There’s nothing a retailer likes more than a consumer who goes shopping for gifts, and who winds up picking up a few things for herself while she’s at it. Earlier in the shopping season, a rise in self-gifting was projected, with 57.1% of pent-up consumers expected to take advantage of deals and buy stuff for themselves on gift-getting …
Borrowing
180 Money Tips, Holiday Gift Edition
Including links to more than 80 unusual and unusually thrifty gift ideas, along with money lessons from “The Simpsons” and money lessons for irresponsible 20-somethings, smart financial moves to make for the holidays and dumb financial moves that’ll make you fat.
Cheapskate Wisdom from … Billionaire Dallas Mavericks Owner Mark Cuban
“Saving 30% to 50% buying in bulk–replenishable items from toothpaste to soup, or whatever I use a lot of–is the best guaranteed return on investment you can get anywhere.”
The Curious American Consumer: Notable Trends for Housing, Shopping, Work, Fast Food, and More
As the numbers attest, life has changed quite a bit recently for homeowners, workers, shoppers, families, and even for rich people. And it’s not all bad: At least TVs are cheaper, right?
Q&A: ‘The Adventures of Unemployed Man’ Author Erich Origen
If you ever wanted to make sense of the bubble-riding, downsizing, outsourcing, debt-inducing, credit-crazy, middle-class-destroying era we’ve all just lived through—and in many ways, which we all continue to live in—a comic book will do the job as good as any. Hilarious, clever, very relevant, and remarkably insightful and …
Q&A: ‘Generation Earn’ Author Kimberly Palmer
To today’s young professionals, debilitating credit card and student loan debt and unemployment rates of 10% are common parts of their economic landscape, while ideas like job security and real estate investments that always rise in value seem like concepts of the distant past. How do people in their 20s and 30s differ from previous …
Holiday Spending by the Numbers
How much will you be spending this holiday season? Probably less than you did last year (about $25 less), but, if last year’s any indication—when the average shopper dropped $112 more than he’d anticipated—still more than you intend to spend, whether you draw up an official budget or not. Whatever you buy, it’ll probably be on sale: …
Shout Out: ‘How to Literally Mortgage Your Children’s Future’
Tom Tomorrow envisions a new banking industry product that allows parents to get cash advances based on the estimated future earnings of their offspring.
A Full Year of College for $999?
A Baltimore-based for-profit company is offering online core 101-style college courses—English, statistics, algebra—for $138 per month, or at the infomercial-esque price of $999 for a full year.
The Good News If Debt Collectors Are After You
In many instances, debt collectors are even sloppier and more clueless than the robo-signers involved in Foreclosuregate.
The Good News If Mortgage Lenders Are After You
“The banks have been servicing mortgages and chasing delinquents with the same carelessness and indifference to due process that they demonstrated when they underwrote and securitized the mortgages in the first place.”