Hi, I’m Arielle McGowen, and I do some reporting and researching for Jean. In my downtime, though, one of my favorite things to do is cook.
This, I’m sure you know, can be an expensive hobby. I only have two mouths to feed – I live with my fiance in Brooklyn – but a good chunk of our budget goes to the grocery store and farmer’s market each week. Over the past few years, I’ve had to learn how to cut back so we could put a bit of money away for a rainy day (Jean’s influence) and, let’s be honest, so I could afford to support my other costly habits (namely, going out to eat…I’m noticing a pattern here). More…
As I write this, Teddy, my beloved cockapoo, has snuggled up to my feet (the benefits of working at home). He doesn’t know it, but last weekend he almost got a brother. We were out and about with our next door neighbors in a nearby town. They’ve been talking about getting a puppy. And together we wandered into a local pet store where there were two cockapoo puppies — brothers we were told — from a nearby breeder. “If you take one,” we’ll take the other, Eliot, my fiance, told my neighbors, not wanting to split them up.
In the end they opted to pass. I was disappointed. But then I thought about how much better this would be for my bottom line. Two dogs would mean twice the vet bills, twice the grooming, twice the food, twice the dog-sitter (when I travel for work, she often takes him overnight). In other words, thousands of dollars a year. And that doesn’t include start-up costs. More…
Yes, that’s a line from Little Shop of Horrors — the score from which has been running through my head for the last three weeks (that’s what happens when you see two high school productions and one college one inside of a six-day period). I thought I had actually gotten rid of it — replaced, you’ll be happy to know by Rock Me Amadeus, the song that runs through the new movie Adventureland, which I saw over the weekend — but no. More…
The best piece of parenting advice I ever got came from my mother. I was stressed out because my son wouldn’t eat — what else? — his veggies. He was happy to dine on mac and cheese and more mac and more cheese. Especially more cheese. (This was in the days before my pal Sneaky Chef Missy Chase Lapine taught me you could bury broccoli in just about anything.) I thought I was failing motherhood. I was new at this.
In swooped my mother who told me to calm down. She said you can’t look at what kids (or adults for that matter) eat at a single meal or even in a single day. More…
Money 911
After a brief hiatus last week to make room for Today’s tax hotline, Money 911 was back this morning. Take a look at this week’s segment here:
Yesterday, I spent a few minutes helping a young friend search for low-enough airfares that her dad would agree to a quick Florida getaway this coming weekend. I struck out. There didn’t seem to be much under $600 – $700 person round trip — especially if you wanted to go early enough on Friday and return home late enough on Sunday to actually have a substantial weekend.
Today I have a new trick to try. According to my friend David Bach’s new bestselling book Fight For Your Money, searching for tickets for a family is often more costly than searching for tickets for individuals. He demonstrated the trick for Harry Smith on The Early Show finding a $275 difference per ticket — $1100 in total! — for a family of four flying from NY to LA. To find out how it works from NY to Florida stay tuned…..
On Today this morning we talked about life’s five biggest crises. If you’re dealing with one of them, see the post below for some advice on how to better your situation.
Are you prepared to handle a financial crisis — 6 out of 10 Americans age 40 to 79 have experienced at least one, according to a new piece of research from AARP financial. What sort of crises? Job loss, divorce death of a spouse or a child, sudden illness. (Personally, at 44, I’ve gone through three.)
Unfortunately, most of us don’t prepared for these crises before hand – and then make some wrong early moves when they actually hit.
Q: How unprepared are we? More…
Kev wrote: Do we really all have the new sensibility now? Are the Jones’ out of fashion or out of style for good? I think the American consumer will come back, though never as bold as we were – at least not for a while.
I for one think thrift is going to be hip for a while. Just check out the style section of yesterday’s New York Times where there was a story about how less expensive labels like Ann Taylor, Talbot’s, Isaac Mizrahi’s new Liz Claiborne line for Macy’s have become suddenly alluring to the Prada shopper. And the story in today’s WSJ about the slowdown in global consumerism.
Are you actively shopping less? Because you want to? Because you have to? Lemme know….
Yesterday, Nicole Wong, a reporter for the Boston Globe volunteered for a layoff. Yes, you read that right. Despite the sorry jobs numbers that continue to hit newspapers like hers — another 669,999 applied for unemployment the week of March 28 according to today’s data dump, that’s a 12 percent increase over the week prior — Wong, who most recently wrote about travel but has in the past covered workplace issues in Boston and Silicon Valley took the fall so perhaps her colleagues wouldn’t have to. Here’s a bit of what she wrote on her facebook post that then made it’s way to Poynter, where I found it:
This wasn’t an easy decision to make. I’ve loved working with all of you, learning from all of you, and having fun alongside all of you. I’ve loved covering the travel beat for the past 1.5 years, and I would have loved to continue reporting on that here for years to come. But I realized — after weeks of talking to worried coworkers and overhearing them fret to whomever happened to be on the phone — that at least it should be less of a hardship for me to find a job since I’m more mobile than my colleagues who have spouses, kids, mortgages, and more. (This is probably the first time I’m relieved to not even have a boyfriend or a house!)
More…
