John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Feb 10, 2012, 3:10 am
The mortgage interest tax deduction is one of the best sales tools that real estate agents have at their disposal. It costs them nothing to mention that in all but the most expensive homes, all of the mortgage interest on a primary residence is a federal tax deduction if you itemize your deductions....
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Feb 8, 2012, 12:49 am
I’ve talked about Mr. Rebates before many times.  This website, which has now been around ten years, allows you to save money online through thousands of stores simply by clicking through Mr. Rebates on the way to the online store.  The rebates accumulate until you reach $10.00, and then you can...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Feb 3, 2012, 2:56 am
You’ve heard of the magic of compounding, right? If not, here’s a quick version.  Let’s say you have a savings account that earns 1% per month.  (Don’t laugh too hard.  My dad had one that paid this rate at one point.)  Let’s say also that you put in $1,000 at the start of 2012, and n...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Jan 26, 2012, 2:53 am
Next week I’ll have been married ten years to the best woman in the world.  (Yeah, I know — I’m biased.) We’ve gotten into the habit of letting each other know before we’re about to purchase something big — something that costs in the neighborhood of $150 or more.  When I tipped my pl...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Dec 12, 2011, 12:12 pm
It’s that time of year again when the only thing that’s stretched tighter than our budget is our nerves. Christmas shopping can put a huge financial strain on the average family, but it’s even worse if you are the one pegged to cook the Christmas family dinner. It’s natural to want to put o...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Dec 9, 2011, 10:58 pm
Seriously.  If you have to subscribe to your fire department, there really is no reason not to. This method of paying for fire service in advance — a bit like paying Triple A for their services — has gotten recent national attention due to the aftermath of the dark side of this arrangement: no...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Dec 2, 2011, 1:04 am
A couple of weeks ago we had dinner with a friend visiting from Hawaii.  We had a $100 Visa gift card in hand to put a big dent into the bill. We were confused when the card came back declined.  At first we checked the balance on the card because we thought that they had given us less than they h...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Nov 29, 2011, 12:44 am
Stores online and offline are fighting tooth and nail for your money this holiday season.  The deals are far from over, of course. If you’re planning to save yourself a whole boatload of stress and buy most (all?) of your gifts online this holiday season, then I hope that you’ve become well-ac...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Nov 25, 2011, 11:13 am
I’ve talked about investing in yourself in the past, and one great way to do this is to start a blog (like this one).  Regardless of what interests you, if other people are interested in the same thing, you’ll find an audience, and that audience can help you to build up a side income.  (Odds ...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Nov 23, 2011, 2:19 am
I have to hand it to my credit union.  Their marketing is pretty good!  They advertised an unsecured loan special, good through today, at rates starting at 7.5% for up to 12 months for amounts between $500 and $2,500.  It ends today presumably so that people can have the money in hand to shop Bla...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Nov 15, 2011, 1:18 am
Fixed-rate mortgages are almost as cheap as the teaser rates on adjustable-rate mortgages of a few years ago.  The average rate on a 15-year fixed rate mortgage for today (November 15th, 2011) stands at 2.97%.  (Note: It was at the time I wrote this post.  Rates change all the time.)  Rates have...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Nov 9, 2011, 2:21 am
Our new (to us) car is now in our driveway.  Pretty much everything is settled with this vehicle, and we sold the old one that had the broken transmission.  We continued “money lessons for kids” with our daughter by showing her a few — OK, two dozen — $100 bills and a cashier’s check wit...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Nov 2, 2011, 1:45 am
(And no, the answer is not to give $50/week allowance to a six year old!) Last week our minivan’s transmission bit the dust.  (Thankfully it bit the dust in our driveway.)  Over the next couple of days my wife and I discussed what to do: whether to fix our car, whether to buy a new-to-us one �...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Oct 24, 2011, 11:21 pm
The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), with the Federal National Mortgage Association (“Fannie Mae”) and the (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation) (“Freddie Mac”), today announced a number of changes to the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) designed to increase the number of bo...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Oct 22, 2011, 2:31 am
The Alexa Toolbar has some interesting headlines come across it.  It draws on Reddit fairly often.  The submitter for this article now has about 1600 net votes from describing their experience calling up a representative at a bank to contest their new monthly service fee. It’s clear that the re...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Oct 21, 2011, 12:15 am
You may have heard of cash-for-gold businesses — turn your gold into cash.  The procedure for getting cash for your gold at these kinds of places goes like this: Request an envelope. Drop your gold jewelry in the envelope and mail it to them. They send you a check. Easy peasy, right? It is. The ...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Oct 17, 2011, 12:43 am
