Michelle Crouch at Reader’s Digest has compiled another list of secrets that your waiter won’t tell you. Some are just going to make you annoyed, like the waitress who lies for sympathy tips. But there are plenty of useful secrets on the list that might improve your experience the next time you go out to eat. [More]
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20 Tips To Ready You For Black Friday
By 11.26.09
Budgets Are Sexy’s J. Money put together a list of 20 ways to prep yourself for Friday’s shopping frenzy. Here’s a taste of the post: [More]
Police Drop Theft Charges Against Pub Non-Tippers
By 11.23.09
Police in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, are withdrawing charges against the two college students who refused to tip at a pub last month, says The Morning Call.
Are You Cutting Back On Tips This Season?
By 11.23.09
The end of the year is usually when you tip service providers, but if you’re on a reduced budget then you’re probably going to want to scale back this year. Here are some suggestions from etiquette experts contacted by Reuters.
Should Yelp Remove Reviews By Non Customers?
By 11.20.09
Lehigh Pub, the restaurant in Pennsylvania that had two patrons arrested for not tipping, was blasted on Yelp in the past 24 hours or so by angry readers. Many of them weren’t customers, but heard about the arrests in the news and came to vote down the pub. As of this morning, it had an average of one star out of five.
College Students Arrested For Refusing To Pay Tip
By 11.19.09
Should you be required by law to pay a gratuity if you don’t think the restaurant’s service was worth it? The police in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania think so, and they arrested two college students for refusing to pay a $16.35 tip over what they claim was poor service. Update 11/23/09: the charges will be dropped.
Warning Signs That Your Mechanic Is Scamming You
By 11.18.09
Mint has a great article on how to protect yourself from getting ripped off by a mechanic. First and foremost, read your car’s manual and learn what to ask for when you take it in. Just saying you need a tune up with a modern car flags you as an easy mark.
Free Thanksgiving Tips Book Download
By 11.18.09
Here’s a free Thanksgiving-themed PDF booklet from Money Management International, a non-profit that focuses on financial literacy. The booklet contains some guidelines on how to plan out the big event, how to save money on decor, and tips on shopping and saving money.
10 Strategies To Lower Your Auto Insurance
By 11.10.09
Over at the Mint blog they’ve posted a list of 10 ways to reduce your car insurance premium. You’ll want to contact your current insurer and ask some questions, like whether they offer a discount for paying up front, or if they’ll cut you a deal for being a long-term customer.
Take More Notes, Save Money
By 11.2.09
Yesterday I grabbed a notebook app for my smartphone and spent a couple of hours organizing the various content folders—ideas for Consumerist, gift lists for Christmas, things to look up later on a computer—so that I could capture information more efficiently. Wait, why s ths n Cnsmrst? Because The Simple Dollar argues that by keeping a notebook and using it all the time (Lifehacker calls it “ubiquitous capture”), you can end up saving money.
When To Buy A Home And How To Avoid Screwing It Up
By 11.2.09
Are you hitting that stage in life where you’re thinking of becoming a homeowner? Morningstar has published two home buying articles that together offer some good, concise advice to the prospective buyer, especially if you’re a first-timer.
How To Choose The Best Tires
By 10.22.09
The Consumer Reports Cars blog has posted a video on how to choose the best tires for your car. Here’s one interesting trick we learned from the clip: how to measure tire tread depth using coins.
Sparkling Wine Is Just As Good As Champagne (When It's Well Made)
By 10.21.09
The Champagne Bureau, a trade organization representing “the grape growers and houses of Champagne, France,” just sent us a nonsensical press release warning consumers to be on the lookout for imposter champagne. WATCH OUT! You’re pouring sparkling wine into your mouth, you jerk! The thing is, the only real reason “champagne” is unique is because wine houses in that region of France managed to get laws passed to prevent anyone else from using the word on their own sparkling wines. They’re all sparkling wines; how they’re made is what determines quality.
What Are Some Cheap Halloween Costume Ideas?
By 10.19.09
The personal finance blog Moolanomy posted a list of 25 cheap Halloween costumes, including ones that make no sense (see “Soup and crackers”) and ones that sound borderline dirty (see “Facebook wall”). The list made us realize that our readers probably have a lot of equally cheap, and equally-or-more creative, costume ideas of their own.
How To Ruin Your Jeans On The Cheap
By 10.16.09
If there’s one thing my grandmother and I agree on, aside from the fact that Marlena being possessed was a dumb storyline on Days of Our Lives, it’s that it makes no sense to pay top dollar for deliberately weakened/damaged denim. The ConsumerReports blog ShopSmart has found a website that offers tips on how to distress your jeans at home, like using a pumice stone to cut holes, or a cheese grater to create patterns.
How To Reduce Your Insurance Premiums
By 9.28.09
Kiplinger has put together a list of ways to reduce costs for auto, home, and life insurance. For auto and homeowners insurance, boosting your deductible from $250 to $1000 can lower your premiums between 15-25%. If you haven’t looked at your life insurance policy in a while, don’t wait any longer to shop around—rates have “dropped significantly” over the past 15 years but are now on the rise. And when calculating homeowners insurance, don’t fall into the market value trap: make sure you’re covering the true cost of replacing only the home and what’s inside, not the value of the land.
Get Your Data Out Of Google
By 9.24.09
If you’re like the average Google user, you’ve now got a lot of personal data—emails, addresses, calendars, documents, photos and videos, maybe even health records—in their system. This is fine with them, because the Google Hive Mind needs all of this data to eventually become self aware and enslave us. However, if you ever want to get that information out of Google, the company has created something they call the Data Liberation Front to make it easier for you.
23 Tips On How To Pay Down Your Debt
By 9.21.09
If you’re still floundering when it comes to paying off debt, here’s a great starting place for you. The blog DoughRoller has listed 23 ways to get started on freeing yourself from debt, along with lots of links to tools and other articles or websites that can help.
