I’ve noticed a side effect of the bad economy that may end up prolonging our economic woes. It’s called poor customer service. The other day I had to return something to a big box electronics store. The line in the returns department looked like the day after Christmas and only one clerk was working. When [...]

My family and I have lived in the same house for close to a decade. When we moved here, there were six palm trees on our rather small lot, and I could trim all of them on my own. A few years ago, several of the trees had grown to a height that [...]

Many times, when I help someone with their finances, I discover that their biggest obstacle is that they don’t understand opportunity cost and the impact it has on personal finance. In order to take advantage of an opportunity, something else must always be given up. Opportunity cost is basically what you lose by choosing one [...]

Editor Note: This is a repost of an article posted last week. David did a live, nationally televised show regarding on ABC Money Matters titled Shop With Your Man: Why husbands should shop with their wives.
Although the men I know seem uniformly capable of going to a store, buying a product, and feeling confident in [...]

Several financial experts (most notably Dave Ramsey) preach that, if you want to become and remain debt free, you must not use credit cards. Ever. Their reasoning is that, a) it is too easy to get into the debt trap when using cards and, b) that you spend more money (around 25% more) when you [...]

One of the biggest things you can do to save money is simply to plan ahead. I’m not talking about planning far ahead like planning for retirement or for starting a family, although those are good plans to make. I’m talking about planning hours, days or, at most, a few months ahead. There’s nothing wrong [...]

After following sales and coupons religiously for several months, I’ve started to get a sense of the best prices for various items.
The best way to get these prices is to use the Coupon Mom method of combining a store’s loyalty card discount with sales and coupons. However, over the last several months, it [...]

I live about two miles away from “Restaurant Row,” a road that has an amazingly high concentration of restaurants from Mickey D’s to fine dining. I generally do not visit any of them, with only a few exceptions. Nestled among all of the high end chains (Roy’s, Morton’s, Ruth’s Chris, etc.) there are [...]

I’ll admit to loving movies and certain TV series. As a result, I buy a lot of DVD’s. Someone once told me that I was wasting my money on all those DVD’s, since I could rent them for free or watch the same movies on cable. I didn’t think it was a waste of money, [...]

I, like a lot of people, have a list of things that I would like to own. There can be a lot of fun in fantasizing about all the things you’d like to have and the fun you’d have owning them. However, the smart consumer understands that reality is somewhat different. The things that we [...]