Busting cheap airfare myths.

thPlanning to hit the beaches on spring break or take your kids to a theme park during school vacation? Better buy those tickets soon. A new study from CheapAir.com indicates that the lowest prices can be found about seven weeks out.

The study also addresses questions like “When’s the best time to buy a ticket for Thanksgiving?” and “Is Tuesday night really the best time of the week to buy a ticket?”

The answer to the second question, by the way, is “no.”

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Just in time for Valentine’s Day: Chocolate-scented toiletries.

chocolate_0The every-Friday giveaway fell by the wayside for a few weeks. I missed it again last week because I was waiting for a couple of items to arrive from Good Earth Beauty.

They sat in the mailbox until my roommate got home late Friday evening and I must admit that the first glimpse caused me to make the girl-noise. Take a look at the accompanying photo and you’ll see why.

Couldn’t use them right away, because they were solidly frozen. But oh, how delicious they smelled on Saturday morning.

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Live, and almost live: Advice on writing and personal finance.

k7316319You’ve got two chances to hear me talk, if you so desire. The first is archived and aimed at writers, and the second is personal finance advice done in real time on Google this Friday. (Edited to add: This, too, has been archived; see below.)

Those of you who missed the 2012 Financial Blogger Conference can catch some of it as archived presentations on the FinCon video page. My own speech, “Got voice? How to make your posts more compelling,” just went up.

I came up with the idea at the initial Financial Blogger Conference in 2011, after my “Write like a pro” presentation. Several people asked some version of the question, “How can I learn to write like you?” My response was, “You shouldn’t try – you should learn to write like you.”

I don’t think the problem is that bloggers aren’t creative. I think it’s that they don’t trust their own voices.

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Some things are worth the cost.

thApparently I was out of my mind when I booked my recent trip to the East Coast. My return schedule last Friday was Philly-Chicago and then Chicago-Anchorage. The option of flying directly to Anchorage vs. a stopover in Seattle or Salt Lake City felt like a grand piece of luck.

And it would have been, if the flight had left on the same day. However, it left at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday.

I wanted to do a series of forehead-plants into the drywall. Instead I sighed, shrugged and started looking for a semi-affordable hotel near O’Hare.

The old me would have done those forehead-plants.

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