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Entries Tagged as 'Spending'

Why the Layered Look is Always In

December 8th, 2009 2 Comments

Someone passed along a link that points out common retail “gotchas.” I’ve got another to add to the list: Women’s clothing.
Whereas my husband can walk into a store and buy a long-sleeved dress shirt appropriate to the season, women’s dressy clothes are puzzle pieces that must be assembled. Long-sleeved shirts, when you can find them, [...]

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Welcome to the Working Week

August 17th, 2009 1 Comment

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I’ve got a fun temporary full-time gig helping to launch a corporate web site, so blogging, which I try to save for evenings, has gotten squeezed lately. (Nights I’m trying to finish the other freelance projects due this month.)
Financially, I feel like a space alien. It’s been nearly a decade [...]

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Frugal Fail: Generic Foods Haiku

August 6th, 2009 No Comments

generic grape nuts
lack a certain flavoring
they used dust, I think
generic cheese of
the cottage type lacks body
but brims with water
off-label fruit cups
glow eerily neon bright
is this papaya?

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Happiness is a Warm Sparkler: Where Spending Overlaps Joy

July 3rd, 2009 2 Comments

Image via Wikipedia

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, [...]

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Can’t Afford a Pet? Skip the Ant Farm: Try Fostering a Dog or Cat

June 24th, 2009 2 Comments

Did you know ants bury their dead?
Last night, the last ant standing in our $12 ant farm (courtesy of my mom, so free to us — thanks mom!) joined its companions in the designated burial ground — sand mounded like drifts of snow around the little plastic barns and silos. As you can see, one [...]

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Where We Are Now, and How We Got Here

May 27th, 2009 No Comments

If you’ve got a little time, I have seen no better example that encapsulates, in one man’s story, the mania that preceded the housing bubble and its very painful aftermath.
His story is jaw-dropping. A financial correspondent for the NY Times Washington bureau, Edmund L. Andrews’s $120,000 salary was never going to support $4,000 in monthly [...]

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Gamers and Those Who Stop Playing: A Story Behind the Story

May 26th, 2009 1 Comment

In this story I wrote for CreditCards.com on which cards personal finance experts use themselves, Liz Pulliam Weston, MSN Money columnist, and Ron Lieber, NY Times columnist, are both whip-smart and serious about leveraging their credit cards rewards programs.
In the course of my conversation with Lieber, I asked something about how the card issuers figure [...]

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Credit News Roundup: What The New Law Means for You

May 22nd, 2009 1 Comment

Your Money: Guide to New Credit Card Rules, NY Times
President Obama signs the new credit law (Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act) this weekend, which means that by mid-August consumers will be spared some of the most egregious fee charges and rate hikes. (This article by the Christian Science Monitor breaks it all down [...]

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One Perfect Thing: Parkers Farm Peanut Butter

April 7th, 2009 12 Comments

Peanut Butter is my “deserted island” pick. (Or is it “desert island”? Which makes no sense.)
Sometimes I act as if I am, in fact, on that island; I passed up a nice garlicy portion of pork roast last night in favor of PB toast. (Never mind I’d had it for lunch, too.)
Because of the sheer [...]

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Well That Was Fun: Spending’s Hit of Joy

April 1st, 2009 4 Comments

I have a vivid memory of standing with my mom in her bedroom as she went through her closet, bemoaning that she had nothing to wear. I was probably 4 or so. I didn’t understand what she meant — there were clothes everywhere.
Now she is me. My own closet is full of vintage dresses that [...]

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