Philip Brewer's blog

Interview with AFFIL executive director Jim Campen

Early in the subprime lending collapse, Wise Bread posted a report from Americans for Fairness in Lending explaining how the subprime lending boom hurt everyone. Since it's a

Healthy recipes--with cost data

Want to eat a cheap, healthy diet? Want some recipes that use real food instead of packaged food products? Want to argue about how much it costs to feed a family a healthy diet?

Real eggs

Have you ever eaten an egg from a chicken that lives outside, eating bugs and worms and grubs instead of just chicken feed? You notice the difference as soon as you crack the she

Roll your own cost-of-living index

If you have a budget--more specifically, if you track your spending--you have the data you need to track changes in your own personal cost of living. That's a lot more useful

Variable prices, and what economists like about them

From the buyer's point of view, a "market price" is great. This is not only because he or she doesn't have to get a bunch of prices quotes to avoid being cheated

The many reasons--besides frugality--to do for yourself

Doing for yourself--cooking your own meals, making your own clothes, growing your own vegetables, playing your own music, baking your own bread--is sometimes justified on the groun

Why is bread so expensive?

Having given us some good tips on dealing with the rising cost of bread, Myscha asked me to provide a bit of analysis on why bread has become so expensive. Oddly, the reasons behi

Best asset allocation for your portfolio

This is the first Wise Bread post that I've been afraid to write. I've thought about it many times, but haven't even gotten as far as making notes until today, when I

Nonfat dry milk--no longer a frugal alternative

For more than thirty years, nonfat dry milk was a frugal staple. For things like baking and making yogurt, it was as good as fresh milk. Not many people wanted to drink the stuff

Manage your charitable giving

Are you one of the people who responds to begging letters from national charitable organizations by occasionally sending money? I used to do that. In my case, it was mostly envir

When to drop collision coverage on your car

A few years back, I got a tidy little lesson in exactly what collision coverage is. We'd had a car damaged in an accident, damaged pretty badly. So, it wasn't a surprise

Scheduling Time Versus Scheduling Tasks

Of late Getting Things Done by David Allen has seemed like the book to read. I read it a year or two ago, and internalized a lot of its methodology. One thing about it, though

When NOT to put money in your 401(k)

The twin advantages of tax deferral and a corporate match make the 401(k) the foundation of most people's savings plan. Putting in enough to get the maximum corporate match is

Local Currencies

Because the advantages of trade (lower prices) fall into the hands of the person making the decision (the buyer), there's a constant tendency to move toward freer trade, unless

Trade versus localization

Localization--eating locally grown foods and buying locally produced goods--has become trendy just lately. For the past twenty years, though, globalization has been the dominate f

The core rate is not an evil conspiracy

The Consumer Price Index was released today, showing prices were up 0.3% last month and up 2.8% from a year ago. The same report also includes the so-called core rate, which exclu

Better cars are not the answer

Wise Bread is an optimistic place. There are some people who can't see the congruence between optimism and frugality. I'm talking about the people who point to our progre

Good Debt, Bad Debt

Whether debt is good or bad depends on how you spend the money. From best to worst, here are the four categories of debt that one writer uses.

A second emergency fund you never spend?

I ran across this idea in a book by some financial guru years ago. The book was packed with an odd mix of obvious and kooky ideas, of which this was one of the latter. For some r

Figuring the Size of Your Emergency Fund

The usual rule of thumb is 3 to 6 months' income. Of course that's silly--the size of your emergency fund needs to be based on your spending, not your income. But even 3