There are tons of great personal finance articles on the web. Here’s my highly subjective list of 10 of the best from recent weeks – 5 from traditional sites, 5 from blogs.
How Die-Hard Couponers Do It (via CNNMoney). Feel like you’re missing out because you’ve read about the coupon pros who by $1,000 of groceries for $10? Here are five tips most mere mortals can follow to save some dough at the grocery store.
Best Price Comparison Tools (via Mainstreet.com). I use PriceGrabber fairly often to find the best prices, but this article mentions several other good price comparison web sites and smartphone apps, including one that’ll help you figure out what secondhand goods are worth and another that’ll help you calculate the best price per ounce or per count for items at the grocery store.
Should Your Kids Have Life Insurance? (via Bankrate.com). Some good reasons why to say no to this idea, along with some good alternatives.
5 Ways to Save Big on College Textbooks (via Mainstreet.com). If you’re a college student of if you know one, this article will point you to five places to get textbooks for a lot less that the college bookstore.
How to Get the Best Price When Selling Your Gold (via USA TODAY). With the price of gold going through the roof, you may be tempted to part with some of your gold jewelry. Here’s some good advice on how and where to sell it.
And here are five especially good posts from personal finance bloggers.
How We Keep Our Grocery Budget Under $250 Per Month (via Faith and Finance). Tim writes about the practical steps he and his wife use to keep their food spending under control.
2011 Sales Tax Holidays for Back-to-School Shopping (via FiveCentNickel). If you’re buying something you need and it’s on sale, why not shop during a tax-free time as well?
Make a Starbucks Frappuccino for $.32 (via Sqawkfox). Many are the bloggers who bemoan Starbucks. I like it when one teaches you how to enjoy pricey coffee on the cheap.
My Car is Dying, What To Do? (via Financial Samurai). Sam raises some good questions about when to finally part with an old vehicle, and his readers weigh in.
5 Common Resume Mistakes You Should Avoid (via Couple Money). If you’re in the hunt for a new job, here are some good points to keep in mind.
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Some information for the textbook discussion:
A sight I have found VERY helpful is http://www.bigwords.com. Their engine searches all the major online book sellers and finds the best price. I’ve tried to beat it by doing my own searching. After a couple hours, it still beat me by about a 5% margin.
The site also has a selling option. After you are done with your books for the semester, go back to BigWords and put them in the search engine. They will tell how much each site will PAY YOU for your books. I was shocked at how much some places pay. (I actually made a profit on a couple books).
Further, do this fast before textbooks quickly become obsolete due to newer versions. Then they become worthless. If you have a book you want to keep you can sell it at the higher price, wait for a new version come out, then buy your book back from Amazon (or somewhere similar) for a dollar or two.
I’m in grad school and this worked really well for me last year. I got around $450 back for my year of books.
All the best,
Ryan Wilson
Sam – I did just finish another book project, but it was a special project for an organization that works with college students. This version won’t be available to the public. It’s possible, though, that a different version of it will be available to the public – I’ll keep you posted.
Howdy Matt! Thanks for the highlight and doing the wrap.
Did you say you were working on a new book after the marriage one?
Sam