Today’s post is a guest post from Sarah Scrafford. It is written from an American perspective and gives information about US bankruptcy. For our British readers, we will write about bankruptcy another day. Thanks to Sarah for the post.

Debt is extremely easy to accumulate and just as hard to pay off. Indiscriminate usage of credit cards, frivolous spending and high interest rates have led to a large number of Americans steeped in debts that leave them wringing their hands in despair. Continue reading »

In the past, I have been unwisely generous, especially when it came to lending money to friends. I would lend money freely, even when my own funds were limited.

I lent money to people because I knew they loved me, believing that love would guarantee payback. I trusted people who had previously paid back small amounts, believing this meant they would pay back on bigger loans. Friends could ask me to get credit for them because, if they said they would make the monthly payments, I believed them and, finally, I lent people money just because they were nice.

Shakespeare said, “Neither a lender nor a borrower be”. I learned, the hard way, the wisdom of those words. Continue reading »

I stumbled upon a cool tool today. It’s a Time Machine for emails. Sound weird? Whatever would a time machine for emails do?

The mini-app web page is very simply laid out. You fill out the details of the email address to send it to and the date you would like to be it to be sent. When that date arrives, it sends the email out. It doesn’t ask for too many details, like even who it’s from, so… How could it possibly be useful?

It’s advertised as something that could be used to remind you of an event in the future (I already use a schedule for that) or to send someone else a Happy Birthday message that you may forget later, that could be of some use, I guess.

So I gave it a few minutes of my time and thought about how it could really be useful. I came up with a few ideas, but here’s one that specifically relates to debt… Continue reading »

Sitting at my desk, sun streaming through the window, wind chimes tinkling in the wind, I glanced up at the clock. Oh no! Lunchtime was looming. I quickly checked my schedule, no lunch dates, phew! Now all I could hear was the rapid beat of my heart. As I sat quietly, I found myself wondering who was going to knock my door. Who was going to pop in and suggest a little lunchtime stroll to the local café, the new bistro, the delightful Italian on the corner, the heavenly wine bar that makes ‘to die for’ salads, the art gallery with the exquisite menu? The door slowly opened, beads of sweat forming on my brow, I looked up ready to make my excuses… Continue reading »

How quickly things change! With lightening speed, words enter our language and trip off the tongue while others are discarded, just as rapidly. The Oxford English Dictionary grants official status to new words with every edition. The British press wait eagerly, for the list of what is in and what is out. I really wonder how they can continue to keep up now. This isn’t just the language of the street we’re talking about either.

Six months ago, if someone had asked you what credit crunch meant, what would you have said? I thought a lot about this. I’m sure I would have thought it was an exotic breakfast cereal, perhaps including some freeze dried strawberries that counted as one of my 5 a day… Continue reading »