Living for today - Planning for Tomorrow
You can feel the excitement in the air. The Mega millions lottery is up to $330 million and people are buying tickets like crazy. If you win, you would receive upwards of $200 million after taxes. That’s a lot of cash. If you generated just 3% interest off of that $200 million you’d make over $500,000 a month in interest (before taxes). HOLY SMOKES. What
Fresh off the press is the LA Times with an article highlighting that stopping smoking can save you a lot of money. No kidding. It can save you thousands of dollars a year in cigarette costs alone! If you calculate in the health costs of smoking, the figure goes much higher. I admire those people who made the switch from conventional smoking to vaping. It
Just a quick note to say Happy New Year to everyone. 2010 was an okay year for us at our house and I hope 2011 will be full of opportunity, excitement and happiness. I’m not a big fan of New Years resolutions per se but I am looking at a couple of goals for 2011. First and foremost is a desire to get healthy. I
Xzibit (Alvin Joiner) from the show “Pimp My Ride” owes upwards of $1M in taxes and has a negative net worth of about $660K. Apparently he has declared bankruptcy twice since 2009. Really? You can do that? It sure looks like Xzibit probably should have made a few different decisions. A $2200+ car payment? Really? http://jalopnik.com/5720753/xzibit-pimp-my-ride-made-me-broke
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 wonder if this is a sign of things to come for public pensioners around the country. Prichard Alabama quit paying out benefits to all of it’s retirees in 2009 against state law. So far, no one has forced the city to start paying benefits again but there are lawsuits. Unfortunately a number of people have died since the benefits stopped, including the retired fire
I’ve been watching all the tax cut coverage over the last month or so and was actually surprised that they came up with a compromise. A compromise that I think is a pathetic cop out from all parties involved. Farm animals could have completed that deal so it’s not quite what I would like to expect from my politicians. I better stop at that so
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
