Most Americans aspire to owning a one-family home with a nice backyard and a white picket fence.  They imagine their kids riding their big wheel up and down the driveway and family barbecues on their back deck.  At face value, there is nothing wrong with owning a one family home, afterall, a home without tenants or extra maintenance comes without […]

As I’ve said in the past, eating out/ordering in is a colossal waste of money and beyond the occasional breakdown or special night out I tend not to reach for the Chinese take out menu or make reservations at our local restaurant very often.  My other rationale for not eating out is that I simply will not get the same […]

Good Life and Food Most people live beyond their means because they want to feel and be perceived as being wealthy.  A Coach handbag or Mercedes-Benz  sedan screams, “hey, look at me I can spend money and feel good about it!”  Feeling good about buying stuff or leading a “high-end” lifestyle is not inherently a bad thing, afterall we all […]

Now more than ever the idea of an emergency cash fund is critical.  Many personal finance gurus recommend that individuals and/or families put aside at least 3 months of living expenses in a conservative vehicle (such as a CD, money market fund, or traditional savings account).   Living expenses include: mortgage, taxes, utilities, food, gas, and car payments.   An emergency […]

(photo: cooking onions at home) According to an Indiana Business Review article, individuals in the United States between the ages of 25-54 spend an average of $2833.00 each year on eating out (this is according to 2004 data).  While the number is not surprising, it did get me thinking about personal finance and daily eating habits.  Given the current economy, […]

>>CLICK HERE AS THE LOCATION OF SCORDO.COM HAS CHANGED Recently, our extended family has been going through a difficult period caring for my 89 year old grandfather (Nonno Vincenzo).  Nonno Vincenzo has been housebound for the last year suffering from dementia, et. al.  I was named after Nonno Vincenzo and we share many of the same traits (including being calm most of […]

One of the most important life skills you can teach your child is how to save or, more specifically, why it’s important to save.   My parents would often bring me to the bank as a small child and I observed my mother writing and cashing checks, depositing money, etc.  By the time I was 7 or 8 my parents told […]

Shhh, insider secret: Consumer product companies want you to be slaves to trends.  Companies that produce automobiles, clothes, furniture, electronics, etc. are all dependent on repeat business (in marketing terms: retention rates) and the only way they can get customers to buy a product again is to argue that their older product is outdated and now has a newer version available.  […]

With temperatures beginning to drop and cold winds battering against our 83 year old house, we’ve been giving serious consideration to replacing our original, single pane, wood windows.  Our windows also include storm windows that, at one point, guarded against strong gusts of wind (but they are pretty much non-functional at this point). We do like the aesthetics of our […]

There have been some great blog posts on the web this past week focused on happiness and savings, frugal living, how to talk about sensitive money/job issues, etc. and here are the best of the lot: – Trent @TheSimpleDollar talks about Happiness and Saving for the Future – JD @ Get Rich Slowly posted a nice article on great wine […]