Remember my previous post about money-lending? Here’s an update — and it isn’t pretty.
values
Blog roundup: 9/11 edition.
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:
Get rid of junk mail, both physical and virtual.
Inundated with phone books, catalogs and direct-mail marketing offers? Catalog Choice can help – for free.
The value of work.
I’ve got a nice new divot in my left thumb, worn there by a hoe handle. Earlier this week my father and I spent about 90 minutes grubbing out weeds in a field of Christmas trees.
It’s healing surprisingly fast (thanks, Neosporin!). You should have seen it a couple of days ago. Despite the work gloves, I’d dug a hole deep enough to accommodate a hearing-aid battery.
Better safe than soggy.
Now that Irene has said good night – and as a topical storm rather than a hurricane – it’s time for everyone to attack the news media for hype and scare tactics.
My mom, the frugal role model.
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.
The bank of BFFs.
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.)
Are you your parents’ ATM?
Often we hear about boomerang kids, or middle-aged “children” who keep asking their parents to subsidize them. But what happens when Mom and Dad hit you up for a loan?
Goal-oriented groceries.
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.
Christmas is six months away. Just sayin’.
I don’t bring this up to make you nervous about shopping. Instead, I want to point out that we all have choice about how – and whether – to buy.