Our church has been doing a study on money in the adult Sunday school classes through a video series from Crown Ministries. Today’s lesson talked about racking up lots of credit card debt and expecting others to take care of you. (Oh wait … sorry … that was the pamphlet I saw for FROWN Minist...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Oct 14, 2011, 3:16 pm
Luke “Flexo” Landes of Consumerism Commentary has a guest post over at Wealth Pilgrim on whether the government should have a ban on reward credit cards. The post had the flavor of a thought experiment, and I’m not aware of any talk to implement this. Nonetheless, the thought of that idea sen...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Oct 13, 2011, 1:57 pm
I met Mike Piper of The Oblivious Investor briefly at FinCon11 and he came bearing gifts.  (I guess I was The Oblivious Conference Attendee and did no such thing myself.)  I snagged two copies of his newest book, Can I Retire?  (I’ll offer the second copy to a randomly-picked subscriber of my n...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Oct 12, 2011, 10:04 pm
Restaurant.com has an 80% coupon going on through October 16th, 2011. The code is TOUCHDOWN. $25 dining vouchers, good for qualifying* expenses at over 18,000 restaurants nationwide, are normally $10, but this coupon code knocks them down to $2. But wait! There’s more! If you first sign up fo...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Oct 12, 2011, 12:27 am
This article on the NPR Planet Money blog discusses the projected federal budget deficit as compared to the maximum deficit reduction discussed in recent debt-ceiling negotiations. If we cut to the chase, there is a $9 trillion shortfall over the next ten years.  The most stringent deficit reducti...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Oct 9, 2011, 11:43 pm
Our church has been focusing on the topic of money in its sermons and study groups for the past several weeks.  Today’s sermon started out with some facts I hadn’t known before about the history of the motto that appears on all proper examples of today’s United States money. First, a very co...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Oct 3, 2011, 11:58 pm
I arrived home safely from the Financial Blogger Conference about 2 AM today. Phil of PTMoney and friends did a superb job putting everything together.  All aspects were very well organized and very professional: the social events, the programs, the takeaways, everything.  First class from start ...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Sep 30, 2011, 2:02 am
To my blogging colleagues: Very much looking forward to meeting you there in person — many of you for the first time. Best wishes to everyone for a fun and productive conference! Sign up for the Mighty Bargain Hunter Newsletter! Related Posts:Tax giveaway winners will be announced end of weekH...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Sep 23, 2011, 2:17 am
A friend and I got to chatting about investments over lunch recently. After lamenting about the stock market, 401(k)s, and so forth, we talked a bit about precious metals. Like most people whom I’ve talked with about this subject — including myself, I suppose — we wish that we would have bough...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Sep 14, 2011, 3:30 am
The authors were kind enough to get a complimentary copy of Living the Savvy Life into my hands a while back.  Subtitled “The Savvy Woman’s Guide to Smart Spending and Rich Living,” Melissa Tosetti and Kevin Gibbons have a lot to say in this 219-page book.  The book’s primary audience is i...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Sep 5, 2011, 2:18 am
Baker posted a link on his Google+ profile to this CNN Money article.  Denise Townley received a letter from Discover Card less than two weeks after her mother had passed away seeking to settle her mother’s debts.  It would be an understatement to say that Ms. Townley wasn’t pleased by this be...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Sep 2, 2011, 3:06 am
A couple of months ago, the headlines reported that that babies born today have a 40% chance of living to be 150 years old.  That’s about 25% longer than the oldest living humans in recent history.  Experts base this claim on the advancement of regenerative medicine and the like. Let’s just s...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Aug 25, 2011, 3:09 am
One of my office mates recently got another house that was closer to his family’s activities.  From the looks of mortgage rates now it seems like he could have gotten quite a deal, even now!  Rates have stayed down for quite a while — quite a bit longer than I had thought they would, I admit. ...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Aug 16, 2011, 2:44 am
Our clothes dryer had been not doing its job for the past few months.  It would take a couple of cycles to get the clothes passably dry.  It wasn’t like this when we first bought the dryer. We checked the parts we could see first.  We were regularly cleaning out the lint trap.  The heat was d...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Aug 11, 2011, 2:11 am
Yesterday I received an unexpected surprise: a cashier’s check for $87.50.  It was for a gig I played almost a year ago, and I had since practically forgotten about it. What was a bit unusual, though, was that the check didn’t have a recent date on it.  The date was in September of 2010.  Th...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Aug 3, 2011, 11:19 pm
(Hah … the WordPress text editor is telling me that it’s “Saving Draft” … that’s actually what I’m going to talk about!) This past weekend I took a trip to Costco to pick up a few things.  Some places my wife and I hesitate to get generic (store) brand because it was weak, didn’t w...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Jul 29, 2011, 2:19 am
My wife, daughter, and mother-in-law have been traveling around Wyoming for a week.  The stated purpose of the trip was to do some research for a sequel to her first historical fiction, but my daughter sure is learning a lot out there having a good time, too.  They’ve been to Yellowstone Nationa...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Jul 19, 2011, 2:52 am
