A disproportionate number of the personal finance bloggers out there seem to have a history of being bad with money. They are currently deeply in debt, or were so not long ago. Does this seem odd?
BillShrink made its name by offering services that help consumers to choose cell-phone plans (there are something like 10 million possibilities, absurdly enough) and decipher credit card legislation. Now, the website introduces a free search engine that’ll help you pick the most cost-effective pay-TV package.
My those Celtics taste delicious! At long last you can get toast and pizza with the logos of NBA teams on them. And you’ll pay extra for the privilege.
Sounds pretty darn logical, doesn’t it? One study shows that 20% of subprime borrowers who are bad with numbers were in foreclosure, compared to just 5% of subprime borrowers who scored high on financial literacy tests. As for the banks and agents who agreed to lend money for these subprime mortgages in the first place, it is unclear how …
Four new books explore why consumers do what they do—even when they know it’s unhealthy, unsanitary, and/or obviously bad for their finances.
Because if you do so and reserve a specific date and window of time to pick up your sandwich, you get the sandwich for free.
For quite a while, employees have been extremely reluctant to quit their jobs. Even if they were awful-paying and just plain awful gigs, the jobs market was even more awful, and so few workers wanted to risk being without a paycheck or trying something new. But now, in another sign that the economy isn’t a total basket case, tons of …
Once the fake money is in your hands, it’s your responsibility—and if you try to use it, you could go to jail for 20 years. This is even the case when the business handing out the counterfeited cash is the U.S. Post Office, as one man in Los Angeles found out.
In three recent rip-off round-ups, title insurance and college textbooks have consumers riled up, as have unnecessarily expensive—or just plain unnecessary—home repair jobs.
“Stores are open all the time, parking is easy and a lot of people treat shopping as a sort of recreational activity, and stuff is amazingly cheap. It’s the same problem we have with fast food. Fast food is so cheap, it’s just tempting to eat a lot of it.”
Some salespeople will do just about anything to convince you to purchase. But by creating a culture in which sales must be closed at any cost, a business may pay the ultimate cost, with brands that turn customers off, sales that cannot be sustained, and efforts that in the long run are failures.
If you’re going to the trouble of telling a business what went wrong with your experience, you should do so with a purpose—namely, to convince the company to make amends in some tangible, meaningful way. Mere venting, while somewhat therapeutic, won’t necessarily get you anywhere, especially if you’re dealing with someone who doesn’t …
