September 2009

How much financial help to give a family member?

September 15, 2009

Over at Get Rich Slowly, J.D. has a great post on dealing with a family financial crisis. Responding to a reader’s question asking how to stay out of the red when you’re faced with a job loss and dwindling statements, he brings up a similar problem his brother faced and is still struggling to overcome, [...]

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Why is the grass never greener…?

September 14, 2009

Am I the only person who keeps imagining the grass is greener on the other side of the fence and then, once I’m in the pasture, discovering that’s not grass—it’s Astroturf? On the way home from Saturday’s six-hour choir workshop, what should I spot but an open-house sign (Sotheby’s: around here, that spells “if you [...]

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Repurcussions of the fall

September 13, 2009

Talking with people about the collapse of the economy, you gain some unexpected insights and hear stories you hadn’t thought about. This afternoon I dropped by a pricey optical boutique in hopes that they could adjust my glasses frames and get them right. Background: Three or four years ago, I bought a pair of stupefyingly [...]

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Frugal Cosmetics: Lemons for your beauty routine

September 12, 2009

Here’s something fun and useful: check out Miss Thrifty’s Six Thrifty Uses for a Lemon. The main post has six great ideas, and readers have been adding more—including one link to an experiment that shows how to use lemons as batteries! The physicist in me fails at that stage. But since I’m a woman, my [...]

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If I Had It to Do Over: 10 money moves I’d do differently

September 11, 2009

Ever think about what you’d do if you could turn back the clock and be 20 again? Though I wouldn’t especially want to live my life over, there are a number of money moves—and decisions that had more influence on lifelong personal finance than I could have guessed at the time—that I’d either not do [...]

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Facing unemployment: The emotional effects, the business consequences

September 10, 2009

By way of handing off her classes to me, the community college instructor for whom I agreed to play substitute while she’s out of town came over to my house with a pile of lesson plans. Let’s call her La Maîtresse (the teacher), for her extraordinary enthusiasm and her creative approach to the often routine [...]

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