A Costco Reward Gift That’s Nice to Have
Last Friday we received a membership renewal letter from Costco. Together with the notice is a $64.86 reward gift check from Costco. As a Costco Executive Member, we are able to enjoy the 2% cashback for shopping at Costco and the reward check is what we have accumulated last year, which also means that in [...]
Make A Budget in Three Steps
When talking about living on a budget, people sometimes mistakenly equal it to living cheap. The fact is living on a budget has nothing to do with living cheap. Instead, it means living organized. Particularly, for those who live from paycheck to paycheck, a budget is the tool that lets them prioritize their spending and, [...]
PIN vs. Signature Based Debit Transactions
Last week, when I was writing the article on reward checking accounts, I noticed that some banks not only require a number of debit card transactions in a month in order to get the higher yield, but also explicitly say qualifying transactions must be PIN (personal identification number) based, while others insist only signature based [...]
Google Tip Jar Lets You Take and Share Tips
So the economy is bad and families are tightening their belts to save here and there. In time like this, we can always use a few helpful tips. If that’s what you are thinking, then you may want to check out a new site called Tip Jar from Google, a place where you can share [...]
Where Did Our Money Go?
As I continue to review our finance, where I have covered trading, passive income, and net worth so far, the next item on my list is to examine our spending last year. The reason I want to check where our money went is the increase of our cash in 2008. Though the gain of nearly [...]
Do You Budget?
If you do, then what’s the reason for you to budget?
I don’t and I don’t know whether that’s a problem for me or not.
There were several years in the 90s when I wrote every penny I spent in notebooks, not to better plan how to spend my money next month, but to know where it [...]
Previous Poll Results
So far I have conducted three polls on this site, one about paying mortgage with credit cards is still ongoing and two were closed. The reason I like to run opinion polls is to get real life people’s opinions on issues that are closely related to personal finance, in addition to getting the news [...]
Save Big with Small Things, 20 of Them
Found this article, “20 Small Ways to Save Big,” by Jessica Andersonon on Kiplinger’s Personal Finance today. It’s always interesting to see how small things that we sometimes overlooked can add up to big money. I especially like No. 8 “Get a credit card with rewards,” No. 13 “Insure yourself” and No. 20 “Keep track [...]
Upgrade To Quicken 2007
I have been using Quicken to track my investments for a while. After started with Microsoft Money, I switched to Quicken in 2003. Ever since, Quicken has been my favorite (though I also use Excel spreadsheet). Currently, I use Quicken to track investments, bank accounts, credit cards, and loans.
For the 2007 version, the most noticeable [...]
