Savvy Saving Bytes

While working on staff at two different companies, I was startled when documents listing employee’s salaries somehow suddenly crossed my desk. Wow! Here I’d been wondering how much money coworkers were making and shazam – there were the numbers in crisp black and white. Twice! Both financial documents were enlightening, but the larger company’s payroll [...]

In contrast to all the familiar Christmas songs and salutations surrounding us this season, here again from early blog days are some quotes with a bit more zip and zing: “Our children await Christmas presents like politicians getting in election returns: there’s the Uncle Fred precinct and the Aunt Ruth district still to come in.”~ [...]

Can you picture the Wicked Witch of the West living in extravagantly expensive New York or San Francisco? No way. Smart in the ways of low cost real estate, that green faced, frugal master cast her evil spells in a castle far beyond the most distant boondocks, where land and tax costs have always been [...]

My first run-in with a pickpocket happened in the most innocent of places — an outdoor fruit and vegetable market on Second Avenue. A finicky shopper when it comes to fresh veggies, I was giving some red peppers the old eagle eye, when a nearby shopper suddenly leaned in closer to pick up a pepper [...]

Already at 11:00 AM on Friday, Fifth Avenue traffic at 85th Street is backed up all the way from mid-town. “Security checks,” a doorman says. In the crush of traffic, the buses aren’t moving so I start walking to midtown, picking up as I go scores of other New Yorkers whose legs today are faster [...]

A longer version of this post was published in the early days of this blog when readers were as scarce as frogs flipping up Fifth Avenue. Ever get the feeling too many salespeople consider customer’s questions to be intrusions into their real job – which is to grab our cash at top speed and shove [...]