On the day after Christmas, 2018, police in North Little Rock, Arkansas, talked a man out of jumping off a bridge. The police worked with the man for 30 minutes until the man backed down, was put into an ambulance, and taken to a hospital. There isn’t much publicly known about the man or what…
Saving money involves not just eliminating unnecessary expenses such as Starbucks or cable television. It also means making the most of what you have, and one small but important aspect of that is the principle of using less of the products you already incorporate into your routine. This includes items such as shampoo, laundry detergent,…
Not long ago, I was talking to a relative about the business of writing. This relative maintains a very active social media account, and I told the relative that I thought that maybe there was some potential to turn it into a blogging gig, perhaps even a monetized one to help offset the relative’s tight…
So, you’re facing a huge decision. This one’s big. Really big. This is the kind of decision that will make or break you. Sausage or bacon? Okay, maybe not, but there are plenty of times when we do have to make big decisions: about what car to buy, about whether to splurge on that expensive…
I’ve been teaching high school for close to two decades now. When I first started teaching, Bill Clinton was at the end of his presidency, dial-up internet was still a thing, and there was no such thing as a smartphone. Some things have changed during that time, while other things have not. What follows is…
As an adult, jobs (for most households) are necessary in this world. They provide income to pay the bills, and in the United States they also provide access to crucial benefits like health insurance and a means to contribute to social security and / or a pension. For kids — teenagers — money is certainly…
For years, I’ve lived on the cheap end of cell phone plans. Like $8 a month cheap. And while, early on, my phones were more or less prehistoric, today I carry around a functional (if modest) Android smartphone. On Tracfone. My data cap? About 1.2 GB. A year. And yet somehow, I’ve managed to get…
There are a lot of ways to pay for entertainment, be it cable or a vacation. But sometimes you may not have the money, or you may not want to spend the money. Chances are, there are some free (or really cheap) entertainment options in your area and you may not even know about them….
I’m frugal and conservation-minded, preferring to save money and resources — and reduce waste — whenever I can. As a result, there are some things I never buy or only buy on rare occasions. 1. Fabric Softener I find that often my clothes are fine without using fabric softener. I sometimes use it during the…
I once held a $200,000 lottery ticket. It was many years ago. A friend of mine ran a work pool that would regularly buy Powerball tickets … and one time, one of the group’s tickets matched 5 numbers in the Powerball lottery. At the time, the payout was $200,000. When he told me this story,…
