This past Sunday, my wife and I awoke to the pitter patter of little feet in our home. It was not our children, because long ago they left gentle footsteps behind them in favor of the thundering stomp-stomp-stomp of teenage boys. It was not our grandchildren because we do not have any. It [...]

Last week, Sadie wrote about how debt free living means not being a slave to a FICO score. In the article, she pointed out that FICO has become such an integral part of our lives that even the debt free can’t ignore the score completely, which is annoying, at best. But I’ve been giving it [...]

About ten years ago, a woman I know gave up a high paying job in Connecticut because she felt that she could not handle the stress. She moved to rural Florida for a few years, lived with a guy she had met in high school in a house that her parents bought and basically [...]

I’ve mentioned before that I really like saving money. To me it’s like a game to find new ways to reduce my spending. Constantly finding new ways to lower spending keeps me on my toes and protects me from slipping into careless patterns that could lead to debt. It also frees up more cash that [...]

Suze Orman was on Oprah last week and one of the pieces of advice that she gave for dealing with the recession was to learn how to live on half your income. The reason behind the advice was that if you have a job loss or a reduction in hours you would have to live [...]

The other day my son managed to lose a pair of pants from his school uniform. How he did this, I am not sure, since he was wearing them at school that day. Nevertheless, somehow between the end of the school day and the end of his bus ride home, he managed to [...]

When I started working after college in 1993, I was thrilled to get a job and make more than minimum wage. However, that $5.65 an hour didn’t stretch as far as it might, and I started to learn the hard lessons of personal finance all over again.
My parents shared their financial experience with me, [...]

Although I am frugal, I like to at least think that I am neither stingy nor greedy. I am quick to spend if it will make my family happy and I have always been quick to donate to a good cause. When I go through the checkout line at my grocery store, I [...]

Last week I wrote about reframing the economic crisis. The point of that piece was to bring a little positivity into what is becoming a pretty gloomy economic time. I hoped to challenge you to think of the positive things that may come from disaster. So, in the interest of continuing that bit of positivity, [...]

There are a lot of discretionary expenses that we incur every day. Whether we spend more for a brand name product or save money on a generic product is entirely up to each individual buyer. Whether we should buy a new car or a used car or go without a car is also [...]