This post is from new staff writer William Cowie.
Prom inflation? There’s such a thing now? Seriously? Yep.
Visa evidently thinks prom spending is significant enough that they’re spending money doing an annual survey about how much people are going to spend on proms.
The 2013 report just came out a few weeks ago. What did it say?
New records
Recession, [...]

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A week ago, I asked how you guys will be preparing your taxes. As of this writing, just over 340 readers have responded, and the results are quite interesting. By far, the most popular response (with 48% of all votes) was commercial tax prep software, followed by a professional tax preparer (25%), electronic fillable forms [...]

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With just over six weeks until Tax Day 2011, many have already done their taxes, and most have at least started thinking about doing do so. With that in mind, I thought it would be interesting to run a poll about your preferred method for preparing your federal income taxes.

How are you preparing your taxes?

Paper [...]

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Guess what? Valentine’s Day is on Monday. Like many holidays, Valentine’s Day has become more and more commercialized. In fact, according to the National Retail Federation, the average consumer is expected to spend $102.50 on Valentine’s day this year.
Here are some more interesting stats from the NRF:

36% will buy flowers
About half (47%) will dine out
16% [...]

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With the 2010 elections now behind us, I thought it would be interesting to run a quick poll about one of the most talked about subjects – jobs. It seems that campaign ads this year either focused on a personal attack aimed at tearing down the opposing candidate, or they talked about jobs.
While there are [...]

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How do you handle restaurant bills when eating with a group? This can be a sticky issue, as you don’t want to get stuck paying an unreasonable amount, but you also don’t want to come off as a cheapskate.
While on our recent vacation, we went out for dinner with our extended family. In order to [...]

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I don’t know about you guys, but we’re headed out of town for a glorious week of relaxation. In fact, by the time you read this, we’ll have nearly reached our destination.
As we do nearly every summer, we’re traveling by car, and we’ll wind up covering close to 3,000 miles by the time we get [...]

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Last summer I ran a poll asking whether or not you were feeling any economic pain. At the time, 51% answered “yes” with an additional 16% saying saying that you weren’t, but that you suspected it was just around the corner.
Since that time, the stock market has rebounded nicely, though it’s been a pretty rough [...]

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I recently wrote about the advantages of tax-deferred (traditional) vs. Roth retirement contributions. That post sparked an interesting discussion about the value of Roth vs. traditional accounts in the long run.
Each approach has its advantages, and the optimal strategy may vary based on your circumstances. For example, if you’re currently in a low tax [...]

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The big news earlier this week was that pending home sales in March were up 21% vs. the same period in 2009. While that sounds promising, it must be kept in mind that many buyers were rushing into the market to take advantage of the homebuyer tax credit, which expired at the end of April.
At [...]

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