Vincent wrote to tell me about “lazy portfolios”: Paul Farrell of MarketWatch tracks a group of portfolios composed of index funds, and watches how they are performing vs. the S&P 500.  He writes an update a couple of times a year, with both a long-term and short-term perspective.  The portfolios consist of as many as [...]

Sometimes I’ll be talking about frugality with somebody who says, “Why bother? Pinching pennies all the time makes me feel lousy. Besides, you can’t really save that much money. You really save money on the big stuff.” This is a common response to frugal living. I have some standard replies: It is true that it’s [...]

This is a guest post from my wife, who thinks the following story is simply hysterical. J.D. and I are fairly good at eating our leftovers. I often intentionally create leftovers for my sack lunches or an easy weeknight dinner. J.D. has improved at remembering we have them since instituting his leftover list on the [...]

Casey Serin of I Am Facing Foreclosure recently held a two-hour conference call to take questions from readers and to explain his situation. I didn’t hear the call, but I did read the entire transcript (part one, part two).     For those of you unfamiliar with him, Casey Serin is the Napoleon Dynamite of [...]