Let me preface this by saying that, depending on your company's 401k, you may be restricted in your choices. Let me also say that this is the opinion of someone who is not a financial analyst but who has been investing for almost 50 years, starting with hundreds of dollars and this year retiring with almost a million…

I'd also take a look at FX File Explorer from NextApp. It's basic version is free with no ads.

Part of the problem is that people talk about one emergency fund when you should have at least two, lets call them My Car Died and My Job Died.

If you worry about leaving a simmering pot unattended, you can do this with a crokpot.

If you want to use a card rather than your phone number, just make a paper copy and keep it in your wallet. By my estimation, 10 card paper copies are about a millimeter thick.

Another idea is for Firefox users is the QuickFox Notes Add-on. It stores your notes as bookmarks so they get synced across machines. You have the option of encrypting a note locally so that all Firefox sync sees is the encrypted text. The add-on shows the notes in a tabbed format within a Firefox tab or window.

Start a 529 college fund (not one you see on TV). The younger the child, the cheaper the payment. As an example, Virginia's pays the full cost of in state public colleges, regardless of how high tuition goes, provides an equivalent payment for in state private colleges, and provides guaranteed return if your child…

Another cool thing you can do with toolbars in Win8/8.1 is create a new toolbar and paste "%ProgramData%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs" (without the quotes) into the folder name. You will now get a Start Menu when you click it. Note that in both cases you have to click on the little ">>" to activate it.

In Win8 and later (and, as I recall, in earlier Windows as well) you don't have to go through the step of creating an empty file, Windows will do it for you. Create your directory and add it as a taskbar. Then open the directory in File Explorer, click on New Item/Text Document in the ribbon bar (a right click in an…

Screw stories. As an old man (mid-sixties, retired) I have plenty of stories that people can pretend to be interested in (did I tell you about the time I tracked through a core dump and found a bug in CICS where it lost addressability if a page went over 32kb?).

Get off of my blog sonny!

A further reminder, don't believe a source just because the first tip worked. An old tactic for shady financial planners is to cold call 200 people and tell half to sell a stock and half to buy. Then call up the 100 people who would have made money on your advice and give half a sell tip and half a buy tip. Do it…

The biggest government problem stems not from the USDA but from an anti-science Congress. The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act declared that dietary supplements should be regulated as foods rather than drugs meaning that health claims can be made with no scientific studies to back them up, just a hard to…

I tried it and found a glitch - the all plans tab does not seem to include prepaid. My $30 T-Mobile plan did not show up in the first tab (it would have been #1) but did show up on the prepaid tab. those using this should check each tab to be certain.

I suspect this is the case because the market has been trending up, in general. But you don't buy in general, you buy in specific. Depending on when your money gets added and how it gets invested you may do better or worse.

One thing people sometimes forget when it comes to tax advantages is that mortgage interest often moves you from the standard deduction to the itemized deduction which can make other expenses deductible.

For people with more imagination than sense, go for it. You can start here and work your way up to building a secret safe room behind your home built bomb shelter.

First, unbreakable and uninvertable require different designs. Unbreakable tend to have fiberglass ribs that bend and invert when the going gets tough. Uninvertable go with solid steel ribs that can stand more wind but my break when they eventually invert.

I'd agree that password protected notebooks could be a game changer except that if you password protect a notebook it cannot be opened with the Android app which is a deal breaker for me.

If the handle is part of an heirloom, clay seems an awful idea. There are a number of stores selling antique hardware replacements. If you really want to match the other hardware, use the mold you created to cast a metal replacement (check tin soldiers supply stores).