POSTS WITH TAG: home finances

Home & Garden Say What!?

Your Coupons May Not Be Saving You Any Money

Posted by Amy Keyishian
on Apr 7, 2012 at 11:00 AM

CouponI hate it when I get to the store -- like the Carter's outlet near me -- and find that I had to have signed up for their email updates to get a discount. Of course, being a frugal consumer (read: cheap bee-yotch), I am happy to take 10 minutes to step away from the register, sign up for the emails using my smartphone, and present my coupon like I'd planned to do that all along.

Never mind the irony of being a cheapo with a smartphone. I'd sooner give up my dishwasher.

There's just one problem with the money-saving emails: Sometimes the time you spend unraveling the exact deal, and how much you can actually save, costs more than the savings. And sometimes, if you really look, you aren't saving anything. When did my money-saving email deals turn into spam-scams?

Read More
Home & Garden Say What!?

6 Super Cool Jobs With Shockingly Low Pay

Posted by The Stir Bloggers
on Mar 28, 2012 at 3:00 PM

Wouldn't it be nice if every dream job had a dream salary to go along with it? Unfortunately, that's far from the case. So many glamorous-sounding careers pay a pittance. I guess people who have them should count their lucky stars that they're doing something they love. But that isn't exactly going to get them through the recession or pay the bills.

But some of the jobs with the lowest salaries are totally unexpected. Click through the slideshow below and see if you're as bowled over as we were to learn that these careers are so financially thankless.

What other cool jobs can you think of that pay terribly?

Image via ph-stop/Flickr

Read More
Home & Garden Say What!?

Driver Buried in Tickets Because of Misleading Vanity Plate

Posted by Amy Keyishian
on Mar 25, 2012 at 11:00 AM

no tags license plateAh, vanity plates. Almost invariably, by the time you're old enough to get one, you no longer have the desire to announce to everyone behind you that you're 1H0T1 or MISSTHANG. I myself had always intended to get one, till I realized that if I were to commit some kind of crime, it would be easy for eyewitnesses to identify my vehicle.
 
Not that I'm planning any drive-by snowballings or bank robberies, but it did seem prudent to avoid being super obvious.
 
Anyway, a guy in Washington, D.C., where weirdly huge and stupid fines are de rigeur, did not get the memo. In addition, he chose a vanity plate that ended up costing him much more than the $50 the DMV requires. Like tens of thousands of dollars more. How?

Read More
Home & Garden OMG

Woman's $107,000 Electric Bill Could Easily Have Been Avoided

Posted by Amy Keyishian
on Mar 14, 2012 at 2:59 PM

utility bills, money down the drainHey, billing errors happen. We’ve all opened a utility bill and said, “This doesn’t seem right,” and 9 times out of 10, it’s all resolved with a quick phone call. Even when it’s an aquarium-sized water bill for a three-bedroom house.

But what if that billing error happened, and you’ve authorized electronic billing? If you’re like one Chicago-area family, you could end up overpaying by more than a hundred grand for a month’s worth of electricity.

Oops.

Read More
Home & Garden

5 Can't Fail Tricks to Cut Your Gift List Without Hurting Anyone's Feelings

Posted by Jeanne Sager
on Dec 5, 2011 at 11:45 AM
Penny Pincher’s Holiday Guide

holiday giftsIs there anything that's more depressing than looking at your holiday gift list and wondering: how am I going to pay for all of these? The older we get, the more people it seems clog up that list. Is it any wonder that 40 percent of Americans say they flat out won't be holiday shopping this year because they're terrified of going into debt? What a bummer!

Folks, you don't have to go all or nothing to have a good holiday, I promise. Just doing a little trim of the holiday gift list should do it ... and before you say, "But I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings," that's possible too. Just check out this list of perfectly plausible ways to kick people off your present list:

Read More
Home & Garden

Utility Company That Overcharged Elderly Man Should Turn Into a Bank

Posted by Amy Keyishian
on Nov 22, 2011 at 12:00 PM

light bulbOccupy Connecticut Light and Power! The electric company of the Constitution State was charging an old Italian guy $220 a month for power in his condo. He knew the bills were wrong because he hardly used any electricity or gas at home. Meanwhile, his barbershop was tricked out with electric everything and plenty of A/C, and its bill only topped out at $150 a month.

