This evening my wife and I got to talking about the term “baker’s dozen.” I can’t recall what got us onto the subject, but it prompted me to look up the origin of the term. According to Wikipedia:
The expression found its genesis in 13th-century England, when an Assize of Bread and Ale was introduced… Bakers [...]

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Last night, a reader named Heather asked the following question:
We are debating about whether or not to take the $7500 from the government for being first time home owners. In 2 years, we will have to start paying “them” back $500 for the next 15 years. If we were to sell our house in that [...]

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Last night I finally found the time to open an account with DollarSavingsDirect. For those that are familiar with it, DollarSavingsDirect is a new(ish) high yield savings bank. Amazingly, despite month of falling rates, they managed to stay atop my list of online savings account interest rates with a juicy 4.00% APY.
While DollarSavingsDirect is a [...]

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Here’s an interesting little tidbit from Consumer Reports Money Advisor… Almost all credit unions require you to put up your other accounts as collateral when applying for one of their credit cards. Thus, if you default on the card, they can take your savings and apply it toward what you owe them. In contrast, very [...]

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The good folks at Intuit have provided me with three “financial packages” to give away to FCN readers. Each package comes with a Turbo Tax Deluxe online webcard (including one free federal and state preparation along with e-filing) and a copy of Quicken Deluxe Desktop. That’s right, you get both. In case you’re curious, here’s [...]

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A little over a year ago, I ran across an article in a local parenting magazine about paying kids for their performance at school. At the time, I thought it would be a great topic to discuss, so I cut it out and filed it away (by which I mean I threw it on my [...]

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The Tax Cut giveaway is now over, and I’ve (randomly) selected the winners. Here on FCN, 77 people left comments. And the winner is… mbhunter!
Over on Twitter, there were only eighteen entries, so the odds were significantly better over there. And the winner is… @BlaineMoore.
Congrats to both of you. Please send me your mailing address [...]

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Over the weekend, I opened an account with Zecco. I’ve been meaning to do this for quite some time, but never found the time to do so. In case you’re not familiar with Zecco, they burst onto the scene back in July of 2006. Their name, which stands for “Zero Commission Cost,” pops up in [...]

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Did you hear about the fraudulent $0.25 charges from a company called Adele that hit millions of consumers recently? Mint did. And guess what? They reviewed their customers’ accounts and notified everyone that was affected. Pretty cool.
And now for some other cool stuff…
David compiled 50 tips for saving money on vacations.
Ben pulled together a list [...]

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Yikes! I just realized that I forgot to pay the 4th quarterly installment of our 2008 estimated taxes, which were due on January 15th. After the initial panic subsided, I did a bit of digging and was relieved to find out that it’s really not a big deal. Here’s the straight dope from Fairmark.com:
Penalty for [...]

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