Financial Advice

Gary Foreman has been helping people save money for years. His DollarStretcher newsletter / website reaches over 300,000 people each week.

Gary has been a financial planner, but in recent years has moved from advising people about how to make more money to helping them use what they have more wisely. He firmly believes that saving money is as good, if not better than earning more.

With the average college class costing anywhere between $185 at community colleges to $900 at some universities, you've got to be sure you get your money's worth. You are purchasing a service, so get the best quality you can.

We do several things to ensure that our kids find instructors who have a passion for what they are teaching and have the ability to communicate well with their students.

1) Ask around   Our kids ask other students who the best instructors are.

We've always bought gently used pre-owned cars (from individual owners, not dealers). One book we read calculated that over a lifetime the difference between buying new cars (with financing) and paying cash for gently used cars can save you over $128,000. We don't know about saving that much money, but we do know that we've never had a car payment, never paid a penny in interest on car loans and always found great deals on used cars.

Years ago, Annette's dad, Syl Meola retired from a sales job in the electronics industry and took a job at his local church as the head of the maintenance department — that's right, he became a janitor. Syl is the consummate organizer and master of efficiency. He can fit more stuff in a small space than anyone we know. One thing he noticed was that whenever there was a reception or some sort of meeting where drinks were served from a coffee pot or cooler, inevitably some of the liquid ended up dripping on floor.