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Books & Memories is a secondhand book store in Syracuse, New York, with a terrible name and dead web site.
2600 James St
Syracuse, NY 13206-2842
(315) 434-9268
But because visiting it made me enormously happy, I’ll describe it here, so that you may believe, despite the inability to click on it.
Like any good independently owned store, [...]
Tags: happiness · money psychology · Venn diagram
Items packed, but not used, on my trip to Syracuse, New York:
Workout clothes (2 pr shorts, 2 shirts, 1 exercise bra, 4 pr socks)
2 work-related books
2 work-related files
Why do we think we’ll work and exercise according to our everyday schedules while we’re on vacation?
It may give you comfort (or an increasing sense of fatalism) to [...]
Tags: money · relative comparisons · time
Why do Minnesotans love Target so much? Recently, the Star Tribune reported that despite Target’s losses to Wal-Mart in the rest of the country, it was still holding its own here.
To many Minnesotans, the equation is not “MN-heart-Target.” It’s “MN = Target,” says a University of Minnesota researcher. Carlos Torelli, assistant professor of marketing at [...]
Tags: Minnesota identity · Target
Budgeting gets a bad rap as a giant drag. If you’re not someone who’s inherently organized, as I’m not, first thinking about the process feels like trying to corral the very air.
“Money? I don’t know, I just, you know, wing it.”
But winging it always left me uneasy. I’d think, “I must be overspending. But I [...]
Tags: Budgeting · money psychology
Knowing your weaknesses — what makes you pull out your wallet — is one key to spending less.
By necessity, I’ve deactivated many of my “fun” spending triggers:
The library has replaced book stores.
A $10 monthly subscription to E-music has replaced CDs.
Good old Walgreens has replaced the spendy gift store for greeting cards (sorry peeps who love [...]
Tags: anxiety · stock-pile syndrome · time savings
Famous !@&#-laden “Closers” speech from Glengarry Glen Ross. Definitely skip in mixed company.
Apparently those of us in the middle class are better losers than middle-class millionaires.
In what authors Russ Alan Prince and Lewis Schiff called the “dark side” of their surveys for The Middle-Class Millionaire, they found those with the higher net worths were more [...]
Tags: John McCain · losing · Machiavellian · winning
For one hot minute many years ago, I dated someone completely wrong for me. To this day, thinking of him makes me irrationally angry. Not because we had that wake-up, break-up moment over Steely Dan versus Nirvana. (Who the hell are you? I mean, I thought I really knew you after two weeks. Steely Dan?!)
He [...]
Tags: beans · groceries · identity · lifestyle · Nirvana · rice · Steely Dan
In addition to expenses going up and income going down, here’s another reason why sometimes we’re spending more than we earn.
My husband and I took a money attitude quiz the other night that asked us to rate money’s importance to us on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being “the root of all evil” [...]
Tags: money management · parasailing · scale of 1 to 10
My parents are moving to our city in order to see the grandkids and at least two of their daughters at least weekly instead of biannually. Unfortunately, they’re moving to a more expensive market. It’s been tough watching them scramble to find something nice on social security and my dad’s pension.
If they don’t find something [...]
Tags: magical thinking · scrambling
I dreamed this morning that I was trying to balance my checkbook. In the Sisyphian melodrama that played out, someone (probably me) was telling me that not only had I never done this, but I never would. Thanks, brain!
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