Category: Saving and Investing ideas

The cost of daycare for preschool age children can be one of the most significant expenses parents face. According to the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies, a family with a 4 year old child could pay upwards of $10,000 a year for center-based child care. I…
Read More

Get in Shape Frugally For most people getting or staying in shape brings about connotations of joining a gym, getting a trainer or going on some new fad diet. This can all be quite expensive and act as a deterrent to people who are on a tight budget and don't…
Read More

Smart Money brings us some novel new coupon delivery methods. These are quite interesting and innovative and shows that as times get tough companies are continually finding new ways to lure shoppers to their stores via coupons. Here are some of the methods highlighted leveraging technology to its fullest (and…
Read More

Recently there has been a spate of minor burglaries in my apartment complex, which prompted my wife and I to consider getting an alarm system for our apartment. We looked into this via various on-line sites and calls to security companies in our local area and found that the costs…
Read More

[Update] I wrote this article a few years ago as average national gas prices were approaching $5 per gallon. That seemed preposterous then. Fast forward a few years and $5 seems mild now as we may see $8 gas in some states as inflation spikes and supply constraints worsen due…
Read More

I came across an article recently about how to save money and shop on-line more effectively by taking advantage of freely available merchant discount codes. These codes can be entered at the checkout page of most on-line retailer web sites and can result in some real savings ($29 on average)…
Read More

A while ago I came across a poignant article in the Wall Street Journal - You're Not Super Rich? You Lucked Out, by Jonathan Clements which got me thinking about this concept. Here are some excerpts from it that I think ring especially true. On the face of it.... We…
Read More

Many personal-finance sites and authors talk about the need to cut your day-to-day expenses so that you can boost your savings. Good simple advice, but some who propose concepts like the obligatory measure of eliminating your daily cup (or two or three) of coffee and investing what you would have…
Read More

If one of your resolutions was to save money, you probably prepared yourself for a long year of penny pinching and bargain hunting. But saving more doesn't have to be such hard work and in fact if you make it a habit its much easier to maintain for the longer…
Read More