Why would someone choose to have less than they could? Lots of reasons. There are as many ways to live large as there are people who refuse to think small. Over the time I've be
Especially for things people often buy on credit, like a car or a house, there's a tendency to divide the ownership into two periods--while the loan is being paid off, where the it
I got a notice from one of my credit cards a bit ago, announcing that they were raising the interest rate. It's only of theoretical interest to me, of course--I use credit cards f
Your IRA and 401(k) (or 403(b) if you work for a non-profit) are great tools for deferring taxes, and have other advantages as well. But because they're labeled "retirement" accou
It's easy to find books and articles on how to manage your money to support your long-term goals. You can read a lot about stocks and bonds, retirement accounts, investing in gold
This article has its roots in an article I wrote some time ago that used the terms wage slave and debt peonage—terms that some people objected to. Those making free choices aren't
Just to be clear, I'm also worried about a surge in inflation, but that's not what I'm talking about here. I don't know the future, so I try to stay away from predictions. But yo
A few times I've written a post that I thought was good, but that seemed to vanish into the blogosphere without a trace. On my two-year anniversary of writing for Wise Bread, I
One of the most common questions over on the Wise Bread forum is some variation on, "I have $X in savings but $Y in credit card debt. Should I use the savings to pay down the debt?
Corporations were invented a few hundred years ago--created to increase the wealth and power of favored businessmen (and the governments that favored them). They have become such
There are two ways to make a major change in your life. One is to make a series of small changes--this month you might brown-bag your lunch one day a week; next month you might go
The economy is way short of full employment, so naturally, consumer spending is down. Sooner or later employment, I think, will return to normal levels. Consumer spending will re
I have a pair of shoes that are about to wear out. This sucks because they're shoes I wear pretty often (which is no doubt why they're wearing out). I'll probably have to replace
A while back, I heard an interview with a guy who, troubled by the Exxon Valdez oil spill, decided the right response was to quit driving. The bit of the interview that stuck with
I spent my whole adult life trying to figure out how to get by on a lot less money, because I wanted to be a full-time writer and knew that it wouldn't pay enough to support the li
Everyone knows that cooking is cheaper and healthier than eating out. It's also better (i.e. more to your taste) than eating out, and easier than eating out (no driving, parking,
There's a store near where I live that sells stuff for organizing your other stuff--racks, boxes, cabinets, and shelves for tools and toys, sweaters and shoes, spices and CDs. The
The Wall Street Journal has an opinion piece by Arthur Laffer that shows a scary graph of the monetary base, which has surged enormously in the past year. He suggests that this is
When I went off to college in 1977, inflation was high and rising, but the maximum interest rate you could earn on a savings account was capped by the government at a fraction over
If you want to get good at something, you need to practice. If you're not trying to get better, and just want to enjoy doing whatever it is, there's no need to practice--do what y
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