Mother's Day Gift Ideas - WindowBoxes

[This post is written and copyrighted by FIRE Finance (http://firefinance.blogspot.com).]Apr 29, 2009: We have loving moms. So this year we're thinking ahead on various gift ideas for Mother's day. We'd love to surprise them with simple gifts which they'd cherish. For those of us with urban moms who love to do gardening, windowboxes seem to be a great option. Gardening and working with plants

Valentine's Day Flowers - Top Ten Online Florists

[This post is written and copyrighted by FIRE Finance (http://firefinance.blogspot.com).]Feb 10, 2009: Valentine's day is round the corner. It really helps if we plan ahead for a nice bouquet of flowers. We hate last minute scrambles where we end up spending too much money to get our act in place. This time we've decided to get it right by ordering early on so that we don't burn holes in our

Electronic Gadgets - From Junk to Joy

[This post is written and copyrighted by FIRE Finance (http://firefinance.blogspot.com).]Dec 12, 2008: When we were cleaning our house in preparation for our moves (this year) we were amazed at the amount of electronics junk that had piled up over the years. You name it and we had it - old PDAs, cell phones, computers, laptops, music players, docking stations and what not. We were not sure

Tipping Guidelines

[This post is written and copyrighted by FIRE Finance (http://firefinance.blogspot.com).]Aug 1, 2008: This summer, during our cross country US Tour, we had to pay quite a lot of tips to bellboys, skycaps, waiters and waitresses at restaurants, taxi drivers, food delivery and room service. Since our travel lasted for nearly 8 weeks and spanned across ten expensive US metropolitans, we ended up

Sub Prime Mortgage Fiasco - Credit Losses So Far

[This post is written and copyrighted by FIRE Finance (http://firefinance.blogspot.com).] While doing some research on the sub prime mortgage fiasco we came across some interesting data, courtesy Bloomberg and Company. These figures show the credit losses incurred so far by various financial giants. Citigroup heads the table of losses with a gigantic $40.7 billion dollars till date. Here is the

Airline Excess Baggage - Tune in to new fees

[This post is written and copyrighted by FIRE Finance (http://firefinance.blogspot.com).]Jun 19, 2008: Recent changes in the policies of major airlines regarding the number of bags that can be checked in (domestic flights) has definitely increased the cost of air travel. More so for people like us who almost always need to check in a couple of bags due to the nature of our jobs and travel needs.

Is Your City Recession-Proof? These 10 Are!

[This post is written and copyrighted by FIRE Finance (http://firefinance.blogspot.com).]Some American cities are doing fine irrespective of falling home prices (at national level), rising unemployment and an economy with a slow growth(?). To find America's top 10 recession proof cities Forbes conducted a study. They examined the country's 50 largest metros and looked at several key measures:

A Cup of Tea for $1 Million - Its' true!

[This post is written and copyrighted by FIRE Finance (http://firefinance.blogspot.com).]Of late our US dollar's value has been falling with respect to a bunch of international currencies. Over the last couple of years the Euro has been persistently beating the US dollar. Have you ever wondered what happens when the value of a currency falls? You'd be surprised to see the reality of such a

2008's Hot Career Trends in US - Some Contemplations!

[This post is written and copyrighted by FIRE Finance (http://firefinance.blogspot.com).]John Schoen (MSNBC) has written an interesting article about the chances of a recession kicking in this year - "Fed says recession risk trumps inflation fears." Well, all we can do is to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Earlier we had created a handy post on understanding recession along with a

FREE Land & Handsome Living Allowances!

[This post is written and copyrighted by FIRE Finance (http://firefinance.blogspot.com).]How often we think that there is no FREE lunch. But that is not really true! Says who? Says Uncle Sam, really we mean it.......North Dakota and Kansas are giving away free land. Alaska is offering handsome living allowances. Well if it sounds too good to be true, read on to find out for yourselves.Kansas -

Wild Fire Disaster Preparation - Part 2!

[This post is written and copyrighted by FIRE Finance (http://firefinance.blogspot.com).]In Wild Fire Disaster Preparation - Part 1 we discussed immediate measures that need to be taken if we encounter a disastrous fire. Continuing from where we left off, today we discuss what our home insurance policies should cover to help us claim appropriate replacement costs for our damaged properties and

Google Page Rank Updates & PF Bloggers!

[This post is written and copyrighted by FIRE Finance (http://firefinance.blogspot.com).] Google's recent Page Rank (PR) updates have left the blogger community gaping. More so for the Personal Finance (PF) bloggers. Most of the famous non PF blogs which suffered a loss of PR have had their PRs restored within a week or so and are back in business. But the PF blogosphere has not been so

Wild Fire Disaster Preparation - Part 1!

[This post is written and copyrighted by FIRE Finance (http://firefinance.blogspot.com).]The wildfires which are devastating California have already consumed hundreds of homes and burnt many thousands of acres of land. Most probably it is going to be one of the costliest natural calamities of the century. And the seven counties affected by this devastation have some of the most expensive real

Are Banks Safe In A Falling Market?

[This post is written and copyrighted by FIRE Finance (http://firefinance.blogspot.com).]When the market is a roaring bull, everything is rosy and fine. But when we face a bear market it would perhaps be worthwhile to contemplate on the safety of our hard earned money deposited at various banks. Not all banks are same! Apart from comparing customer service, interest rates, account fees, and other

Credit Score - Myths & Facts!

[This post is written and copyrighted by FIRE Finance (http://firefinance.blogspot.com).]Mrs. Micah has raised an interesting question as a comment to our post titled "Hot Credit Card Signup Bonuses" which we published last week. Here we quote her verbatim:"I'd do this except for one reason--well, I'd do it in the future, right now we're trying to straighten out our finances and I wouldn't want