Posts by Dan Kessler
Free Professional Advice For First-Time Homebuyers
Somebody Will Give You Straight Advice About Buying a House, for Free, and Isn’t Selling You Anything Every generation is supposed to hand the next one an easier time of it. That has been the arrangement for a long while, and it mostly held. It isn’t holding now. My kids’ generation is delaying the big…
Read MoreFree Help For People Struggling With Gambling
The Phone Number on the Counter There is a phone number posted at the register where you buy scratch tickets. State law requires it to be there. People rarely see it. Here is what is behind it, because it is more than most people expect, and because gambling is the rare money problem where Minnesota…
Read MoreMinnesota’s Free Quit Tobacco Program
You Already Paid for Quit Partner MN I was paying for gas in Chaska a couple weeks ago and looking at the wall behind the register while the guy in front of me bought a pack of cigarettes. I wasn’t doing math at the time. I did it later. On January 1, Minnesota’s cigarette taxes…
Read More$35 Emergency Insulin From MN Program
There’s a Law That Gets You Insulin for $35. Almost Nobody Knows About It. In 2017 a 26-year-old man named Alec Smith aged off his mother’s health insurance. He had Type 1 diabetes. The insulin and supplies he needed ran about $1,300 a month, which he did not have, so he started stretching what he…
Read MoreGas Is Over $4 Again In Carver County
9 Things That Actually Help Carver County residents are watching the dollars rack up instead of the gallons when they fill up their tank these days. They used to just look at gallons. The Minnesota average that day was right around four dollars. A month before that it was $3.62. A year ago it was…
Read MoreThe Child Care Squeeze
Here is something you can do at your own kitchen table tonight. It takes about ten minutes and a bank statement. Add up what your house actually costs you in a month. Not just the mortgage payment. All of it: principal, interest, property taxes, homeowner’s insurance, the utilities. In Carver County, the middle of that…
Read MorePublic School Parent
One of the reasons Michelle and I love raising our family in Carver County is pretty simple: Our public schools are excellent. Our children have grown up in Eastern Carver County Schools, and over the years I have had the opportunity to see what a strong public school system means; not just for individual students,…
Read MoreI Played In The World Series Of Poker
Here’s What I Learned About the House In 2006 I played in the World Series of Poker. I lasted about six hours. I was chip leader at my table for a while, which felt tremendous, and then I misplayed one hand so badly that I cut my own legs out from under me and…
Read MoreCurling In Chaska
There’s a stretch of about four seconds in curling between letting go of the rock and finding out what you’ve done. You’re still sliding. Your sweepers are looking at you, waiting to be told something useful. And somewhere in that four seconds you know, before anybody else on the ice does, whether you threw it…
Read MoreFrom Farm To Table
Farmers are getting squeezed, and it’s coming for all of us. Because of the war of choice in Iran, global oil prices have surged, driving diesel costs sharply higher. For farmers, diesel isn’t optional. It runs tractors, combines, irrigation systems, and the trucks that move crops. When diesel spikes, their costs explode overnight. And farmers…
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