Ok, so some of you out there might not consider free opera a win. Personally, I had no stance on opera at all, which is a little weird given my whole career path. I do remember a sort of masochistic 20 year old Mel hearing that opera was the hardest thing to stage manage and…
How do you pick which mass market retailer you shop with? I think it’s interesting that they have different “vibes” in different areas of the country. Where I grew up in central NJ, Target was the only really socially acceptable mass market retailer. There was no stigma at all about shopping there – and I…
Who says all goals have to be good ones? Buy every pair of shoes in Nordstrom. Marry a guy (or gal) with $500,000 of debt in student loans. Eat at Olive Garden every night for the rest of your life. Mmm… breadsticks. Get the cable package with every single channel that’s ever existed. Who needs…
Usually when I write about life in NYC, I regale you all with one of my Fail tales. This past week though, I actually scored an NYC win that I thought I’d share with any locals or folks headed here in the summer. Free kayaking! Erin over at Broke Millennial has this great list of…
I don’t think you should pay for anything on your birthday and apparently I’m not the only one! Check out this list of companies who just wanna celebrate you on your big day! Most of these offers are even good for the entire week or month of your birthday. Am I missing some? Leave any…
Maybe I’ve been living under a rock, but the 4th of July was the first time I’d heard about Uber and Lyft. I was visiting an old friend in Washington, D.C. and we were discussing our evening plans, which were going to include a whole lotta cocktails, ya’ know, in honor of our nation and…
The final aspect of green burial is green cemeteries. Most people opt to be buried in a traditional cemetery, six feet in the ground, in a coffin encapsulated in a vault. Others opt to be cremated. While it may seem like you’re choosing the environmentally friendly option in that case, in reality, the energy used…
Today I have a guest post from someone really in the know about how to save cash on everyday items (and she’s a college student, so you know she’s budget conscious) – Jane Hudson. Jane is freelance writer who writes about all things shopping, saving tips, and lifestyle… under the sun. Check her page coupon4share.com for…
Green funeral homes are funeral homes that are willing to work with you to make sure your desire for an eco-friendly burial is carried out. According to the law, funeral parlors need your consent for several of the things we’ve already mentioned, like embalming, but they can also refuse to have an open casket wake…
There are two main products used in every funeral – a receptacle for the body and chemicals to preserve the body. If you’re thinking of going green, these are the two things you’ll need to address with any funeral directors you work with. At the risk of being a little tactless, coffins are expensive. Just…
What exactly is a green funeral? It’s a funeral that uses products and methods that leave as small an environmental footprint as possible. Basic funerals seem like a huge waste to me – of both money and material. I don’t even consider myself all that crunchy and I still think it makes more sense for…
I don’t know about your family, but in my house my mom was always the pushover and my dad was the really strict parent. If you asked my mom for a candy bar at the grocery store you got two. If you asked my dad for a candy bar at the grocery store, he threatened…
Until I moved to NYC, bodega was just a word I learned and promptly forgot in my high school Spanish class. Now, it’s kind of my life line. You can get pretty much anything at the corner store – milk, eggs, alcohol, full meals, toilet paper, duct tape, even lottery tickets if you’re feeling lucky.…
*Please note that while I was a licensed insurance agent for auto and home in the state of Virginia in 2008, it has been several years since I’ve used this knowledge. If you are in the process of purchasing auto insurance, please make sure to double check all information with your insurance provider. Coverage requirements…
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about when it’s ok to indulge the urge to splurge. While I’ve come to the conclusion that there is only one hard and fast rule, it’s still a definite gray area. #1 Urge to Splurge Rule: Only splurge when you can afford it! This isn’t really a quality versus…
I sure am. The more I take a closer look at my spending and saving habits, the better I get at both of them. I think the first few steps are some of the hardest, but there are some really great tools on the internet to help you get a handle on your finances –…
For as long as I can remember, my extended family has gone on camping trips. My dad is the youngest of nine, so there were always plenty of cousins to hang out with and piles of mischief to get up to. There was the memorable year when I ran full speed into a partially buried…
**This is not a sponsored post. But it should be. I’m looking at you, Starbucks and Raise.com. However, there are affiliate links.** If you’re taking your first baby steps into the personal finance world, you might be reading about something called the “latte factor.” This is essentially the amount of a small expenditure you…
I think pretty much everyone who works in theater knows that stage managers could single handedly fund Staples. Turns out there’s actually a fantastic blog run by Rebecca called Stapler Confessions that focuses on personal finance AND getting the best deals at Staples. She is seriously into this store, and if there’s one person out there…
There’s an old saying that goes, “you can do things fast, well and cheap, but only in combinations of two.” Um. Yeah. Something like that. So you can do things fast and well, but they won’t be cheap. You can do things fast and cheap, but the results are not gonna be good. The one I want…
The other day I got my bi-yearly haircut (it’s true) and since I’m not particularly chatty, my hairstylist struck up a conversation with the neighboring hairstylist that was fascinating to me. Hairstlyist #2 enters salon and drops a half a dozen shopping bags on the floor next to the neighboring chair (that salon is in…
Moving to NYC has made me super budget conscious. Fortunately, I work a lot and don’t have many friends in the city. Being on my own most of the time makes it easy to stick to my budget, and hanging out with my hometown friends on the weekends in NJ is so much cheaper than…
When I was a broke grad student living in England, the price of everything there freaked me out for the first few months. This is because the pound kicks the dollars butt… and it was kicking it pretty good in 2010-11. I seriously lived like a weird little hermit, but I still had to eat.…
Hang out in the PF blogosphere for a little bit and you’ll see there are several money saving “tricks” that are pretty prevalent. If you read my February update, you’re aware I finished up the month a little cash strapped. Fortunately the whole Roomba fraud business seems to be taken care of, but my credit…
I love free stuff. Although I think very few things in life are truly free – pretty much everything has a string attached, whether it’s a price tag or something else – I still also think that some of those strings are more palatable than others. Personally, I’m ok with trading a little of my…