Saturday Night Live had a hilarious skit this past weekend about the ‘Spirit Halloween’ store that pops up across America for 6 weeks then disappears into the ether until the next holiday season. If you missed the skit it’s worth to watch for a few good laughs but it got me thinking about when Halloween…
Category: Expense Management
How I Save Money Using Open Source Software
A few of my hobbies include photography, videography and travel and as you can imagine those three activities can cost quite a bit of money. In the past, I spared no expense on my hobbies but as time wore on I realized I was spending too much money on software. The issue became worse when…
Do You Use Inflation Reports To Your Advantage?
The BLS released their latest inflation reports this week for CPI and PPI and I have been looking over the data. Yahoo Finance has a nice chart here that shows where the most deflation has occurred over the past month. Two things have caught my attention. FOOD According to the Consumer Price Inflation report food…
Another Repair & Hit To My Rental Property Income
Well it turns out last month I had more repairs on a condo unit. The property management company took care of everything including sending me the bill. In August, it was a $500 hit to repair a fireplace and an issue in the kitchen and some other minor problem. Fortunately, I haven’t had any major…
Incredible Streaming Services Inflation
As part of a potential recession coming up, I wrote this post about a year ago where I talked about rationalizing streaming services. I still think a recession is likely into 2025 but I was able to get some good deals on streaming services. In one instance, I got Hulu (with ads) for $0.99/month for…
Flood Insurance Double The Cost
We got our flood insurance bill this week and the cost doubled from around $500 last year to $900 this year. It is important to note that we have never filed a flood insurance claim. Actually we haven’t filed any kind of claim in the 30 years we’ve owned our current home. Our home owners…
My New Parallel Medical Ecosystem
I’ve embarked on a journey to build my own parallel medical system that is somewhat outside the current medical ecosystem which I believe to be fundamentally broken. I’m not talking about alternative medicine such as herbs, teas, magic crystals or copper bracelets but new startup medical firms that have a science based but different perspective…
Air Conditioner Cost About To Skyrocket
I recently wrote about my Mother’s Day fiasco with our air conditioner unit so it got me thinking about what it would cost to replace the unit. Our current AC unit is approaching 10 years and that’s about the time it starts failing or need constant repair of some sort. In looking for the latest…
Your Three Retirement Demons: Inflation, Taxes & Lifestyle
While I don’t watch or listen to Dave Ramsey, I do occasional run across an article with an outrageous title such as this one, “Dave Ramsey delivers wake up call to Iowa couple making nearly $200k but struggling to make ends meet“ Essentially, this couple has $785,000 in debt even though they earn $200,000 per…
$1600 To Watch NFL Football?
The Dailymail has an article out claiming it will cost NFL fans $1600 to watch all the NFL games next season. Ouch. The good news is that I don’t watch football other than the Super Bowl. I don’t have 3+ hours to waste watching football per game and it’s time I’d rather spend on investment…