I'm in a similar situation: we have a rewards card, so we put everything on it. We budget for this (obviously) and pay it off each month. So in my own mind, that is not a part of my debt-income ratio, although like you if you count the credit card it would surely put us over 36%.

I'm seeing a lot of "debt makes you a slave" talk here and on the Facebook post. Is this from Dave Ramsey? I've never read his books or listened to him. (I have nothing against him, I've just never felt my debt was a problem.)

I don't recall exactly as that was around 7 years ago, but I do know that our debt to income ratio was well within the 36% figure cited above. Our debt wasn't a problem for us, we just didn't like the idea of being in any more debt than necessary so we started aggressively paying it down. We just aren't big spenders…

One of the moments I'm most proud of in my adult life was when my wife and I paid down something like $35K of debt in about three and a half years. None of this was "bad" debt - it was student loans, what remained of two car loans, and a home equity loan piggybacked on to our mortgage so we could avoid PMI. Our debt…

In a post about Do Not Track yesterday, I openly questioned what the big deal was. But as I think about all this data out there, and people's/companies' increasing sophistication in how they are able to use it, I'm coming around to the idea that this is worth taking more seriously.

I read that NYT story last week and it's fascinating. But while the premise of that story has ramifications online or offline, am I incorrect in thinking that being tracked online does not identify you personally in any way, other than to those (like Google, for instance) you choose to identify yourself to? Isn't…

I don't mean this in a dismissive kind of way, I'm asking a genuine question for discussion: what is so bad about being tracked online?

This is in conflict with other pieces I've read that says you're probably halfway through a long vacation before you ever begin relaxing enough to actually enjoy it. Plus, added trips = more planning = more travel expense = more disruption to your work/life/routine/etc.

Yeah, I wish I'd thought of this before I bought that mini-fridge for our wet bar, before realizing that you have to buy a special fridge for an enclosed space like that. I did all that research, then had to sell the stupid thing on craigslist before launching another massive round of research. Grrr.

This doesn't just apply to bad news...I can think of a few times where someone was delivering good news but they start by meandering through the backstory, meanwhile my mind begins churning and assuming a bomb is about to be dropped, only to be greatly relieved when I hear the good news.

I switched my Droid X to Google Voice (without porting my number) about a year ago, and while it appears to me to have the same number of rings before going to voice mail, people who call me say it's something like 8-10 rings. That seems like a Google Voice feature though.

Years ago I received noticed of a class-action suit against DeBeers for price-fixing or something similar. If you bought diamond jewelry within a certain period of time you were eligible for settlements that could potentially be hundreds of dollars depending on how many people responded. I signed up, bookmarked the…

I like ESPN ScoreCenter, but I'm a college football fan so I scroll through a lot of scores frequently. This app has the annoying habit of starting with LAST week's games rather than this week's. And to my knowledge there's no setting to fix this. A great app otherwise...

Or just access the NYT through RSS feeds via Google Reader. Never hit the paywall once.

Hear, hear. I would not condone these things for routine everyday use. But with a highly energetic 2-year-old on a recent trip through a busy airport, with another child and lots of luggage in tow, it was nice to have that extra bit of insurance that he couldn't run off and endanger himself.

I get the whole Lifehacker "become your own expert" concept and God bless Tim Ferriss for his conquests but this is silly. It's a freaking marathon and frankly, if you don't prepare for it you deserve what you get.

Hear me now and thank me later, folks: DO NOT ACCUMULATE STUFF. Forget about the space, emotional baggage, whatever. Think about how you're impacting other people - because guess what, they are the ones who will end up inheriting it and sorting through it (read: throwing it away).

@mentalsticks: You've never lost a hard drive, have you? I mean *really* lost a hard drive?

Okay, forgive the potentially dumb question, but why do you need a Verizon plan? Is that only for universal web access from places without wi-fi? Would you still use broadband at home?