Buying an internship: different from paying for summer camp?

In this unbelievable Wall Street Journal article, Sue Shellenbarger reports that some parents are buying internships for their kids. (If you don’t have a subscription to the WSJ, you can search on Google for ”Do you want an internship? It’ll cost you” and you should get to the story.) While this shocked me at first, I [...]

The trouble with clothes shopping

First of all, I have to say: get thee to an Ann Taylor Loft. Today. My mother in law works there, and she bought me a whole new wardrobe, with almost nothing costing more than $10. I have a fantastic new dress which cost–I’m not kidding–$6.88. That’s before my mother in law got her 40% [...]

The financial lessons I’ve learned from my younger self

I almost always like Ben Stein’s column in the Sunday New York Times, but he usually focuses on macro economic issues, rather than personal finance. This week’s column, however, was different. He wrote about the financial advice he tries to give his 21-year-old son, a recently married student.
What I keep coming up with is this: [...]

When a $150 dinner is a good investment

On Friday night, Jon approached me rather tentatively. We had decided that we would set a budget for the weekend: $200 for everything, including groceries and anything else we needed for the house. But he told me that there was a work-related dinner on Sunday night, at a fancy steakhouse. It would probably cost $100 [...]

Trying the most expensive stuff in the world

Bargaineering recently alerted me to this video, which I thought I should share. It’s a presentation given by of the writer Benjamin Wallace, about his quest to try the most expensive version of everything, including a bed, car, hotel room, and bottle of wine. It’s really fascinating, and worth watching until the end. I can’t embed [...]