Financial Hack

I’ve got an insider trading tip. If you invest in this… you WILL gain benefits. This isn’t a Murdoff Ponzi scheme and I’m pretty sure I won’t suffer Martha Stewartesque consequences (though I could use a lovely hand knit prison sweater). I’m talking about investing in… your marriage. What does marriage investment have to do [...]

April’s tax hikes gave me yet another incentive to push myself to find additional ways to save. I’ve cut most of my budgets as much as possible but there was one I could scrimp a little on… gasoline I am fortunate to live near the center of a beautiful city and most of my errands [...]

The California ‘sunshine’ tax has struck yet again. Sales taxes in our area rose to 8.25 percent last year despite pleas for help. I struggled with the hike but now… I’m furious. Arnold Schwarzenegger added another 1 percent to our sales tax. Some cities decided to add to this new number. Our current sales tax [...]

My coworker was murdered yesterday. Several of us were unfortunate enough to face his body for four hours until it was cleared by the police to be removed by the coroner. It was random. There was no reason. Seeing death in person is hard. I went home. I made dinner. I couldn’t help but feel [...]

I lack a green thumb. An example of this fact? We have two bougainvilleas in our backyard. I tried to keep one alive and kill the other. The one I tried desperately to keep alive… I killed. And the one I tried my hardest to kill… is flourishing like a giant miracle grow plant. Seriously… [...]

The personality preference class was… interesting. HR put me through an hour of testing and three hours of scenario testing. It wasn’t until halfway through that I realized… the results of this test may hurt me! Am I going to lose my job over this? But, like I said before, I’m big on honesty at [...]

I washed my car last weekend. It’s been a month shy of a year since I last washed my car so perhaps… I’m not the best person to give this kind of advice (Actually, my car has been ‘cleaned’. The windows are washed by Jiffy Lube every time I get an oil change). But… I [...]

I was reading a recent Time magazine article about jobs. According to the article, people are focusing on their jobs as the only way to build wealth since property and investments have gone south. In this economy, it seems like 10% of the population doesn’t have jobs and the other 90% are struggling to keep [...]

I tend to be a little on the clumsy side and a little on the edge of dim. I was a member of the international honor society and made the dean’s list every year in college. I competed in kickboxing and trained with an Olympian. I can perform killer half moon kicks and read novels [...]

Thanks to the nature of the company I work for, our meetings are occasionally held publically. They are often televised or played on the radio… though I think our audience is primarily retirees and community involved stay at home mothers. I’d never thought about our audience… until this week. We were forced to cut our [...]