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Posted
Apr 13 2009, 11:07 AM
by
Joan Melcher
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Wow. Free bowling for kids. All summer long. Two games a day. Could this be one of those too-good-to-be-true deals?
We checked into Kids Bowl Free and found the offer to be almost as good as it sounds, although there likely is money involved.
Many parents will either need to accompany their young children or want to bowl with their kids. But even then, if you have a penchant for rolling a heavy orb down a wood surface at 10 objects shaped like old milk bottles, you can get a family pass for $23.95 that allows two free games per person a day for up to four adult family members.
So, the whole family can bowl throughout the summer for a total of $23.95.
The real catch: You have to live in a town or area with one of the roughly 300 participating bowling centers. But there’s even wiggle room there.
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Posted
Jan 22 2008, 08:55 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from David Wood at partner blog ConsumerAffairs.com. There is one thing about being a teen that every generation experiences. A teen must have a place to hang out, a place to meet and socialize with friends. For some of us it might have been the malt shop, for others the mall. For today's teen, it's the Internet, especially MySpace, Facebook and other networking sites. These sites generally offer an excellent way for teens to keep up with their friends while making new friends along with the way. MySpace has grown to be the behemoth of the social-networking Web sites, thanks in part to its openness that allows teens to be, well, open. But this openness has created a headache for parents, teachers and teens, while raising serious issues of privacy and safety. Trying to restore its good name -- and to relieve mounting legal pressure from 49 states and the District of Columbia -- MySpace recently agreed to implement new measures to protect young users from sexual predators. Earlier MySpace had deleted the profiles of about 29,000 known sex offenders and predators. But deleting known predators doesn't solve the problem of young people who inadvertently give away too much information about themselves, or who, like 13-year-old Megan Meier, fall victim to hoaxes or harassment.
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Posted
Sep 11 2009, 07:13 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner blog The Dough Roller.
I can still remember my first ATM card. I was a teenager in high school when ATM and debit cards first arrived on the scene. I had a passbook savings account with our local bank, and they issued a debit card that I could use to make deposits and withdrawals to and from my account.
Taking money out of my account when the bank was closed was nothing short of amazing. But my ATM card of the 1980s was a lot different from debit and prepaid cards for teens today.
The most important difference was that it was not part of the Visa or MasterCard debit network. When ATM cards first came out, they could be used only at a bank automatic teller machine. I couldn't use the card at a store. And of course there was no Internet, so we couldn't check our account online, either. On top of that, the debit card didn't work with all ATM machines. You had to make sure that the ATM was on the same network as your bank, or the card wouldn't work.
With the advent of the Internet and the Visa and MasterCard debit networks, a whole new generation of financial products was born. And recently, companies have begun using those tools to market debit and prepaid cards and other financial products to teens.
Let's look at a few of those new financial products (some recently reviewed by Smart Money), and then I'd like to hear your view on these products.
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Posted
Mar 26 2009, 01:44 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Hey, kids: Did you know that cash is no longer cool?
That's what Discover would have them believe as it markets the new Discover Current card to teenagers. In our way of thinking, this is almost like those cigarette ads the tobacco companies said weren't aimed at creating the next generation of smokers.
Jason at Frugal Dad is not amused either. In a recent post, he said: "Thanks to years of Visa and MasterCard (and Discover) pushing their products down to our youth, and our youth watching their parents use and abuse the same products, kids know exactly what to do with plastic these days -- swipe it!"
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Posted
Jan 11 2008, 02:23 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
An Iowa mother billed herself as the "meanest mom on the planet," but some bloggers disagree. "Kudos to Jane Hambleton, who sold her 19-year-old son's car after she found alcohol under the front seat," writes Chief Family Officer. Adrienne at Baby Toolkit said her husband and fellow blogger, Jim, was almost killed in a crash with a drunken driver. "I'm really proud of Jane Hambleton for going public with this important lesson for parents and young drivers," she writes.
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Posted
Sep 28 2009, 04:42 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
The first car owned by Paul Van Lierop, the FiscalGeek, was a 1977 AMC Gremlin, presented to him for his 16th birthday. The year was 1989. If cars are a personal statement, it was a disaster.
"'Wayne's World' had not come out," Paul wrote. "AMC Gremlins, Pacers or Hornets were definitely not cool. I was actually laughed at by scores of kids the day I drove it into the parking lot of our high school."
Why would he now insist that his own kids' first cars will be equally used and unhip? He listed seven good reasons in a post called "Why my kids will drive a piece of crap." It's a fun read and also prompted many readers to reminisce about their first vehicles.
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Posted
Oct 31 2008, 08:42 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Like blogger Neimanmarxist, we were amazed at a recent statistic in The New York Times: Annual discretionary spending by teens has fallen to $2,600, a recent survey shows. That's 27% below the all-time high of $3,560 reported in the spring of 2006. "Really?" the 20-something blogger wrote in a post at The Reductionist. "Teenagers get that much money? I didn't."
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Posted
Oct 20 2008, 04:01 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Imagine this scenario: You've just written a killer e-mail at work that you think is going to earn you a bonus or promotion. But, as Jay says in a post at Dumb Little Man, "Everything is great except that your gold star memo has dangling modifiers, double negatives and run-on sentences colliding with each other." Without a doubt, good communication skills are essential to finding a job or better employment. Are yours holding you back? Do you know what a dangling modifier is?
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Posted
Feb 05 2009, 08:11 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from Tisha Tolar at partner blog Wise Bread.
The economy is hurting all of us -- especially families trying to raise and educate their kids. Unfortunately, things have become so tight that there is often little left to do but complain. Even worse, a lot of struggling parents still cater to offspring who are now of an age that they should no longer expect their parents to buy everything for them and instead take an interest in earning their own money.
Who doesn't have a grandpa who can regale you with tales of his early earnings of a few pennies an hour that went to support his entire family? Well, these days, most kids who are working are doing it only to feed their shoe, clothing, video game or dating habits. How many actually contribute to the welfare of the family?
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Posted
Aug 14 2008, 09:20 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from Trent Hamm at partner blog The Simple Dollar. There are a lot of ways to choose a career. Most of them are bad. Someone tells you, "Hey, you know, you should be a ...." Bad. You started a job and just kind of stuck around because nothing better came along. Bad. You pick out a college major because it seems interesting at first glance, without really knowing the kind of work it entails. Bad.
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