pocketmint

Tag: cars

1. Reader Case Study: short sales and debt

   9 April 2012

   After I posted What to do — and not do — with your former mortgage dollars, I received a request for advice on a strategic default from a woman I’ll call Tricia. I agreed to give her some (friendly, I-am-not-a-lawyer) suggestions based on my own research, and she gave me permission to share our exchange [...]

2. Spending money to save money

   5 November 2009

   We’ve done a pretty good job of cutting back on unnecessary expenses during this period of reduced income. ‘Magazine subscriptions’ seems like an obvious category to eliminate, right? Yet I kept mine. Here’s why: they save me way more money than they cost. Consumer Reports My first-ever magazine subscription, when I was 19 years old, [...]

3. Credit cards (part three): use ’em … and lose ’em anyway

   7 August 2009

   It was a brief segment on NPR’s Marketplace last month that alerted me to the newest scary thing about credit cards: banks have begun to curtail or withdraw credit based on where you shop and what you buy. Here’s one example: consumer Kevin Johnson had his credit line slashed by two-thirds despite a stellar credit [...]

4. Avoid the high cost of premium gas

   2 July 2008

   A friend of mine has begun posting photos of gas pump digital displays after each fillup, which costs her an astonishing $70-$80 now. I noticed that she’s been consistently buying the middle grade of unleaded gasoline, labeled ‘Plus’ at the Chevrons she frequents. As someone who invariably buys the cheapest gas possible, I started wondering [...]

5. Gas mileage: we’re doing it wrong

   24 June 2008

   Gasoline prices are on the mind of nearly every American right now. Here in Seattle, where gas is currently climbing past the $4.50 mark, we like our hybrid cars. A lot. But Seattle had an environmentally ‘green’ culture long before the recent spike in gas prices, which suggests that a lot of those hybrids are [...]