The following is a guest post. Insurance comes in many forms, and most people have at least a few different insurance products at any given moment. In addition to auto insurance, most people have homeowner's insurance and life insurance. When shopping for any kind of insurance, it's important to be thorough and methodical. Without being careful, it's easy to pay too much or to end up with the wrong kind of coverage. Fortunately, there are a few quick and easy… Read the rest

Now obviously I'm referring to children who are old enough to work and pay rent!  My youngest son recently moved out, and when I wrote about it, one of my readers asked me if we had charged our son rent. My answer is yes.   I believe a young person, once they begin working a regular job, be it full time or part time, should contribute to the household expenses.   My son and I agreed that he would pay $200 each… Read the rest

Only a personal finance blogger would react the way I did today when I opened the payment booklet from my mortgage company and saw that our mortgage payment had gone down to $508.85 from $534.02.  I whooped and said, “Finally!  I'm catching a break!  This extra is going straight to the principal!”  It seems like all around me our bills are going up, as they tend to do, and this made me very happy. I usually receive a notification letter… Read the rest

Back in February 2008, I helped Mr. A apply for a bank secured credit card so he could start building credit since he had dealt in cash for most of his life.  About one year later the card was graduated to an unsecured card and the spending limit raised from $600 to $1100.  The annual percentage rate was lowered from 24.99% to 16.99%.   We decided to use the card to buy gasoline, but somewhere along the way I decided to… Read the rest