Blog

Blog

Musings on personal finance and more. Not written with AI since 2012.

Gas prices sign

Adventures in pointless frugality: Shopping for a gas station

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I’ve been fascinated in one way or another by gas prices ever since I worked at a gas station in college. At first it was just the geographic variation in prices, like how I could drive across the river from … Read More … Read More

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Why I want you to live paycheck to paycheck

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“I couldn’t make ends meet. I was living paycheck to paycheck.” “78 percent of U.S. workers live paycheck to paycheck.“ “Stop living paycheck to paycheck and sign up for our credit counseling service.“ The phrase “paycheck to paycheck” is a … Read More … Read More

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Product splash

Why frequent flyer miles but not grocery stores? A study in contrasting loyalty programs

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I’m a big fan of collecting frequent flyer miles and points. While the airlines and hotels have done their best to devalue the extreme opportunities that there once were, I believe that there still are some great deals to be … Read More … Read More

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Handholding

What to do when an emergency isn’t unexpected

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I’ve long said that you can gauge whether something is an emergency if the following three “U” words describe the situation: Unexpected Urgent Unavoidable I use this metric to be able to distinguish between actual emergencies and things that feel like … Read More … Read More

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Gift cards

How to offload (or combine) unused gift cards

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After the debacle of trying to use a prepaid card to anonymously purchase VPN service, only to find that I couldn’t use it for purchases outside of the U.S., I decided to just buy the VPN service outright. But I … Read More … Read More

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Cameras

Online trust, or How to figure out your biggest threats online

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Greetings from Seattle, Washington! Actually, hello from Charlotte, North Carolina! On second thought, salutations from somewhere in Azerbaijan! It’s fun to be anywhere at the click of a button. By this I mean, anywhere as far as my computer traffic … Read More … Read More

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Corner store

Why prices actually fall as you build wealth

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Cost is a psychological phenomenon as much as it is a mathematical phenomenon. Back in my college days, the question was, which can I afford to get at Denny’s, a soda or fries? Could I afford to get both? (Actually, … Read More … Read More

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Why prices will seem to change as you build wealth

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(I don’t condone software piracy. But this is a story where some rules were bent. And then un-bent.) In college, when my income was basically nil, I was just starting to get into audio engineering. While I was primarily working … Read More … Read More

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Statue blindfolded

How I tried to buy something totally anonymously online

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My experiences with trying to buy something online without revealing anything about my identity, and why this is so difficult. (I talk about using products or services, but I received no commission for this. I do not do affiliate marketing. … Read More … Read More

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Mask ornament

Why it’s so hard to buy online and maintain any privacy

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In a perfect world, no one would have any right to know what I buy, where I go, and what I do unless I gave them that access. This seems rather quaint now. Today, everything you do is scrutinized, advertised, … Read More … Read More

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