A few weeks ago I wrote about how terrible it was preparing my car to be turned in at the end of a lease, and how I hated having to wait and find out if they are going to charge me for damages that were above and beyond "normal wear and tear". I was told that I would hear from them in 7-10 days if they were going to charge me for any damage. It has now been over three weeks since I handed over the keys and I haven't heard a word from Toyota. I logged onto my Toyota Financial Services account and it says, "This account has been closed..." Looks like the end of the lease wasn't so bad a

Have you ever been invited to a dinner party? No, I'm not talking about a booze fest at your college's frat house. I mean a party where you are going to a friend's house and they are going to feed you while you socialize. If you've ever been to one of those parties, I hope you didn't show up empty handed. It's always nice to bring a small gift, and a bottle of wine is usually appropriate (assuming they like wine and aren't recovering alcoholics. Definitely don't bring booze to a recovering alcoholic). Tag and I have a recurring weekly invite to my Aunt and Uncle's house for dinner every

Three years ago I leased a new car and thought it was a pretty darn good idea. I loved the fact that I could just basically "borrow" a car for three years and then give it back without any questions asked. On Monday my lease expired and I turned it in. Many of the benefits I listed in that first article still apply. The residual value in my contract was around $14,000. According to Kelley Blue Book, my car would only sell for about $13,000 if I tried to sell it on craigslist. That's a great deal for me. However, there are some really crappy things about a lease that I hadn't considere

I can't believe it's already been over a month since we bought our puppy! Sydney came to us in the beginning of February weighing somewhere around seven pounds. Now she weighs about 13 pounds. She's already almost doubled in size! When we adopted Sydney, we also bought two different books about Australian Shepherds that specifically address how to train your puppy to be a good dog. I also had some experience from training the puppy my family got when I was about 15 years old. Surprisingly I remembered quite a few of the commands and how they were taught. I thought between the books

Yesterday was the first day of Lent, which means it was the first day of mine and Tag's Lenten sacrifice. There are about a billion things I could do to make myself a better person, but Tag is almost perfect so it was hard to find something we could do together. However, after a little discussion we decided that we wouldn't eat out for the next 40 days. Stop Eating Out to Save Money One of the best reasons to stop eating out is simply because it will save money. I have no idea exactly how much money you can save by saving money, but I do know it's pretty substantial. A meal at a fast food

Ever since I left college and started working full time, I've wanted to get Invisalign. I want straighter teeth, but I don't want to have ugly braces on my mouth. Invisalign is really my only option. There's one big problem with Invisalign that has made me not get it for the last three and a half years. It's EXPENSIVE! According to the Invisalign website, cost of treatment ranges from $3,500 to $8,000, with an average of just about $5,000. I want straighter teeth, but not that badly. I actually had two free consultations hoping to get a price I could afford, and both times I was to

My fiancee and I close on our new house in a little over a week and we had one big problem to solve this weekend: the house doesn't have a refrigerator. The current owners are taking the fridge to their new house so we needed to get some appliances and we needed to get them cheap. We also wanted to make sure to get something nice because we know this won't be our "forever" house. We expect to live her for about 5 years or so and then hope to sell for a nice profit. Everyone knows an updated kitchen (including updated appliances) is the key to raising the value of your home and selling it

Tag and I are currently living in a one-bedroom apartment. That means we have one bedroom, one bathroom, and one living space with a desk in the corner (my "office"). As you can imagine, even the happiest couple on the planet can get into trouble when living in such close quarters. For instance, I've been in a particularly cranky mood this evening because of some frustrating technical issues with my website, and Tag really doesn't have anywhere to go to get away from me. We would be so much happier if we had an office where I could go to work and blog while Tag could have the rest of the

Lately Tag and I have been hooked on watching Property Brothers on HGTV. The show is about two brothers, a realtor and a general contractor, who team up to find people fixer-uppers and then help them buy and fix the house all at once. If you are even thinking about buying a home at any time in the future and don't have a boatload of money then this is must see TV as far as I'm concerned. The great thing about this show is that it shows how you can get aspects of your dream home at a fraction of the cost of what a dream home might cost you. Plus doing a custom renovation means you get EXA

Tonight I'm going to see The Amazing Spider-Man, and not just at any theater. It's called a Cinema Suites theater where I get assigned seats, a leather recliner, and they serve me dinner. It's freaking awesome. Sure the tickets were $18.50, which would be outrageous if it weren't for two things. First, I have an assigned seat right in the middle of the theater. In a regular theater I'd have to show up 30-45 minutes early and stand in line to get a good seat during opening weekend. Now I can show up 5 minutes before the show starts and still get the best seat in the house. Time is mone