Exactly one week after ordering checks through Sam’s Club, they arrived in our mailbox exactly as promised. I just double-checked the information on the checks and it’s all good. Needless to say, I’m pretty happy with this transaction, and I would recommend Sam’s Club to anyone looking for checks. The same presumably goes for Wal-Mart [...]

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I just ran across an interesting article on Bloomberg by Kevin Hassett that looks at Halloween through the eyes of an economist. In it, the author argued (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) that:
Economists haven’t … applied numbers to their laws, but if they did, the first law of economics would be that lump-sum transfers are more economically efficient [...]

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Since tomorrow is Halloween, I thought I’d dig a couple of related posts out of the archive. Here they are:
- Halloween Treat Ideas (or Not)
- Halloween Safety Tips
Enjoy!

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I just saw a plug for a new real estate show on HGTV, but this one’s a bit different… It’s called “Buy Me.” The tagline used in the ad was “They’re running out of time, money, and patience.” Here’s the description from the website:
Determined real estate agents, disenchanted homeowners and a pressing deadline. How far [...]

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Here’s a quick look at some of my favorite posts from a year ago this past week:
• Big Box Mart – An amusing commentary on our consumer culture by the folks at Jib-Jab.
• Improved Security for Online Banking – Ever wonder why we have all these new, more complex logins for online banking? Turns out [...]

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Here’s a quick look at some of the posts that caught my eye over the past week…

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Unless you live in Arizona or Hawaii or parts of Indiana you need to set your clocks back by one hour tonight. However, due to the Energy Policy Act of 2005, this is the last time that you’ll be doing so in October. That’s right, from next year on, the date for ‘falling back’ will [...]

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FiveCentNickel participated in five carnivals this week. Here they are with links to my articles that were included in each.
The Carnival of Personal Finance included “Withdrawing Funds From Upromise.” Also included was “Teaching Kids the Value of a Dollar” from raising4boys.com.
The Carnival of Investing included “Opening a Vanguard SEP-IRA and Executing a Direct Rollover.”
The Best [...]

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According to a recent AP news report, Americans are burning nearly 1 billion more gallons of gas each year than we did in 1960 due to our expanding waistlines… Based on recent prices in the range of $2.20/gallon, this translates into an additional $2.2 billion spent on gas each year. When you think about it, [...]

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Ouch. Home sales have now fallen for six straight months, and prices experienced a year-over-year decline of 2.2% in September. The median home price now stands at $220,000, down form $225,000 in September 2005. The only bright spot was that the number of homes on the market declined by 2.4% in September, meaning that there [...]

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