It’s time once again to reach into the mailbag to answer a question from my dear readers. It’s kinda my favorite day, which should give you an idea of how much I love to hear from you. While I cannot respond personally to all of your messages and letters, know that I read every one,…

Whether you’re aware of it or not, you have a money temperament. Everyone does. It’s the way you naturally think about money, behave with money or react to money. To loosely assess your money temperament, and to have a little fun with it, consider the following scenario and choose the response that’s closest to what…

Sodium bicarbonate, commonly known as baking soda or bicarbonate of soda, is an alkaline compound that, when combined with acid, produces harmless but useful carbon dioxide gas. When used to bake biscuits or cake, the small bubbles of carbon dioxide gas become trapped in batter, causing it to inflate, or rise. Baking soda is well…

Discovering that you’ll be getting a tax refund is certainly not the worst news you’ve had in your life. In fact, it’s easy to see a tax refund as some kind of gift from the universe. You might even be feeling kind of proud of your forced savings account, to which you knowingly contribute every…

These days, it’s practically inevitable that you or someone close to you will face a period of unemployment. Consider these practical tips while dealing with the financial and emotional toll of leaving one job and searching for another. Don’t Take It Personally Losing a job can cause shame, humiliation, and embarrassment. You may feel depressed…

Dear Mary: My husband and I have been out of debt for approximately five years. It’s great. The problem is we now seem to spend a lot of money needlessly just because we can. We have so much money over and above our living expenses that it is easy to be reckless. We keep just…

A credit score is a three-digit number between 300 and 850 generated by a mathematical algorithm (a mostly secret formula) based on information in your credit report, compared to information on tens of millions of other people. Like it or not, the resulting number is said to be a highly accurate prediction of how likely…

Do you ever notice how your hair hurts when you haven’t washed it in a few days? Hey, washing and styling can be so time-consuming! It’s not just you; greasy hair pain is a thing. There’s a legit reason for this, having to do with oils that your scalp produces naturally accumulating around the hair…