, taxes). When looking, I noticed that what the airlines seem to do is list ridiculous prices for hotels in their packages. While Alaska has “kids fly
Sometimes I Wish I Didn’t Know any Better
I’ve often wondered what it would be like to float through my existence on this planet with complete and total ignorance. I wouldn’t know enough to worry about retirement. I’d simply spend to exist and not worry about what awaited me in the future. If I didn’t know any better, I wouldn’t worry about whether I’m saving enough. I also wouldn’t worry about losing my
What Would You Do?
I was surfing around on Fat Wallet and came across this post in the forum: “My gf has 80,000 in school loans (masters degree in Italian) and 12,000 in credit card debt. I just found this out today. We have been going out for around 8 months and all seemed great till now. My credit is pretty good, and I am wondering what the long
My Pissed-O-Meter is Maxed Out
Arrrgggghhh I like to check my online visa statement every now and then when I log in to my credit union. While looking at it today, I noticed that I received a $41 charge from Vonage. If you recall, I canceled my Vonage account awhile back after I had been a customer for 13 months. When I called to cancel, the CR rep told me
I’m Cured, I’m Cured!
Well, as many of you might know, I’ve been spending an embarrassing amount of time mulling over the purchase of a new car. Not because we REALLY need one, but rather because I got a wild hair in the very southern region of my back. I had been secretly searching through all the online used car aggregators (Traderonline, Dealernet, cars.com etc) looking to see what
Don’t Let your Cash Cow Die!
The more time I spend browsing through all of the great personal finance blogs out here, the more I think about how it’s just too bad that so many people in the U.S. (and elsewhere for that matter), are so stressed out about their finances and could really benefit from reading these blogs. It’s too bad that they don’t take any interest in personal finance.