If a scam can fool the likes of Matt Haughey, creator of MetaFilter, it can happen to anyone. He got three calls with the caller ID of his credit union and picked up on the third. After some smooth talking they convinced him to provide his ATM card’s PIN (a huge red flag) then stole […]

I’ve been using MailChimp for my Riddles and Brain Teasers site for the past five years. When I first started, it was free. Then it bumped up and leveled out at $50/month. I was okay with that. The price began another ascent when the list reached 5,000 subscribers. It leveled off at $75/month and I […]

When gas prices were sky high I was curious how much more my daily commute cost. I also wondered if it would make financial sense to get a more fuel-efficient car. At the time I made a spreadsheet to do the calculations, but it was a pain to have to keep twiddling the numbers to […]

There’s a reason the saying, “Time is money” has stood the test of time. It’s because the saying is true, more than you know. When salaried workers work extra hours, they’re getting a pay reduction. And if you change jobs and work more hours, a pay increase might not make up for the extra time. […]

If you’re looking to buy a house and want to monitor mortgage interest rates, it’s harder than you might think. I was unable to find a single site that had stock market-like mortgage rate tracking. Part of the problem is the variability among mortgage rates depending on your credit score, loan and home value and […]

Don Knuth has decided he can no longer write checks after being forced to close three checking accounts after they were subjected to multiple attacks by criminals. He says the way checks work is fundamentally broken. With the information on a check, a criminal can create an ATM card, impersonate a bank in another country […]

With the economy in the toilet and showing now no immediate signs of improving, it’s a good time to analyze your monthly expenses. I’ve come up with five ways you can save money without requiring you to change your lifestyle. In other words, you won’t notice the difference except for the extra money in your […]

Image via WikipediaEd McMahon is joining the ranks of those facing foreclosure. The numbers may be a smidgen higher than most. He’s $644,000 behind on a $4.8 million mortgage for his house in Beverly Hills. What I can’t get over is he was worth over $200 million in the nineties, won a $7.2 million insurance […]

The Bank of North Georgia has a sweet offer. You open up a checking account sign up for online billpay and pay 3 bills with the account by July 31, 2008. In return, you get a free iPod Nano. Their signature checking account has free billpay service, so it shouldn’t cost you anything. The Apple […]

It’s not a strict requirement to be in your skivvies while browsing USASpending.gov but it provided a catchy headline, no? Have you ever wanted to know what the government is spending your money on? Ever wondered where federal contracting dollars and grant awards go? Wonder no more. USASpending.gov was created to comply with the Federal […]

Before I say anything else, you may just want to take a look at the free report to see it for yourself. Below is my take on the teaching sells web site and explains why I chose to join. The background If you’re anything like me, you’re interested in learning how to make money online. […]

Yale economist Robert Shiller’s chart of historical housing prices is shocking (and frustrating if you’re buying a house). Now you can take it a step further and take a virtual ride on the roller coaster of housing prices (based on Shiller’s graph).

How many times have you heard that a home is the best investment you could ever make? David Crook of the Wall St. Journal disagrees, and wrote an article explaining why your home is not the investment you think it is. It rejects the common premise that a home is a good investment and he […]

One moment Dave DeSmidt had $179,000 in his 401(k) retirement account, the next he had nothing. In the comments on the article, there is some skepticism that it would have been so easy to transfer such a large amount without verification, but the fact remains that somehow, someone managed to get his money. There’s a […]

I want to teach my children about money and finances at an early age, so a post at Dumb Little Man about some comic books to teach kids about money piqued my interest. I ordered them for free from the Federal Reserve, and they showed up a few weeks later. I read through them and […]

JD at Get Rich Slowly has decided to switch to basic cable after crunching the numbers on his monthly bill to see how much it cost them to watch TV. He’s not the only one. John Zeratsky bid adieu to Comcast last September and Eric Olson got rid of cable last August. (I just found […]

This is truly a heartwarming story. A laptop stopped working a mere 2 weeks after the 1-year warranty had expired. Compaq wasn’t willing to budge on the 1 year mark, but since the laptop had been purchased on an American Express card, which has extended warranty protection, they would take care of it. The customer […]

I have a lot of different financial sites to keep track. I thought there must be a way to enter all the stocks, mutual funds, accounts and their interest rates as well as regular deposits or purchases I make so I could track the growth of my portfolio in one place. I searched around for […]

Trent at the simple dollar has done an overview of 5 authors in the financial management area. I find the subject quite interesting and having read several personal finance books myself, I’m inclined to agree in general with his opinions on them. He did the reviews from best to worst (in his mind) and I […]

I ran across True Majority, a site where Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerries explains the United States budget with Oreos (here’s the transcript). At first I was outraged and in complete agreement that we should reallocate the national budget. But there are always two sides to the story, and I wondered what the other […]

Forbes released their latest list of the 400 richest Americans. I find the sources fascinating. They range from tech companies like Microsoft, Google, Dell and Oracle to Walmart and Enterprise Rent-A-Car. Then, for something completely different, there’s candy and chewing gum. There’s an awful lot of hedge funds too. I’m going to have to take […]

Here’s a way to see how energy efficient your house is. It’s called the Home Analyzer and can get pretty detailed if you keep drilling down and entering information about your appliances. You can also enter your recent gas and electric bills and it will tell you how they compare with other people in your […]

This year’s top ten stocks caught my eye in the news. I looked at some of the charts (Avaya for example) and discovered that the reason many of them jumped so high is because they were at all-time lows last year. Ebay’s growth on the other hand appears to be consistently trending upward. Eric Hellweg […]