A couple of gift-card related tidbits…
For starters, be sure to use your gift cards. According to an article in the WSJ, Americans spend $65B per year on gift cards (no including bank issued, pre-paid cards), with $6.8B going unredeemed. In some cases, that money becomes “abandoned property” that is collected by the state. In other [...]

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Few celebrations are sweeter than those centered around accomplishment through sacrifice.
Sacrifice yields success
Simply put… Debt reduction takes sacrifice. It requires us to set aside immediate desires in favor of long-term piece of mind. It’s not easy, and we’re not robots. We run the risk of burn out, failure, tension with loved ones, embarrassment, and exclusion, [...]

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After months of consideration, the NY Times has confirmed that they will begin to charging consumers who wish to access more than a certain number of articles per month. This all begs the question… Would you pay to access this sort of content on the web? Or would you just look elsewhere?
While you think about [...]

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This is a guest post from Richard Barrington, who is a banking analyst for MoneyRates.com. Richard previously spent over twenty years as an investment industry executive.
One of the ways 2009 made history was by having the most sustained episode of deflation since the 1950s. As the year progressed, however, it was clear that inflation was [...]

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In case you missed it, AT&T and Verizon are in the midst of a wireless price war. As of yesterday, both companies have been cut the prices of their “unlimited” plans by as much as 30%.
If you have one of these plans and want to take advantage of the lower rates, you have to contact [...]

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Have you started thinking about your retirement contributions for 2010? We been swamped with homebuying details over the past month or two, but we closed on our condo on Friday, so we’re finally able to change our focus to planning our finances for the upcoming year.
Our plan for 2010 is getting serious with about saving [...]

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As a followup to Friday’s post about having paid off our mortgage early, I wanted to spend a bit of time talking about how things will be different in the absence of our mortgage. What follows are the three biggest issues we’ve come across thus far.
No more escrow
As most anyone with a mortgage is aware, [...]

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Guess what? We paid off our mortgage. That means we have now have no debt. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Nothing. And do you know what? It feels pretty darn good.
Yes, we’re well aware of the mathematical advantages of keeping your mortgage and investing our extra cash, but we decided to pay off the mortgage for [...]

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I recently ran across an interesting article about a Swiss Court fining a speeder $290,000. Apparently the court decided to base the fine on the offender’s $20M net worth. Apparently he/she is a repeat offender and was traveling at a little more then 1.7x the posted speed limit (137 km/hour in an 80 km/hour zone). [...]

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As you’ve likely heard by now, Haiti recently suffered a devastating earthquake. If you’re interested in helping the relief efforts by donating money but don’t know where to start, please check out the following non-exhaustive list of options:

The American Red Cross has pledged an initial $1M in support. You can help support their efforts by [...]

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