If you’ve ever read the book by John Grisham or seen the movie, “The Firm,” then you are familiar with the tale of corporate and personal greed that leads one man to almost lose his life and all of the things he values. In the movie/book, Mitchell McDeree takes a job at a law firm [...]
Home and personal security is a big part of personal finance. After all, you don’t want to work hard for what you have only to have it taken away by thieves. Neither do you want to be physically injured by someone who is after your stuff. While security is a very serious subject, the movie [...]
This week there was a story in the news here about a man who was robbed thanks to a post on Craigslist. He posted several items that he wanted to sell including a game console, TV, some DVD’s and other electronics. A woman contacted him about buying the items and they worked out a time [...]
Trawling Etsy.com this week, I cam across this shop. This person makes pin-on buttons and sells most of them for $1.00. For fifty cents more, you can have the button made into a magnet. Some of them are cute and the whole thing reminded me of the button covered jean-jackets and purses that were popular [...]
Let me say at the outset that I have no hard statistical evidence to back this post up. This is just something I found myself thinking about the other day based on personal observation and experience and I wanted to put it out there to see what others think. So here it is: I found [...]
Americans have a love of cars, so much so that there are 1.17 cars per licensed driver in this country. To talk to most people, a car is an absolute necessity, ranked right up there with food and shelter. To suggest that people go without a car is to incur some strange looks, laughter or [...]
It’s that time of year again. Christmas is past and New Year’s is upon us. With the New Year comes the avalanche of New Year’s resolutions. We claim that this will be the year we lose weight, get our finances in order, and find the path to happiness. We start out all gung-ho in January [...]
A debt free friend of mine came to me this week with an interesting problem. He’s recently been laid off from his job and is living on his (not insubstantial) emergency fund and unemployment while he looks for work. By his own admission he has enough in various savings products to last him about five [...]
If you’re trying to scale back your spending and live within your means or just save a little more each month, how do you determine reasonable spending amounts for each category of spending in your life like food, clothes, and transportation? Well, there are several government standards that you can use as a guideline. The [...]
Baby boomers remember a time when airline travel was a luxury and a reason to dress up. But these days, does anyone look forward to flying? Passenger complaints have been increasing along with consumer activism and lobbying congress, but the myriad annoyances involved in taking a commercial flight aren’t expected to get better in the [...]
