Clever Dude founded CleverDude.com in June 2006 while working as a technical analyst in the Washington, D.C. area. A Penn State graduate, he built the site as a side project alongside a white-collar career that included earning a master’s degree and multiple promotions.
In five years he wrote nearly 1,300 articles on personal finance and life lessons drawn from his own experience. The blog grew from a hobby into a recognized early voice in the personal-finance community and generated meaningful revenue. He sold the site in 2010, continued as a guest contributor through 2015, and returned in 2023 after further career advances, paying off his home, and extensive travel.
Every car is slightly (or significantly) different in the engine compartment, but most cars follow general rules regarding how to change their oil. In this article, I'll describe my own methods for changing oil, which I've done for the last 5 … [Read more...] about How To Change Your Car’s Engine Oil
Family or Marriage • Finances & Money • Home
A few weeks ago, when I learned our house and truck have devalued quite a bit, a personal friend of mine who calls himself "Realist" here a guy called "JiggyPete" who commented as "Realist" (NOT my personal friend "realist" who refuses to punctuate … [Read more...] about Riches do not equal Prosperity
Family or Marriage • Finances & Money
Last week, I announced we were selling our 1997 Pontiac Grand Am to a relative. Well on Friday evening, we battled traffic for 4.5 hours to get to Pennsylvania (normally takes under 3.5 hours) in 2 vehicles to get to Stacie's parent's house. The … [Read more...] about Getting a car without earning it
J. Money (formerly J. Savings) proved this week that there's still a market, however small, for SUVs. He sold his Toyota Highlander for a loss after having it up for sale for weeks. The interesting part was the buyer paid $19,000 in cold, hard cash! … [Read more...] about Still a market for SUVs
No, I didn't repulse 1000 readers. Google isn't reporting Google Reader subscriber numbers this morning for at least CleverDude.com and BuildingNutrition.com. That's over half of my readers for both sites. I don't think all sites are affected … [Read more...] about Google not reporting subscriber numbers today
Some of you may notice that I had an article post today (Managing Work, Life and School for Graduate Students), and now it's not here. Well I meant to future-date it to post tomorrow morning at 5am EST, but didn't change the date. So if you see it … [Read more...] about Premature e-Post-ulation
Family or Marriage • Finances & Money
So we have 3 cars for two people right now. Do you think we're selling the 2005 MINI Cooper? What, are you kidding? My wife would kill me! Do you think we're selling the 2006 Honda Ridgeline? As much sense as it makes to dump this truck (get … [Read more...] about We’re selling a car! Guess which one
While scanning through my incoming links, I noticed a number of you are coming from USNews.com's recent article "9 Extreme Ways to Save". Feel free to stick around, browse through my articles and even consider subscribing to my RSS feed or email … [Read more...] about Welcome US News Readers!
