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Nov 29, 2011: Last weekend we were wondering how many Americans live without bank accounts. Our first thought was not many. Curious to know the facts we started researching on the web. We were stunned to find that 17 million Americans have no bank accounts! And 18% of the rest of the population that do have bank accounts use non-traditional banking

Jan 17, 2012: The cost of energy is rising everyday. Whether it be electricity, gas, water or sewage, our utility bills are becoming higher with each passing month. Consequently most of us are looking for ways to trim our energy expenses and boost our savings. The cost of heating our houses in winter is always a major concern.

The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that a typical U.S. family

Aug 29, 2011: Back to school season is here. Parents and students alike are busy planning, budgeting and shopping to meet the semester head on. With rising tuition and increasing costs of school as well as college education, getting our kids back to school can be a major drain on our pockets if we don't plan it well. It gets better if we can get our kids to cooperate with us :). Well, easier said

Jun 28, 2011: The big debate these days is whether home ownership is still everything it's cracked up to be. Yes, we still get a tax deduction on the amount of interest we pay, but the building of equity is no longer a given with a home mortgage.

There are many areas around the United States with falling home prices, causing some people to be upside-down on their loans and leaving them unable to

May 25, 2010: We know that gasoline is not cheap. Neither do these examples suggest that gasoline is cheap. They simply illustrate how outrageous some prices are. Since we purchase these commodities in small quantities we're usually not aware about how expensive they are. More so, when compared to gasoline. Really, this set of data coerced us to think, and aided in correcting our perspective.

[This post is written and copyrighted by FIRE Finance (http://firefinance.blogspot.com).]

Aug 04, 2010: Identity Theft is a serious crime which is growing by leaps and bounds. In this electronic world where millions of e-transactions take place in the world of finance every day, identity theft has become a lucrative profession for phishers.

Once our identities are stolen, it might cost us

Oct 05, 2010: We received a letter in the mail which had a check and a notification. It said that we'd won a foreign lottery! So far so good, after all who does not like free money especially lotteries. The next step was to deposit the check but there was a catch which raised our suspicion. We're told to keep the portion representing our winning and wire transfer $3000 back to cover the taxes so

[This post is written and copyrighted by FIRE Finance (http://firefinance.blogspot.com).]
Jul 28, 2010: It's that time of the year when we are needed to renew our cars' registrations and our driving licenses. We were trying to figure out how to go about doing the tasks online. At DMV's website we found that the rules vary from state to state. So we had to dig on a little further.

In the process

[This post is written and copyrighted by FIRE Finance (http://firefinance.blogspot.com).]
Jun 30, 2010: We all dream of possessing the visionary power of Warren Buffet, the Oracle of Omaha and one of the world's greatest stock market investors. What is it that makes him so successful?

Journalist Roger Lowenstein, author of "Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist," makes the case that

[This post is written and copyrighted by FIRE Finance (http://firefinance.blogspot.com).]
Nov 16, 2009: J.D. Roth's Get Rich Slowly is one of our favorite personal finance blogs. We were shaken when we read that JD's car was burgled again! Sometimes incidents like these forewarn us about raising our awareness on how to protect our valuables. The next step of course is to take action on the

[This post is written and copyrighted by FIRE Finance (http://firefinance.blogspot.com).]July 29, 2009: We all have our own system of keeping records such as bills, tax returns and statements. They are either stored in a file cabinet or as scanned images on data CD/DVDs or perhaps in shoe boxes. That is pretty good as long as the system works for us. But the most important question that arises

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

[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:

[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