He kept trying to tell the company that something was wrong. They kept saying the only thing wrong was he wasn’t sending checks fast enough. This went on for 10 years, before the guy’s son went in and straightened things out. (Why did that take 10 years, anyway?)

In the end, they finally had to cut him a check ... for guess how much?

Read More
Home & Garden

10 Holiday Shopping Secrets From a Mall Insider

Posted by April Peveteaux
on Nov 18, 2011 at 1:30 PM
Penny Pincher’s Holiday Guide

holidy shopping tipsJournalist Caitlin Kelly didn't intend to spend more than two years working behind the counter at The North Face. Yet that's exactly what happened when this veteran newspaper reporter faced an uncertain financial future and needed to make ends meet. What followed was Kelly's eye-opening account of life in customer service and sales in Malled: My Unintentional Career in Retail.

For anyone who has worked in retail, these humiliations and occasional triumphs will ring true. And for anyone who has been a difficult customer -- especially around the holidays -- this story will give you some insight as to how the other half lives. But you don't yell at minimum wage employees, do you?

Kelly is also positioned properly to give you some great holiday shopping tips before you head out next weekend. Here, the author of Malled gives you 10 tips (and two bonus tech tips!) on navigating the mall this holiday season.

Read More
Home & Garden

Being a Squeaky Wheel Paid Off for Woman Who Challenged Cable Bill

Posted by Amy Keyishian
on Nov 2, 2011 at 3:56 PM

Dollar Signs At HomeWhen your two-bedroom bungalow gets a water bill big enough for an aquarium, of course your antennae are going to go up. But keeping your eye on every household bill on a monthly basis can be more of a challenge. Still, it’s worth it, as one woman discovered.

The error on Linda Sacash’s cable bill wasn’t huge, but it added up to a big difference in her bottom line. And even though the company told her she couldn’t do anything about it, she kicked up a fuss and got what was coming to her. Here’s what happened ...

Read More
Home & Garden

Woman's $50,000 Water Bill Reminds Us What Not to Do at Home

Posted by Amy Keyishian
on Sep 27, 2011 at 10:00 PM

AquariumIn the heat of summer, in a record drought year, I think we all expect we’re going to see a jump in our utility bills. I lived in one house where the clunky, old air conditioner cost roughly $25 a day to run -- so we made sure it was pretty darn hot before turning it on and spent a lot of time in the kiddie pool out back.

But a monthly water bill for more than $50,000 ($53,061.92, to be exact)? It happened to a woman in Colorado. It said she had used more than million gallons of water in a month. For comparison purposes, the Georgia Aquarium is the world's largest, and it has 10 million gallons of water. In contrast, Lisa Mannion’s home is an unassuming three-bedroom home with a drought-resistant garden (according to Google Street View).

What would you do if you opened a bill for that much? And what happened to make it jump?

Read More
Home & Garden

Consumer Reports Is Free Today!

Posted by Amy Keyishian
on Jul 5, 2011 at 3:15 PM

Consumer ReportsMy husband knows that before we make any major home purchase, there are two things I’m going to need: My drawer full of Bed, Bath & Beyond 20 percent off coupons, and my back-issues of Consumer Reports. My mom may not have taught me to keep the house clean or separate my laundry -- she’d rather be writing ... and who can blame her? -- but she did teach me to stretch my pennies 'til Abraham Lincoln looks like Gumby.
 
Consumer Reports is a non-profit organization that tests household products and rates them by durability and whether they’re worth the money you pay for them. They don't take ads, and they don’t care if companies get mad at them. So when it’s time to buy a vacuum cleaner and you want to know if Dyson really never loses suction, Consumer Reports is your impartial third-party, removing the hype from the infomercials.
 
And today (July 5, until 3 a.m. EST on July 6), they’re free.

Read More
Advertisement
The Stir on Twitter

Happy Birthday, Shiloh Jolie-Pitt: Officially the Coolest 6-Year-Old on the Planet: http://t.co/RpLgXHgs via @The_Stir @WWLD_jburt 2 hours ago
7 Patriotic #Quotes to Inspire Your Memorial Day: http://t.co/eLFBliVu via @The_Stir @JeanneSager 20 hours ago
How to Find Military Discounts on Memorial Day: http://t.co/3nTj35ZV via @The_Stir @atothepg 21 hours ago
Follow Us On Twitter Follow The_Stir on Twitter
Advertisement