This week’s drawing is for the kind of prize most favored by readers. Chocolate runs a very close second – but allow me to point out that you can buy chocolate on Amazon.com.
Anyone want a $25 Amazon gift card?
Donna Freedman
What I learned from de-cluttering: The sequel.
Just before moving to Anchorage I wrote an MSN Money piece called “What I learned from de-cluttering.” But that was before I’d finished packing.
What I’ve learned since then? That I didn’t de-clutter enough.
It was shocking to see how many boxes I wound up putting in the moving van. As a result, I have half a dozen suggestions for your own future moves.
Here’s hoping these tips help you avoid merely paying lip service to de-cluttering.
Think your money questions are dumb?
Well, they’re not. Or so says my MSN Money colleague Liz Weston, aka the most widely read financial columnist on the Internet. Her latest book, “There Are No Dumb Questions About Money,” is this week’s giveaway.
Liz bases her text on real questions people have asked. In other words, this is information that people like you and I can use.
As a writer she is direct but also compassionate. While she understands how people can get into money trouble, she also is clear that the best person to help you usually is you.
Ice road U-Haulers.
Thursday afternoon the temperature was in the mid-70s as my helpers and I rushed to pack my worldly goods into the 14-foot U-Haul parked outside my Seattle apartment building. A few days later? Driving through snow on the frost-heaved Al-Can.
Things may alter.
Fortunately, that was snow that had already fallen. Driving on frost heaves in blizzard conditions would have been a lot more unpleasant than bouncing over those same white-covered bumps. I’ll take slippery over zero-visibility any day.
Like being at FinCon12 – or at the sponsor tables, anyway.
Even though I had a bad cold I had a great time at the recent Financial Blogger Conference in Denver. If you want to know more about the event, check out my daughter’s posts over at I Pick Up Pennies:
- Off to FinCon
- FinCon: One day down, three to go
- FinCon day two
- Bank vault dinner and “Star Wars” slides
And if you want to win some conference swag? Read on.
Everything is elegiac.
Yesterday I did my last real shopping trip at the nearby ethnic market: milk, yogurt starter, carrots, eggs, bananas, garlic, onion, a couple of oranges and some extra 99-cent spices to take up to Alaska. For example, I rarely see celery seed in most grocery stores — and when I do, it’s a teeny-tiny bottle for $5 or $6.
Rolling the shopping cart over there to stock up has become a pleasant little ritual for me. I’m really going to miss that store, especially as regards cheap produce. Fruits and vegetables are never cheap in Alaska.
Lately everything I do have been imbued with a ridiculous poignancy:
A giveaway for pirate fans (not the ones who live in Pittsburgh).
If International Talk Like a Pirate Day did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it – just so that I could have this particular giveaway.
How I’ll use the GoBankingRates.com prize.
Thanks to all of you who voted for me in the recent PF Olympics competition. With your help I came in second and received $250 worth of American Express gift cards.
These will help defray the costs of my upcoming move to Alaska.
FinCon12, with a cold — and a giveaway to match. Plus: An erudite vampire novel.
I go for months and months without getting a cold. When it’s time to go to a conference, I get sick. But what makes that particularly amusing is the subject of this week’s giveaway: another cold and flu package.
If the items I’m giving away were here, I’d have been into them all by now.
SeaTac Airport, 4 a.m.
I don’t know what I was thinking when I booked a 6:15 a.m. flight to the Financial Blogger Conference, which starts this afternoon in Denver. Why, oh why, didn’t I travel yesterday?
That will teach me to make flight plans while I’m in New Jersey. Apparently the combined impact of heat, humidity and Tastykakes prevented me from thinking clearly.