artofthecoupon.com

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When shopping online, it is always useful to look for coupons to help make your purchase cost less. Almost every site has some type of coupon available- whether it is a free shipping coupon or a percent off your purchase. New customers especially are often given special offers or deals for opening up a new account. However, it can be a time consuming prospect to find all of the different coupons for all of the different stores. I have a few deal websites that I use on a regular basis, but I don’t have a great source of online coupons that I use, so I was excited to try MyCoupons.com to see if it could offer me what I was looking for. Read the rest of this entry »

It appears that in both the U.S. and Britain, unemployment numbers are still up while earnings increases are still down.  Although the stock market is bouncing around and seeming to tend towards going up some days and down others, the unemployment numbers suggest that the economy is still not quite making the recovery that everyone is hoping it will make. However, although the unemployment numbers are discouraging, hearing news like Obama’s plan to provide opportunities for training/education money to unemployed parties seems like one of the better solutions I have heard. Read the rest of this entry »

From watching the stock market and listening to all the different projections being batted about, its really hard to know what is going on with our economy today. Some days things are up, other days they are tumbling back down, and some analysts are predicting the Dow a 11,000 while others say its going  back to the $3200 range… So, I guess perhaps the general consensus about the economy, recession, and recovery, seems to be that there is no consensus and it is too early to form an opinion?  Read the rest of this entry »

On July 29, the minimum wage in the United States going to rise from $6.55 an hour to $7.25 an hour.  Minimum wage in the UK is also set to rise, although there the minimum wage is set by age group and differs for adults over 22 (an interesting and valuable idea, I think, since it makes sense to have different and higher wage requirements for those who are supporting a family on their paycheck than those working for pocket change or weekend spending money).  Much attention has been paid to whether it is in fact possible to support a family while working a minimum wage job in America (Nickel and Dimed, Waging a Living are 2 examples that come to mind).  However, although the question seems to have been analyzed to death, I figure I might as well ask it again.  Read the rest of this entry »

In the US, we have a somewhat stange definition of what it means to be rich and poor.  Even many of those considered to be “poor” in America are rich, compared with the lifestyle and conditions of other countries.  And, in order to be defined as “rich” in America, it seems that the amount of money that you need to have should actually more realistically be classified as obscene.  In America, rich is not defined as having a home, one or two cars, food on the table, at least one telephone, at least one television set, etc. etc.  Rich is defined as having a mansion in Beverly Hills, plasma tv’s in every room, a Rolls Royce or some other car that costs more than a house should, etc. etc.  Read the rest of this entry »

In this post, there was a discussion of why it is so much harder to thrive in America today than it used to be.  A lot of the causes are legitimate, and it really and truly is more difficult to survive and thrive than it used to be, because of a number of different factors.  However, the fact does remain that we also require a lot more “luxuries” today then we ever did in the past, and we also have lost site of some of the basic principles of frugal living that used to exist.  While this tough economic situation has many people rediscovering frugality and reconsidering the spending that we used to take for granted, I sometimes whether the generation raised on easy conveniences will ever really understand frugality the way a generation of people raised during the Great Depression did.  Perhaps this tough economic climate will help bring those fundamental ideas back, but for now, it still seems up in the air as to whether the easy credit generation will return to our less-than-frugal ways once this economy turns around. Read the rest of this entry »

I mentioned in a previous post that my ex boyfriend is having some money management difficulties now that we have broken up. One thing he seems to be doing again, as he did years ago, is taking cash advances on his credit cards to cover expenses like rent and other credit card bills.  This is one of the worst possible things that you can do- the interest rates are extremely high and typically credit card companies apply payments to lower interest rate items first (although I believe this is changing with the new consumer protection laws), so it is especially problematic if you take cash advances on a credit card where you already owe a balance. Read the rest of this entry »

I had written on this blog in the past about how I was getting out of debt, and I also mentioned that the person who was my significant other at the time had a great deal of debt as well.  Now that he is no longer my significant other, I am still doing fairly well at getting out of debt.  I spend almost nothing, and I have increased my income a fair amount over the past two months in order to make larger debt payments.  My ex, on the other hand, is not doing well.  He had been very responsible when were together, but I saw him the other day and he was talking about buying expensive electronics, and even worse- he has started spending money on cigarettes and other mind-altering habits that provide little in the way of benefit and a lot in the way of cost.  He is in even more debt than I am, and he was doing so well at getting it paid off when we were together, that I honestly just don’t know what he is thinking.  The only possibilities that really come to mind are that he is either unable to stay motivated on his own, he doesn’t know how, or he is in complete denial of his situation (which is not a great one)… Read the rest of this entry »

This past few months, I have really been trying to develop my freelance writing career.  I have almost achieved the point now where I am making decent enough money to be satisfied- but I am definitely working a lot.  If I took a different sort of job- out of the house, doing something I find tedious and boring- I could make in 7 or 8 hours what I make in 10 or even 12 hours.  But, to me, I’d rather work a little longer than have to go to work at a job I don’t love and sit there all day doing tedious nonsense.   I don’t even mind working this extra hours, because my schedule is my own and I can be flexible about when I work them.  The tradeoff is an easy one to make.  I imagine it would be a little more of a question for those with youngs kids or other families that they don’t want to spend additional time away from- would the tradeoff still be worth it then, to spend twice as long working at something you love for the same money?

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