Pecuniarities

I recently learned a very important lesson about the pitfalls of complacency. Since June 2004, we had been with an auto insurance company called South Coast Auto Insurance/Anchor General, which we had chosen for its competitive rates in the Los Angeles area. When we moved to a more remote area in December of 2005, we [...]

The iVillage website is hosting a 30-day program called “Save Money, Make Money Community Challenge,” starting on March 3, 2008. It looks like you sign up with your email address and you will receive daily money saving tips and information on getting your personal finances in order.
Here is the brief description from the website:
“Get [...]

Do you have a daily indulgence that seems so trivial in cost that you see no harm in continuing to … well, indulge in it? Perhaps a Starbucks habit, eating lunch out, a pack of cigarettes, a candy bar, buying a daily newspaper from a newstand, etc.? Or not even a daily habit but a [...]

As an artist I am always eager for the creative challenges provided by frugal living and the quest for unconventional solutions. I view limited means and materials as a criteria or assignment and constantly ponder over the possible uses and adaptations of old, broken, or left-over items. My sister and I have always viewed saving [...]

Divide and Conquer
There is a skill called sight-reading. Sight-reading is the act of playing a piece of music through without having practiced it beforehand. We usually sight-read a piece when considering whether to learn it or when it is first assigned to us by an instructor. Some people continue to sight-read a piece indefinitely without [...]

If you make money working on your own, such as blogging with Google AdSense, Amazon Associates, etc., you will very likely have received a Form 1099-MISC for miscellaneous income by the beginning of February. And you will need to file and pay self-employment tax.

The first year I had to file self-employment tax, I was completely [...]

We were first introduced to open source software in 2005 by a cousin who works in the computer industry. He told us there was a group of people who believed that computer software should be available to anyone who wanted or needed it to freely use, develop and share, and that people had developed [...]