Best Buy has announced an electronics recycling program in which you can get a Best Buy gift card based on the value of your old products.

Brian J. O’Connor, personal finance columnist at the Detroit News, is working on a series called The Grand Experiment. He’s aiming to cut $1,000 a month out of his household budget.
This week’s episode features the utility bills, and he picked up on a tip I hadn’t thought of: Find out whether a cheaper wireless plan [...]

Wal-Mart has an electronics trade-in program with free shipping.
You go to the trade-in page on the Wal-Mart site, look up your unwanted (unloved, unused, sniff!) digital camera, cell phone, whatever, answer a few questions and you’ll get a quote.
You’ll get money if your stuff still has “market value.” The trade-in money you get back is [...]

We converted most of our light fixtures to the new CFL light bulbs about a year and a half ago.
The lights that we left on the old-fashioned technology were the applications where the standard CFL bulb just wasn’t going to be the right product: such as ceiling fans, stove fan and bathroom fixtures.
This summer, several [...]

From time to time, I’ll get questions from readers of The Monroe Evening News who like the Monroe on a Budget blog and wonder why I don’t have a regular column in the newspaper.
We’ve talked about the idea, although I admit it hasn’t gone very far.
The main reason is that a lot of the information [...]

When you walk into the store to buy school supplies for the year, you will find a huge array of items aimed at preschool through college years.
This includes a lot of stuff you really don’t need.
If you want to save money during back-to-school shopping time, do not buy the following school supplies unless they are [...]

A new computer is a very popular  – and practical – gift for a student who is heading off to college. That’s why you’ll find lots of computer specials this time of years: extra goodies with this or that computer, clearance pricing that this or that model …
But!
If you are purchasing a computer for a [...]

Are you hearing more of this question these days: “What about the people who don’t have computers?
That conversation has ramped up quite a bit with recent headlines that many newspapers these days are shutting down, publishing less frequently or converting to on-line editions in order to keep operating financially. Several Michigan papers are making that [...]

This notice is for my readers in Monroe County, Mich.:
My co-worker Charles Slat has this post at Consumer Alert! Is your favorite TV channel missing?

I noticed a couple of headlines today about digital conversion and what’s going on in Michigan.
Associated Press story at MLive: Hundreds of TV stations to end analog on Feb. 17.
Associated Press story at Detroit Free Press (slightly different angle here): 4 TV stations in Michigan among hundreds to end analog next week.