• 4 Reasons why Carpooling is a Great Financial Tool4 Reasons why Carpooling is a Great Financial Tool

    4 Reasons Why Carpooling is a Great (and Underused) Financial Tool

      Carpooling.  Very popular in Europe, much like crappy burgers and fast trains.  In the US? Not so much, which is surprising given that Americans drive more than anyone else in the world.  Carpooling constitutes only 10% of all US commutes.  Driving is so ingrained in American culture that people will go into a mall and drive to a parking lot for one store, and then drive to another parking lot just a few steps away, for another store.  And they will do this without any consideration because it’s part of their DNA.  Just as it is for certain Europeans to not use deodorant and then pack into overcrowded buses…

  • 3 Tips on How to Eat Well and Stay Financially Independent

    We’ve all been there.  Friday night dinner.  Do we stay home and eat the leftover rice and chicken, or do we hop to the nearest Oliver Garden and partake in their unlimited soup and salad menu (that’s still a thing, right?), or do we try that new recipe from Martha Stewart (also still a thing, right?) which involves 20 ingredients and 15 different spices? Food is sustenance and a commodity, but it’s also an expense, and a very complicated one at that.  Richard Branson once said that when he became a billionaire, he calculated how many times he could afford to go out for breakfast, lunch and dinner, for every day until…

  • Sights and Sounds of Upstate New York

    Let’s face it.  When you hear the name New York, you immediately think of New York City and the glittering lights over Manhattan.  You imagine the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, the rumble of the subway, the best food in the world, and the Hudson River.  All of those landmarks are certainly famous, and well worth visiting, but there is another part of New York state that doesn’t get much attention from tourists. Sights and Sounds of Upstate New York So what is there to see? Plenty, as it turns out.  Upstate New York is the anti-New York City, because it’s mostly all rural land.  All that clean, tasty…

  • Kilkenny Castle, Ireland

    Our First Impressions of Ireland

    Before we set foot into Dublin on March 19 of 2017, I knew that Ireland had the following qualities: rich literary history (James Joyce, Samuel Beckett), rich alcoholic history (Guinness, Jameson), rich historical…history (Guinness Factory; joking, but even the $25 t-shirts can’t detract from the cool, dark finish of that black brew) and rich linguistic history (as difficult as Gaelic is, I think it’s still more difficult to understand the Scots!).  I wondered about these myths as we stepped off the airport express bus in the heart of Dublin: College Green. Our First Impressions of Ireland: Dublin The name Dublin comes from the words Dubh (black) Linn (pool), which together…