Thanks to all who left comments here and on the Facebook page or e-mailed after my daughter lost her baby. Your expressions of sympathy and support were much appreciated during this sad time in our family’s life.
To get back on track, I decided I’d better keep my giveaway streak alive. Up this week is a copy of J.D. Roth’s “Your Money: The Missing Manual.”
In my most recent Get Rich Slowly column, I offer five tactics to keep from spending money — but I also offer permission to spend.
Four of us will be sharing our stories today at the SaveUp 2011 conference. Well, parts of our stories – we’re limited to 12 minutes apiece.
Our fellow DealPros voted the four of us having the tales they most wanted to hear. We’ll be talking via live stream, and you’re invited: If you RSVP and then “attend,” your name will be entered into a drawing for an iPad 2.
I have never written about Sept. 11. I still don’t know what to say except that I cannot forgive myself for my initial reaction:
Editor’s note: A version of this post (written by me) originally appeared on MSN Money’s Smart Spending blog.
The older I get the more I miss my mother, who died eight years ago this month. Geneva Hanes was the youngest of 10 kids born to an uneducated Tennessee couple who eventually pulled up stakes and moved north for opportunity – that is, to work in South Jersey factories and vegetable fields.
Despite hunger, poverty and violence, my mother became the first in her family to finish high school. Mom owned two dresses (“one on, one off”) and never had a square meal or a bath in a real tub until she married my dad right after graduation.
They had four kids in five years, which sounds impossibly grim by today’s standards. But we didn’t seem to notice that we were poor. Everyone we knew pinched pennies. Nobody did it like my mom, though.
Do you always grab for the tab, or do you and friends/roommates split even the smallest expenditures?
The first can leave you open to exploitation. The second can be aggravating if it becomes an exercise in, “SonyaAnn got the extra cup of ranch dressing so she owes 30 cents more.”
Treading that ticklish territory is the subject of my latest column over at MSN Money, “Your best friends’ bank: You.” (Edited to add: This article is no longer available since Microsoft changed platforms. Sorry about that.)
Jeff Yeager, aka “The Ultimate Cheapskate,” has written two books about tightwaddery. This week you can enter to win both.
It’s always fun to go through the mail after you return from a long trip. True, a lot of what’s piled up is junk mail and charitable solicitations, but you always hope for some good stuff.
Two months’ worth of envelopes were waiting when I got back from Alaska in mid-July. I did find a $39 check from Mr. Rebates (yay, cash-back shopping!) and a couple of paychecks from my Get Rich Slowly gig. But the haul was mostly, well, junk mail and charitable solicitations.
And credit card applications. Ten of them.
You’ve got to love a blogger who can work the phrase “Cartesian dualism” into a post. In this case the blogger is my daughter, Abigail Perry, and the article is about us both. (But mostly her.)
Don’t let the title “Glorifying my mom (who’s glorifying me)” fool you. It’s not an exercise in mutual admiration, although I do admire the hell out of her. The post is about her re-reading “You can’t even tell perfect bodies apart,” a post I wrote about Abby’s near-fatal illness, and then reflecting on who she was then and who she is now.
“Getting out of debt fast is the most important financial move you can make in today’s economy,” according to author/PF guru David Bach.
He wrote the book on it, so to speak. This week I’m giving that book away.