The extra furniture is the least of my (the original poster’s concerns.) More so the other things I mentioned: The maintenance, the heating and cooling and lighting. Of course, none of those things should stop you from getting the house you want. But they aren’t things to be ignored. That’s why my original post says…

Agreed! I still remember the first time I paid for a trip entirely with money I had saved up in a “travel fund.” It was the most amazing feeling.

Since you’re obviously already good at budgeting and sticking to it since you are balancing multiple debts and paying them off regularly, I would recommend creating a “splurge fund” to capture some fun money off to the side for just such a purpose. $200 that you didn’t plan for on a nice pair of shoes won’t feel…

I don’t understand the stress about read receipts... am I the only one who absolutely doesn’t care that someone read a message and hasn’t responded? There’s any number of reasons someone would read a message but not respond... maybe they’re driving, or they’re at work, or they’re cooking dinner, or they’re busy. Or…

Yeah, I realize that I desperately need this in my life. I’m at a point where I’m in line at the grocery store, open up Instagram, and don’t know if the first image that will pop up is someone’s delicious cast-iron brownies or a scantily clad guy with naughty underwear on...

Thanks - Not finding a perfect solution, I created a label for stuff I would like to have had automatically deleted so it’s easy to find every few weeks/months when I bother to do some clean up. Just search for the “delete me” label and delete them all lol.

I think it’s worth noting that home prices vary greatly. I’m not just talking about how my brother in the Midwest can get a larger house for less money that I can in New England; I’m talking about how the same area, the same town or one town over can easily have houses that range for $150,000 to $1.5 million.

This might not work for everyone depending on your office situation, but I have my own office and work with people I trust, so whenever I travel abroad, I (without telling anyone) put paper copies of my confirmations, scanned copies of my passports, flight info, anything else I think is imporant, into a manilla…

Makes me think of a Twilight Zone style short story where dogs stop dying alltogether. What would happen? They just don’t die. They live forever and teh population keeps growing and growing. At first we love it but think of the consequences. Even outside of the population boom, I’d rather outlive my dog and say…

This never seems to be mentioned anywhere, and I wouldn’t know about it had my friends not told me in passing, but you can get a standard non-FHA morgage for as little as 5% down. With FHA maybe letting you need as low as a 3.5% down, I found it good to spend the extra 1.5% to avoid some of the FHA requirements.

Spices are a definitly souvenior for me as well - thankfully I almost always check them in my bag anyway (last thing I need is for a bag of curry powder to rip open in my carry-on and cover my laptop, and kindle with it.

Next you’re going to talk about what foods are actually cheaper to grow than just buy... and I’ll have to reflect on the $6 watermelon and $3 ears of corn I’m growing in my garden right now...

How to get your friends to stop flirting? Have them move in together and date for 7-8 years. That’s cured my boyfriend and I of any flirting with each other. Obviously.

Trick question: Enough to be ashamed of how much and refuse to look into it because the number would horrify me.

Am I the only one who read this question and had it make my heart break? Not out of judgement... just out of the pain that you have someone obviously trying to do the right thing, to make prudent financial moves, for whom $500 initial and $100 is a lot of money, and who is 45 with no pension, IRA, 401k... all while…

It was only after moving to a coastal area did I realize just how subjective beach reviews are. I could walk down the hall and ask my coworkers which beach they recommend and spark a 20-minute discussion about how “this beach is trash” bla bla bla. But more importantly, I never realized how each beach is different in…

See, these should have used this explanation in Star Trek Discovery...

Also interested in finding out more about what pressure Trump exerted on NFL. A private organization like the NFL telling employees what they do with their speech is not a 1st Amendment violation... but a government official like the President of the United States encouraging certain speech to be punished definitely…

A VR or real-life simulation of FTL would be SO. MUCH. FUN.

I disagree with both of your points. I contend that “hey, your school might not publish it, but they might have a tuition payment plan if you ask” is, in fact, a lifehack, and I contend that, while it may not apply to many people, there are those who could meet an expensive monthly payment plan rather than one large…