A site that offers free online access to national magazines seems too good to be true for consumers and a nightmare for publishers. But that’s what is happening at mygazines.com. It offers free .pdf versions of popular magazines. For how long, who knows? I’m no lawyer, but it seems to be a clear copyright infraction.
While […]
Sunday’s Spending Smart newspaper column was about setting goals. That can be a real yawner of a topic – although it shouldn’t be. For those of you in white-collar jobs who handle budgets or manage people, could you imagine your boss just saying, “Heck with creating objectives, just wing it. We’ll just hope our department […]
On Sunday, I wrote in my Spending Smart column about whether satellite radio is a good value, especially for those who are cash-strapped nowadays. So far, I’ve gotten less hate e-mail from satellite-radio fans than I anticipated. However, I did get a note from a public-relations representative for Slacker.com.
In the column, I talked about how […]
I’m constantly looking for better ways to explain Spending Smart strategies, whether in print or during television and radio interviews. One struck me recently as I watched a TV rerun of “Friends.” Monica mentioned something about cooking with a light bulb in an Easy-Bake Oven. That illuminated a light bulb for me.
The child’s toy Easy-Bake […]
In a recent Spending Smart newspaper column about rewards credit cards, I mentioned in passing that the Chase Freedom Visa Signature card was a decent rewards card. I got several reader e-mails about that brief mention; some critical of the card, some supportive.
In the column, I said a good card for big spenders is the […]
On a beach vacation recently, I had a revelation about soap bubbles.
My 3-year-old nephew had a plastic toy gun that dispensed rapid-fire bubbles. One quiet evening on a patio facing the Atlantic Ocean as the sun set, he pulled the trigger and 100 or so bubbles streamed out in frantic exodus.
Of course, it took only […]
There’s very little good news about inflation in consumer prices. We’ve all seen it – at the gas pump, at the supermarket and everywhere else, it seems.
If you’re looking for a silver lining, look at fixed-price items. As prices rise, items whose price stays the same become relatively cheaper.
Two examples are the dollar menus at […]
There are many ways to get bargains on books and audio books. The best is getting them free from your public library. You could also get them used online at such sites as Half.com. Even Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble (with a membership) have decent prices. I personally have a subscription to Audible.com to get […]
Bankrate.com, a great source for a variety of personal finance information, today released a Debt Management Guide. It integrates some of the helpful calculators on the Bankrate.com site.
Best of all, it’s free.
Look for several upcoming Spending Smart newspaper columns, by yours truly, on one of the fundamental components of debt, learning about your credit reports […]
I consume a ton of personal finance stuff every week from books, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, blogs, podcasts, news releases, etc. Most of it is a rehash of stuff I’ve seen a hundred times before. When I run across something interesting, I set it aside or make notes.
Here’s a rundown of some stuff in my “interesting” […]
