In a world where one can buy just about anything on the web, “online shopping” is basically synonymous with “shopping” — minus the whole rigmarole of leaving the house, hitting the stores, and carting ...

Many people look forward to retirement as a time to travel, garden, play golf, or visit their grandchildren. Others have no definite plans beyond a vague idea about “relaxing.” When they leave work, ...

Suppose you’ve got a leaky toilet in your bathroom. After trying without success to repair it yourself, you call a plumber who gets the job done in an hour. Normally, this would leave you with a hefty ...

A while back, my wife and I spent a some time in a beautiful but isolated rural area several hours from the nearest big city. Our little town was surrounded by swathes of dense forest, rocky hills, ...

Kelly Ernst has written extensively about personal finance, careers, freelancing, and lifestyle topics, with her work appearing on The Penny Hoarder, The Write Life, Budgets Are Sexy, and Business ...

It’s been said that men are from Mars and women from Venus. Their investment styles are often worlds apart as well. While there’s a more even balance today when it comes to who handles household money ...

I have an absurd number of credit cards. Most I never use, but because average credit account age is an important factor in credit score calculations, I’m very reluctant to cancel any. Looking through ...

For most Americans, housing is the single biggest expense in their personal budget. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average household spends more than 30% of its after-tax income on ...

When you think of family vacations, what comes to mind first may not be the benefits, but the stress and cost. After all, taking kids on a trip can be expensive – over $4,000 on average, according to ...

The first thing I do after shopping is hand over a little plastic card to the cashier. I don’t mean my generous cash-back credit card — I mean a store loyalty card. I have one for every big chain ...

I own a car, a bike, and two legs. When the weather is nice and I need to run to my neighborhood store or get to an appointment in another part of the city, I walk or bike. If the weather’s bad and ...

We all like to think of ourselves as rational consumers. When we buy Product A instead of Product B, we think we’re doing it because we’ve carefully weighed the pros and cons – price, quality, and so ...