I always seem to overrun when doing errands and hence end up really hungry in town. Aside from taking a packed lunch, what is the best way to eat something for cheap? Our town has supermarkets as well as Subway, McDonalds and the chippie (I’m in England) but getting bread & cheese or meat plus juice works out almost as expensive as just going to Subway and spending £6!

I am reluctant to buy just crisps or a chocolate bar for about 50p because they won’t be filling for more than 20 minutes, if that, and have no nutrition at all. Any suggestions?

Last February, the interior door handle on the driver’s side of my car broke in a way that meant you could not open the car door from the inside. I figured out pretty quickly that I could open the door from the outside if I rolled down the window and used the exterior handle. So I didn’t do anything about it, figuring that since it wasn’t an emergency that impaired the operation the car, it wasn’t worth putting it on my credit card and since my emergency fund was drained at that time, I didn’t have the cash to fix it.

Fast forward to where I’ve been opening my window to get out of the car for pretty much 11 months. This is generally not a big deal, since I only drive the car maybe twice a week (I live close enough to work to walk). Except, sometime over the summer my window went off its track and now doesn’t close properly. And then we got hit with a big snowstorm/extremely cold weather, which meant I had to drive, since I’m medically restricted from any outside activity if it’s under freezing. Well, of course the windows and doors froze shut on the car, so getting out of the car was becoming a quickly insurmountable challenge (I’m not that flexible and it’s a really little car). So I threw my hands up and took it to the mechanic. I’m still waiting to hear how much it’s going to be (I should know later today). My question is, at what point did I cross the line between frugality and well, idiocy? Or is there a line to cross? I thought it was a good idea to just put up with the inconvenience, but now I’m wondering if I should have got it fixed sooner (like, maybe before the window got messed up, although I don’t know that the two are related). Sometimes this frugal stuff is hard!

What happened to your Monthly Reviews?

How can you handle the switch from a negative net worth (or net debt as you say) to a positive net worth???

It’s not a magic trick – the idea is just that if you make half a payment every two weeks (instead of one full payment a month), that’s 26 half-payments in a year, or 13 full payments instead of 12. And even just paying that little bit extra is enough to shorten the term from 30 years to 22. That’s because in the early years of your mortgage, the vast majority of your payment goes toward interest. But the extra payment goes entirely toward the principal, so you’re drastically increasing the rate at which you’re paying down the principal.

You can probably do pretty much the same thing with the mortgage you already have: In the months when you have three paychecks instead of two, make an extra half-payment on your mortgage. That’s it. 30-year term reduced to 22, and no refinancing required. (But first you should talk to your mortgage provider and ask what the rules are for making extra payments against the principal. Sometimes, I think, they require you to make an extra full payment or it doesn’t count.)

(we use it mostly for Dominion. Just like Noah commented above, it’s a fantastic game. It is a lot easier to play on BSW, though, cause you don’t have to deal with shuffling)

On my site I have an article about the 7 Best Mutual Funds for 2009 at: http://www.investorpitstop.com/page0/files/7-best-mutual-funds-for-2009

I hope that helps!

Yikes! Parents actually do that? Really, really?

Trent, a bit disappointed with your answer here. Depending on their age, the kids may have to seriously step in and do some “tough love.” Especially if the parents are close to or are already in retirement.

Because the likely scenario is that their kids will end up having to fund those parents’ lifestyles, which is way different than contributing to the care of our elders.

We’ve been through this in our family with our late mother and it was a nightmare for all of us, since we were not (as many families are not) in the position of paying for her vast debits (that is excluding huge medical and related fees). We put ourselves and our family in jeopardy to ensure that she had things and it caused a lot of other problems and basically compromised what was already a difficult relationship.

Parents who expect their children to just sweep up their financial messes, which happens all too often, are not acting like responsible people. And just because someone is your parent doesn’t mean you owe them your own financial stability and that of your family.

This is a huge issue today that is rarely talked about. Parents of all ages and incomes face problems like huge medical debt, loss of jobs with no replacements and sights…things that can’t be controlled. But many more create their own messes with excessive spending and gambling. Gambling…as in spending hundreds of dollars a month on lottery tickets, for example, or lots of bingo on very limited income…is a huge, undiscussed problem.

Even telling parents that you don’t have the resources to pay for them should they need huge monetary support isn’t enough to scare people who have money problems into getting help. They are very good at conning money out of family and friends, as we’ve seen first hand. Money that is NOT spent on food or other genuine needs.

And the best way to help people with these kinds of problems is not to just pay their bills, if you even can. (It’s the reverse of what some families have where the parents basically subsidize adult children.)

I’ve seen friends who were fiscally prudent, frugal and careful end up in dire straits because they had to basically compensate financially for the mistakes of their parents. (And if you look closely, you’ll see that it’s rarely a family with a good, close relationship where this happens. It’s all too often parents who put their kids through hell psychologically and financially while growing up who continue this into the future.)

Wanting to help our elders as best we can is NOT the same thing as being responsible for folks who have deliberately (and I’m not talking about people who have lost in the stock market) been irresponsible with their money and who have often told others: Oh, let the kids take care of it.

And we won’t even get into the expectations that some parents have that they should be able to just get into debt and assume that their wealthy and/or financially successful kids should just pay for it… BECAUSE. That’s a whole other issue.