What I find fascinating is that many Harry Potter characters in the books are only white because we choose to make them white. Meaning, going out of the text themselves, very few character descriptions are presented in a way that explicitly prohibit them from being a person of color. Based on what I remember about the…

Quite frankly, I refuse to engage in any further discussion with someone who feels it is responsible to enter into a financial agreement with a financial institution without needing to know the terms they are to be held to. “I signed an agreement with x bank to have a credit card and I not only don’t think it I need…

It’s almost as if advice can be prudent for others while not specifically apply to you.

Another reason I think it is useful to have a pretty good sense of how much debt you have is for when you are making calculations for grown-up decisions like “how much life insurance should I have?” My partner and I own a condo and don’t have kids so we aren’t crazy loaded with life insurance but at work they gave me…

Totally! I set up a spreadsheet with all of my debt showing the interest, the monthly payments, the final payment date, etc. and yeah, at first it was kind of depressing to be recently out of college and see student loans with payoff dates set for 10 years in the future... But you know what, once I got into that home…

Ditto! And I found it really empowering to see when things would get paid off if I rolled the debt from one paid-off account to the next. (2 more months till my student loans are paid off and I’ve been looking at the same spreadsheet for years awaiting this day lol)

If you value frugality as much as you say, then you can surely appreciate that someone who even infrequently (even just in the case of an emergency) may carry a balance on their credit card would benefit from selecting a card with a lower APR. And to intelligently select a card with a lower APR one needs to know the…

Cookbook board sounds like a real winner - I find it really hard to find a GOOD solution to keeping track of recipes or cooking ideas. I’ve tried bookmarking, Pinterest, Evernote... none just seem to really work for me but Trello might just do it!

Agreed! I even used to do one where I would put $20 a month into a “train ticket” fund which I would use for guilt-free trips into Manhattan which was an hour away by train by kind of a pricey ticket. So even for fun money I like it as a strategy.

Just wanna say, I have had that exact version of Don Quixote (in paperback), read it 10 years ago or so, but really recommend that translation if you’re going to give it a go. I found it surprisingly accessible for a 400 year old book and actually really got into the story. Have been thinking about giving it a re-read…

Just wanna say, I have had that exact version of Don Quixote (in paperback), read it 10 years ago or so, but really…

You know, in the end, I stopped worrying TOO much about pinching a little from here and there because I was still able to see it in a more intelligible way. For example, I have a furniture fund to help save a little each month for when we need to buy an expensive piece of furniture for our apartment and there have…

Separating accounts for different goals/purchases. Having $x in my savings account and knowing that $y of it was earmarked for a car down-payment just doesn’t work for me. I know it should... but it doesn’t. But having $x in my savings account and another account opened with $y saved up for a car down-payment is…

Most of the refusal to play nicely with other non-apple devices I’m OK with... in fact, most of that has been done away with via 3rd party services that work across platforms... but the inability to Facetime or iMessage on Android or the web or my PC is really growing annoying.

If you’re expecting “news and journalism” from the comment section, you’re the problem. That’s like tweeting at a journalist a question about a recent article and then critiquing their tweet back as not living up to their journalistic integrity.

I recently switched jobs and went from a 3 mile commute to a 23 mile commute where my options are risky heavy traffic taking 45+ minutes each way or a combination of taking the train and walking that takes 70 minutes. I ended up doing the train and walking and actually have found myself really enjoying it. I do a…

I’m close to convincing myself to get one if I get in the habit of buying chicken breast when it’s on sale, freezing in marinade, and then using the instapot to cook from frozen...

In only 6 minutes you say... (reevaluates if he finally needs to buy an Instapot)

Total agree! Within a year both my boyfriend and I bought new cars (well, mine was lightly used and a model year old) - mine a Hyundai from a Hyundai dealership and his a Subaru from a Subaru dealership. While I was happy with my car, I could notice some “encouragement” to look into a different car than the one I saw…

I’m not saying I fully understand the complexities here, and there surely are pitfalls, but the reality is that if I had been able to pay off my student loans as soon as I graduated by committing to a delay in receiving retirement benefits and invested the money I would have spent on the payments (quite possibly by…

Really, all investment advice about crashes should be: “don’t even pay attention if you aren’t 5 years from retirement or currently in retirement.”