Savvy Saving Bytes

  Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden Pond”, a celebration of solitude, simplicity and self-sufficiency, has inspired and instructed us since it was written in 1854. Thoreau’s ideas and insights about life, formulated while living alone with nature at Walden Park for two years, resonate to this day. On defining success, he said: “If the day and the [...]

Okay, you’ve just been fired. Or another calamity has you running out of money at the speed of sound. Or maybe you just want to mercilessly cut corners to save money for a coveted object, trip or some other goodie. It’s time to hit the kitchen and see where you can squeeze money out of [...]

To catch a flight at LaGuardia during the Christmas holidays I could do one of two things: either grab a cab and cough up well over $40.00 OR jump on an M60 bus and pay a sweet little $2.25. I had already taken the M60 from FROM LaGuardia to New York City when time wasn’t a factor [...]

Dear Starbucks: Enough already! I’m heading for a larger dress size yet again. And while I can pretend all these extra pounds jumped on my innocent frame because I’m “big boned” or “not doing enough exercise” or “a bunch of monster chocolate mousses forced themselves on me” you and I both know the truth. I [...]

Want to know which seats on a plane are safest in the event of (eek) a crash? Me too. In answer to these queries, producers of a TV special program in the UK outfitted a 727 with crash test dummies, cameras and sensors and crashed the airplane in Mexico’s Sonoran Desert (see video). The result? [...]

This updated post is about living a debt free life that was shaped perhaps by echoes of the Great Depression. A contented apartment renter in New York City, I have never bought, nor considered buying, a co-op apartment, a country house, a beach house or any other ritzy extravagance like a fur coat or showy, [...]