In an industry as competitive as the one Delta competes in, airlines have no choice but to do everything necessary to cut costs and/or increase revenue-per-passenger.  It comes to no surprise that Delta today announced they are retooling their popular SkyMiles rewards structure to counter rising fuel costs.  Basically, this means that rewards tickets are [...]

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Regular readers will know I’m not such a big fan of variable annuities but I’ve gotten a few comments that perhaps I’m a bit too harsh on them.  To that end, I’ve compiled a list of the pros and cons of variable annuities in an effort to be a bit more balanced in my presentation of [...]

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Your safety deposit box may not be as safe as you think, as explained by an ABC News story I came across earlier today.  Banks are required by law to hand over unclaimed property such as the contents of safety deposit boxes, forgotten security deposits, and other unclaimed financial property to state government, where it [...]

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Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.  The Federal Reserve catches a lot of flack for its loose monetary policy and inflationary actions, and perhaps rightfully so.  There is little doubt inflation will accelerate over the intermediate future as years of too-low interest rates manifest themselves in the form of consumer price inflation.  Nobody [...]

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I forgot to submit posts to any carnivals this week (oops) but fear not, I still have some links to share.  Here are some of my favorite articles from around the pf blogosphere this week.
Are we in a recession?  Technically, we probably won’t know that until it’s over.  But to those of us who don’t live [...]

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I’m not a money expert, but I play one on the interweb.  I’ve made a lot of money mistakes in my day from trying to time the market (it doesn’t work) to not keeping up with my credit card payment (late fees!) but the worst money mistake I’ve ever made was buying a new car [...]

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Every once in a while, one of my favorite investing resources, Morningstar, compiles a list of the 10 hottest-selling funds of a certain period.  I like these lists because it gives a glimpse into the mind of the “average” investor and sometimes makes it fairly obvious what’s hot and what’s not.  In the late 90’s, [...]

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Misconception:  The CPI does not include food or energy prices.
Yes it does.  There are many different CPI indices used for different purposes.  There is one, the CPI Core index, that excludes food, energy, and other volatile products to make it easier to see short-term inflation trends, but this is by no means the only or [...]

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Vanguard, my favorite mutual fund company, now has two foreign index funds (as opposed to the global index fund).  Since these two funds mostly overlap, it may seem a bit redundant to offer two of them, but each fund has its own particular characteristics that makes is better-suited for certain situations than the other.  I actually [...]

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I participated in three carnivals this week: carnival of personal finance #161 hosted by The Budgeting Babe, Carnival of Money Stories #68 hosted by Funny About Money, and the Festival of Frugality #134 hosted by On Financial Success. All three hosts did a stellar job and, as usual, there are tons of great [...]

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