My grandfather was an extremely frugal person.  (As I suppose many people who lived through the Great Depression of the 1930s were.)  One of his frugal habits I remember was that he used to walk downtown to pay his bills in full by check, on the day they were due.  In this way, he got credit for ...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Jul 16, 2011, 3:11 am
You may have heard about the uproar — or at least the grumbling — about Netflix splitting out their movie streaming service and their flagship physical movie rental service, effectively raising the price 60% for those who want both. What was a $9.99/month service (unlimited streaming plus physic...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Jul 9, 2011, 1:45 pm
Squirrelers is a clever guy.  Instead of settling for a free lunch at a local lunch joint every seven visits, he’s cut that down in half.  With the “buy six, get the seventh free” deal, the shop gives a starter stamp when they hand out the card.  So, practically, it’s actually buy five, g...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Jul 7, 2011, 4:26 pm
Actually, this isn’t a recent capture:  Coupons have always been doing the bidding of the marketing department.  Companies don’t distribute coupons because they’re nice.  They want more of your money, and coupons are a way to get you to spend more. There are three basic mechanisms for comp...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Jul 4, 2011, 11:22 am
By now you might have heard about the incredibly harsh email that British florist Carolyn Bourne sent to Heidi Withers, the fiancee of her stepson Freddie.  This is the kind of dressing down that could make both Simon Cowell and Piers Morgan appear as encouraging as Mr. Rogers.  It’s fortunate t...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Jul 1, 2011, 2:34 pm
I’ve posted on this more common debt clock before.  It’s pretty scary.  The national debt stands at $14.4 trillion.  It was “only” $10 trillion as recently as October, 2008. This newer debt clock hasn’t gotten quite as gigantic as the other one, but it’s more directly troubling for m...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Jun 29, 2011, 1:29 pm
Starting up a blog is not an easy way to make money by any means, but by doing so it opens up a lot of doors for building up a side income later.  Knowing how to write to convey useful information and sell things to a market will put food on the table, even in very tight times. Greg McFarlane, co-...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Jun 26, 2011, 12:28 pm
Jacob over at My Personal Finance Journey is in graduate school.  I’ve been in graduate school, also known as Slave Labor, Class A.  (I opted out of Slave Labor, Class B, also known as a “postdoctoral fellowship.”)  Over at the Yakezie Forums when discussing whether or not to e-mail spammer...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Jun 23, 2011, 1:47 am
My wife and I were chatting about why she had sold more Amazon Kindle versions than paperback versions of her new Civil War historical fantasy.  Granted, the Kindle version is only 20% the cost of the paperback version, but I had said that $14.99 was a bit much to pay for a paperback. “Since whe...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Jun 18, 2011, 3:59 am
Peak oil.  Peak water.  Great Depression, Part Deux.  The Rapture.  Justin Bieber. OK, that last one was pretty scary.  Sorry.  But seriously, there are about 24.5 bajillion different bad things that could happen anywhere between 30 seconds from now until the Second Coming.  And every last o...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Jun 11, 2011, 3:34 am
This post yesterday on TechCrunch highlights the story of Posies Bakery and Cafe in Portland, Oregon, after running a Groupon campaign last year.  Her shop’s aggressive deal campaign ($13 worth of merchandise for $6) set her back $8,000 and caused her to need to withdraw from savings to make payr...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - Jun 4, 2011, 4:03 pm
I was talking with my wife last night about getting a smartphone — yes, again — because, as I told my newsletter subscribers today, I may have found a reason that actually makes having a smartphone worth the money. As we were discussing the costs of said smartphones, our Y membership came up. ...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - May 30, 2011, 2:31 pm
This past week, my wife published a 430-plus page novel she had been working on in one way or another for the past twenty-two years.  It’s quite the milestone, and we’re keenly interested and very excited in how things progress from here. For a time, though, I had resigned myself to the prospe...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - May 24, 2011, 3:04 am
This Kiplinger feature on MSN has a number of good ways that we waste money.  Slide 12 of this series (these aren’t my favorite ways of presenting things, but I see how it generates more ad impressions for MSN!) has the following suggestion: If you’re stashing your cash in a traditional saving...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - May 19, 2011, 12:36 am
The final payments on my last Prosper.com notes have finally come in, and the total value of the notes I’ve invested in is now $0.00. And it’s going to stay that way. This isn’t Prosper’s fault.  It’s mine.  I’ll explain. I started investing in Prosper.com notes in June of 2006, as ...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - May 8, 2011, 3:51 am
I discovered something last night.  Maybe this is old news for you, but then again, maybe not. A little less than a year ago, sixteen states banned the sale of dishwasher detergents that contain more than 0.5% phosphorus.  My state is one of those states.  (For the record, the states are Illinoi...
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John W. posted an article on Mighty Bargain Hunter - May 6, 2011, 4:19 am
Last weekend I was looking around in a couple of stores for some CD storage.  The first store I went to I actually had to ask an employee where they were because it took me so long to find where they were.  “Are CDs on the way out already?” I asked only half-jokingly.  The next store, same th...
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