Posted in Credit, Deals, Saving, money, thrift on April 4, 2008 | 1 Comment »
This month, I’ve done my share of complaining. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a world-class complainer. I’ve gotten some fees knocked down without even meaning to — but along the way,I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly about addressing problems with a service.
The good:
I use one Chase credit card a lot because [...]
Posted in Credit, Financial planning, money, tagged debt, finance, goals, money, net worth, new year, retirement, Saving on January 10, 2008 | 2 Comments »
In 2007, we followed several finance rules, including living within our means and making more!
I can still feel cheerful about the latter before the tax bill becomes clear in the next couple of months.
We achieved several goals:
Became free of consumer debt.
Paid off all Christmas purchases already this month.
Increased our net worth by 25 percent.
However, our [...]
Posted in Credit, Deals, Saving, money on December 6, 2007 | 3 Comments »
Back in September, I heard about a great deal for an employee referral offer from Sprint: Wireless service with 500 minutes and unlimited data for $30 a month. That’s a few bucks better than my gazillion-minute “legacy” plan with Qwest, which had no data service.
My Palm Pilot died a year or more ago, so I’ve [...]
Posted in Credit, Financial planning, Insurance, money on October 11, 2007 | 3 Comments »
Remember that sentence you read way back when in that one financial planning book about being prepared for contingencies … and how you promised to go buy life insurance that minute?
And how then you went to a movie and — oh, was that eight years ago already?
This past week, the father of an acquaintance of [...]
Posted in Credit, Education, Home, Saving, money on September 14, 2007 | No Comments »
This week, the Dear College Girl blog reports on changes to college funding options for students. Pell Grants (for broke-r students) have new maximums, and interest rates on need-based student loans will be cut in half gradually over the next four years. In addition, the new laws include loan forgiveness for certain professions (like teaching [...]
Posted in Credit, Saving, money on August 30, 2007 | 3 Comments »
We’ve all heard the phrase “Keeping up with Joneses.” You might even be familiar with the reinvention of this phrase in “The Millionaire Next Door” or Dave Ramsey’s financial advice, both of which suggest we not keep up with the Joneses, since people flashing their financial status may be deep in debt — and we’ll [...]
Posted in Credit, Eating, Eco-quandary, money on August 28, 2007 | 2 Comments »
It’s back to school time here, and my daughter has returned to her (private) school for the year.
At her urging, we signed up for her to buy hot lunch every day. The cost? A painful $60 a month.
I had an e-mail conversation with a friend about this topic, and she jokingly threatened to “out” my [...]
Posted in Credit, Saving, money on August 2, 2007 | 1 Comment »
In June, the U.S. savings rate — the percentage of income Americans save — fell to zero.
Nothing. We don’t save a dime — on average.
It’s the lowest savings rate since the Depression.
This article also says that more than 40% of all women don’t even have $500 saved. For those age 25-34 (my demographic … for [...]
Posted in Credit, Shopping, money on July 26, 2007 | 1 Comment »
If you’re reading this on your computer, surely you have antivirus and firewall software installed. Given that you probably have many passwords and much private information on that computer, you need that protection.
It occurred to me this week that another step we should take to protect our credit is to heed the number of [...]
Posted in Credit, Deals, Saving, Shopping, money on July 19, 2007 | No Comments »
In May, I made a $900 impulse buy. But as it happens, that “impulse” was well thought-through.
The back story
Our house came with an older, off-white refrigerator that froze foods on the top shelves and leaked a river at the bottom. It stuck out 6″ into a narrow walkway, and from the living room, all you [...]
