Gather Little by Little

Sometimes I have random personal finance thoughts that are too short for a post. I type them into a document in my Blackberry and save them up until I have enough for an article. Maybe they will spark a thought or two in your mind –

A grocery store is almost always cheaper and healthier than a restaurant. The difference is simply laziness . . . at least for me. Pour your own water!

Mrs. Stew and I recently finished potty-training my three year old son. At one point we promised him a penny for every time that he successfully used the toilet. He is either the world’s largest source of urine or a budding entrepreneur because his number of trips to the can increased exponentially.

If you ever need to send a free fax, check out bestfreefax.com. You can send up to two free faxes per day of no more than five pages per fax to any destination in the Continental 48 United States, Canada or Hawaii. I am trying to figure out the catch . . . they probably put your phone number or email address on a marketing database. I would not recommend that you send a fax that includes private information using this service, but if you need to send a pdf or some other document in a pinch and you only have an internet connection, this could solve a problem.

I recently took my children to the light rail station in order to take a trip into the city. When we got to the station, we could not go on the train because when I got there, I discovered that it is impossible to purchase tickets with a credit card or a debit card. Seriously? in 2010? It was true, cash only. I had some disappointed kids.

The Paypal money market currently has an APR of 0.11%. Does anyone even care? Why Paypal still pay interest at all? If you kept $5,000 in your Paypal balance for an entire year, you would earn a whopping $5.50 – and that is not guaranteed.

A couple of years ago, someone gave me a scooter for free. It was a piece of junk, but it got me to and from work for a year. Back in December, it was stolen – not because I left the key in it, but because it wasn’t locked up. I think someone just drove up in a pickup truck and threw it in the back. I recently purchased another used scooter off of Craigslist for $1,000. If I had invest in a $6 bike lock last year, I might have saved $1,000 this year.

An ounce of prevention . . .

Article by Stew

Photo by walknboston