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This article is by staff writer Holly Johnson.

A few weeks ago, I received a flyer from a fireworks store that made me shake my head. “Spend $400 in one purchase and earn 40% off for the rest of the season,” it read.

“What a bargain,” I thought as I flung it toward the recycling bin. I mean, does anyone really spend $400 at the fireworks store?

Then I remembered that, yes, many people do. Not only are most of my neighbors fireworks fanatics, but dozens of people I know do it every year, including people in my own family.

My uncle, for example, has been known to buy thousands of dollars in fireworks and put on a show for my entire extended family. The kids swim in the pool, we cook out, and he lights up the sky to the delight and giggles of all the little ones.

This article is by staff writer William Cowie.

It’s been a long time since my wife and I had the luxury of thinking in terms of vacation. When we came to America more than 30 years ago, we also discovered two things:

1. People in America work very hard, probably harder than anywhere else in the world. Two weeks’ vacation seems to be the norm here, while in Europe and the rest of the world anything less than a month is inhuman, insane, or both. (I am not convinced they’re wrong, by the way.)

2. With all our family on other continents, we needed to spend those two precious little weeks every year with them. That led to employing all manner of strategies and devices — like accumulating as much vacation time as we could and squeaking out an advance on the coming year — so we could spend two whole weeks with our family and another week just for travel, there and back.

This article is by staff writer Holly Johnson.

When my husband and I started dating in 2004, he moved across the country to go back to school and live closer to me. Yep, much to our surprise {insert sarcasm here}, his bachelor’s degree in theater arts hadn’t helped him land his dream job. Therefore, he decided to do something different instead and chose to pursue a bachelor’s degree in mortuary science.

As it is with any life-changing decision, this move had financial consequences. Still, leaving Chicago was mostly a good thing. Not only would he have a chance at a more lucrative career, but it also meant slowing down and abandoning an excruciatingly high cost of living. On the other hand, moving to Cincinnati to finish school meant taking on student loans which severely limited his income for two years.

This article is by staff writer Honey Smith.

An issue was raised in the comments of my recent post, Celebrating One Year of Homeownership. In that post, I mentioned that we currently have over $30,000 in liquid savings. At least one reader felt that, with our level of debt (currently over $390,000), that this was an excessive amount and instead we should pay down some of our debt. So I thought that this was a good situation to weigh the eternal savings-or-debt debate again using my own situation as case study.

First, some updates and future plans

• The shed: We had the old shed demolished and removed and the new shed assembled, which cost about $500.