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 [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Spending'
Why the Layered Look is Always In
December 8th, 2009 2 Comments
Tags: retail price · women's clothing
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 [...]
Tags: Bottlemania · work expenses
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?
Tags: Frugal fail · generic · grocery
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. [...]
Tags: happiness · money psychology · Venn diagram
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, [...]
Tags: foster dog programs
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 [...]
Tags:
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 [...]
Tags: cash economy · Chris Farrell · creditcards.com · Liz Pulliam Weston · Ron Lieber
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 [...]
Tags: credit card law · credit card legislation · credit card rules
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 [...]
Tags: grocery store
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 [...]
Tags: money psychology
