books

3 Alternative "Investments" for Long Term Enjoyment and Appreciation

Posted October 1, 2009 - 07:00 by Xin Lu

Investment, Art and Leisure

Stocks, bonds, and real estate are investments we are all fairly familiar with. In the recent economic turmoil, many people are looking for alternative investments to maintain the value of their assets. Here are three long term "investments" that you could enjoy while you wait for possible price appreciation.

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Book Review - In CHEAP We Trust: The Story of a Misunderstood American Virtue by Lauren Weber

Posted September 9, 2009 - 08:00 by Xin Lu

Frugal Living

In CHEAP We Trust: The Story of a Misunderstood American Virtue is a book that explores the morality and practicality of being frugal from the beginnings of America to 2009. The author Lauren Weber identifies herself as a cheapskate who learned her behaviors from her extremely cheap economist father. Here are some strange and surprising highlights from the book.

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Book review: Life Inc.

Posted July 7, 2009 - 14:24 by Philip Brewer

Consumer Affairs, General Tips

Cover of Life Inc

Corporations were invented a few hundred years ago--created to increase the wealth and power of favored businessmen (and the governments that favored them). They have become such a universal feature of our economy that few people give much thought to their origins--or how our economies are structured to suit them. But exactly that is the topic of Douglas Rushkoff's new book.

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Book review: The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It

Posted April 17, 2009 - 07:22 by Philip Brewer

Lifestyle, Health and Beauty, Green Living, Food and Drink, DIY

Cover of The Self-Sufficient Life

In the days when self-sufficiency was simply the normal way of things, you'd learn the necessary knowledge and skills from your parents. (And from your grandparents, aunts and uncles, older siblings, and whatever other adults happened to be around.) Now that most of us work for money to buy what we need, rather than growing or making things ourselves, few of us have the knowledge or skills to be self-sufficient. Few of us even know anybody we could learn from. This book tries to fill that gap.

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Easy weekend business: sell used books

Posted April 10, 2009 - 12:19 by Xin Lu

Making Extra Cash

Used Books Sale

When I started blogging I wrote an article about saving money in college. In this article I wrote that I made money by selling used books. Some people were curious as to how I could make money doing this, so here is a quick guide to how you can start your own used book business from the comfort of your home.

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How to find the cheapest college textbooks

Posted March 5, 2009 - 08:50 by Paul Michael

Frugal Living, Shopping

College books

I’m not in college any more, thank goodness, but I remember every penny-pinching moment. Some days I hardly had enough money for food, mainly because the materials and textbooks I had to buy ripped a hole in my pocket the size of the Grand Canyon. And so I’m always on the lookout for ways to help out college students. Today, I found two.

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Book review: Wabi Sabi Simple

Posted February 24, 2009 - 11:16 by Philip Brewer

Lifestyle

Cover of Wabi Sabi Simple

Is there an intersection between living large and simple living? I think so. To me, living large is not about having more stuff or more expensive stuff, it's about living my life exactly as I choose, without being constrained by what my boss wants me to do, what the neighbors think, or what my creditors will allow. It's about the breadth and width of my life, not about how high I can pile up stuff. If that is how you want to live large, you'll find a lot of inspiration in Richard R. Powell's book Wabi Sabi Simple.

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Book review: Game Over

Posted January 11, 2009 - 10:45 by Philip Brewer

Green Living, Investment

Cover of Game Over by Stephen Leeb

Stephen Leeb's new book makes that case that we're running into resource limits on every front--energy, metals, water--and that this problem is going to affect everything we do. Then, it looks at what can we do about it, as individuals and as a society.

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Book Review: Rich Like Them by Ryan D'Agostino

Posted January 7, 2009 - 00:27 by Xin Lu

Personal Finance, General Tips, Lifestyle

One summer my mother showed me a series of articles in Money magazine by a reporter named Ryan D'Agostino who knocked on the doors of expensive homes to find out how the occupants became rich. These articles were quite memorable for me because I thought it was hilarious how the author literally invaded the private property of rich people. Now a couple years later, D'Agostino has collected the entire experiment along with his personal stories into a book called Rich Like Them.

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Books Get Recalled, Too (The Shocking Truth)

Posted December 31, 2008 - 07:10 by Linsey Knerl

Personal Finance, Consumer Affairs

Just when you thought the world of consumer product recalls was largely limited to lead-based toys, laceration hazards, and the phenomenon of exploding laptop batteries, we can now add reading materials to the potential list of “harmful products.” And while paper cuts are nasty things to experience, we’re referring instead to the possibility of electrical shock with this most recent alert.

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