spending

Goal-oriented groceries.

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Yesterday I filmed my first “Ask A Money Expert” video for MSN Money. I’d done several videos for MSN in the past, but this is a different format: Readers post questions on Facebook, to be answered by people like Jim Jubak and Liz Pulliam Weston. And now by me too, also (as the cat from Mutts would say).

The challenge was giving good information succinctly, since I had just 3½ minutes to answer a trio of questions. I’ll post the link once the finished product is available. In the meantime, I want to talk about one of the responses I gave.

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A real armpit of a place.

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Last evening we visited the Forget-Me-Not Nursery in Indian, Alaska, then got a guided tour of plantings at the Alyeska Resort in Girdwood. Really, though, it was just an excuse to enjoy a sunny summer-evening drive along beautiful Turnagain Arm.

All that scenery made us hungry. On the way back we stopped by a local eatery, the Turnagain Arm Pit BBQ. I haven’t had that much fun since downing the Salmon Dill Dough Pizza up in Talkeetna.

 

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The $9 airline ticket, and other frugal travel hacks.

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My current piece at MSN Money won’t show up in the RSS feed. That’s because it’s a slide show rather than a column.

“$9 airfare and 9 other travel hacks” offers the skinny on things like “news flash” alerts (e.g., a $9 flight from Boston to New York), ways to get a free flop anywhere from Anchorage to Amsterdam, and how to spend just $1 to journey from Washington, D.C. to Philadelphia.

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How to kick your Diet Coke addiction.

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I can remember my grandfather grousing about the price of cigarettes. He swore he would quit when it went up past 35 cents a pack.

It did, and he did.

Now I know how he felt, although my particular vice is brown and fizzy and gives me reward points. At an Anchorage supermarket I was shocked to find Diet Coke selling for $8.19 per 12-pack. Thank goodness there’s no sales tax here.

That works out to 68 cents a can. It won’t break the bank. But really? More than eight dollars for a 12-pack? For something that I can’t even get drunk off of?

 

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My $1 tax refund.

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It’s a little nervous-making to get a letter from the Internal Revenue Service. My first reaction is always, OMG I’m being audited.

Nope. “We changed your 2010 Form 1040 to match our record of your estimated tax payments, credits applied from another year, and/or payments received with an extension to file,” the letter read. “As a result, you are due a refund of $1.”

Some people might think, “A buck? Not worth the gas to take it to the bank.”

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