Archive for 'Entertainment' Category

By Tracy Clark

So, you're planning your wedding and are dazzled by the extravagant weddings of celebrities like Kim Kardashian but you don't have $10M dollars laying around in your checking account? The bubbly alone for Ashley Judd's big day cost as much as the average American wedding!

In an era when the rich and famous drop $80,500 on party favors (because yes, every guest at Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban's wedding deserved a $350 Tiffany clock, daaahling) it's easy to dream big. No worries though, you can make your wedding dreams come true without going broke.

Save on the wedding, plan for the future

Planning smart for a wedding is no different than looking for the best online savings account rates, the best money market accounts, or cd rates. If you do your homework, shop and compare, you will find that there are fantastic deals to be had.

Ask yourselves what you could do with the money by not overspending on your wedding. Your wedding is one day, one goal, in a lifetime of goals together. Your future may include buying a home, investments, children, and retirement.

Start your life together knowing that you are working toward those goals and not against them. You can have an elegant, stylish, and beautiful wedding without paying for that day for years to come. If you'd rather not mortgage your future on your wedding, check out the following tips for saving money on your big day.

By Jim Sloan

Editor's Note: Thank you for your interest, this offer expired and is no longer available.

For those just out of college or starting fresh, a break in the form of traveling to another state or country is usually near the top of wish lists. Finding ways to fund traveling however, can be a significant barrier to actually realizing this. If you're good with credit cards, though, a new promotion from Capitol One may be able to help you with your travel ticket.

Traveling in reach?

Capital One has rolled out a new Venture Rewards credit card promotion with a "Match My Miles" promotion that will match the number of miles you have accumulated on another airline credit card up to 100,000 miles.

You earn the additional 100,000 miles--the equivalent of $1,000--if you put at least $1,000 on the card in the first three months.

The offer is good for new Venture and Venture for Business primary account holders. Current Capital One cardholders who want to upgrade to the Venture Rewards card or swap their existing Capital One card will get the mile match if they get approved, said Sukhi Sahni, a senior communications manager with Capital One.

The company will continue the offer this until they've given away a billion miles or until May 13, 2011, whichever comes first--it's a first-come, first-served proposition.

Miles on top of miles: How does it work?

If you have airline miles on one of 13 airline credit cards currently on the market, Capital One will match

By MoneyBlueBook

As a big fan of the Citi Thank You rewards program offered by Citibank for its credit card customers, I thought I was pretty well honed on all of the user benefits and purchase rewards that Citi Card had to offer. However, there's a relatively less publicized reward program that current Citi credit card and Citi debit Mastercard members are entitled to that many are not aware of. The reward program is called Citi Private Pass. The Citi PrivatePass program itself is totally free to existing Citi Card customers to the extent that there are no extra monthly membership fees required to join. The only participation cost to you is when you actually decide to purchase reward tickets to desired events via the Citi Private Pass program. The tickets feature heavily discounted prices (or sometimes are even provided free courtesy of Citi Private Pass), but oftentimes you'll still have to pay a small portion out of pocket .

Unlike Citibank's well known and popular Citi ThankYou purchase incentive feature, which tends to focus on more tangible gift card and cash based rewards that you can accrue through daily card purchases, the Citi PrivatePass program is devoted almost exclusively to entertainment and experience based offers - providing its participants special access to free and cheap tickets to unique concerts, dining experiences, and popular sporting events. The Citi Private Pass program is not a separate card, but rather a rewards program already available to existing Citi Card customers.

By MoneyBlueBook

Cheapskate, Appropriately Frugal, or Brilliantly Simple? You Decide

Well we've finally reached the dog days of summer - the hottest stretch of heat sweltering days of July and August. For those of you who live in colder climates, bless your hearts - enjoy the mild temperatures while you can because colder weather will be upon you soon. But for everyone else who lives in a state or region that enjoys four seasons year round with hot and humid summers like I do, it's time for all of us to get outside and enjoy that nice sunshine warmth.

One of the best ways to get some mild exercise, and enjoy the great outdoors with the family at the same time is to visit an amusement theme park like Six Flags, Busch Gardens, or Disney World. Now you might be thinking to yourself - wait, visiting an amusement isn't exercise and it sure isn't the great outdoors. Where is the huffing and puffing, and where are the essential greenery that make up the great outdoors? I guess that's where you and I differ - I consider the great outdoors to be anywhere that's not cooped up inside an air conditioned house or apartment on a summer's day spent watching TV or playing Nintendo Wii. As long as you are out and about, walking around outside, enjoying the sun's natural Vitamin-D inducing rays, you are immersed in the great outdoors my friend.

In addition, all that walking around, waiting in line, and strolling from roller coaster ride to concession stand is

By MoneyBlueBook

When you think of Ed McMahon, you don't exactly associate or lump him with big time wasteful spenders like MC Hammer and some of the other well known celebrities of the past who rose to fame and fortune quickly but ultimately frittered away their money into bankruptcy on trivial pursuits. No, when you think of Ed McMahon, you think of the aging but charismatic late night show announcer, the TV personality, and the face and voice of the American Family Publishing sweepstakes team (not to be confused with the more popular Publisher's Clearing House sweepstakes) that arrives unannounced at the homes of winners to present them their grand prize. You certainly don't see or hear about him throwing his money away on fast cars, fast women, or holding lavish sleaze parties to great excess.

So I was quite surprised when I learned that someone like the now 80 plus year old Ed McMahon has now found himself in difficult financial straits and faced with the prospect of mortgage foreclosure on his multi million dollar home. This housing bubble and credit crisis seems to be quite merciless and universally brutal, even to those who simply lived their lives with the best intentions, but still succumbed to hard times. With little regard to feelings or reason, the mortgage credit crisis and the powerful forces of housing supply and demand have devastated many good families.

Ed McMahon and His Wife Pam Speak Out About Home Foreclosure and The Possibility Of Losing Their House

Ed McMahon recently appeared on

By MoneyBlueBook

These past few weeks have been tough on me. Not only did my trusty Honda Accord suddenly break down, but I've been experiencing major Internet service disruptions at home caused by the incompetence and admitted overselling activities of my current broadband service provider Comcast. For months now, I've been plagued by frequent Internet outages coupled with agonizingly slow download speeds reminiscent of my old 56k screech-and-hiss modem days. The breaks in service finally culminated into the complete stoppage and loss of my home Internet signal. Furthermore, the service disruption repair activities were hampered by a series of powerful thunderstorm waves that swept through my area this week, knocking out electricity, cable TV, and broadband Internet service for almost all seven days. While my car was washed and scrubbed sparkling clean by the rain and wind, lightening sparks managed to knock out the power in my neighborhood. Electricity was "quickly" reactivated in 1-2 days, but cable TV and my precious broadband Internet service wasn't repaired and fully restored until nearly a week thereafter.

For the last few days I've been a pretty sad fellow. Not only did I feel isolated and cut off from the real world without convenient home access to the Internet, I haven't been able to properly update my personal finance blog, nor have I been able to check my email messages, or tend to the operations of any of my online passive income businesses. On a normal weekday I usually receive close to 50 emails a day from a variety of personal