I just spent the last few days in Greensboro, North Carolina, where my business partner, Ken Canion, and I hosted a comedy show. While driving around preparing for the show, I was reminiscing about the days when G'boro was home in the mid to late 90s.

I must say the city has experienced some changes since I've been away. North Carolina A&T doesn't look like an extension of the hood anymore. The cafeteria looks like it serves edible food and the lights on the stadium was long overdue. A vibrant downtown scene? When I was there it was a ghost town after 7pm. And get this: middle class white families living on Martin Luther King? We used to speed through the area, never knowing who would roll up to the car.

Ken and I drove past this gas station where I used to fill up the ride when I lived in the area. Gas back then was maybe a dollar and a few pennies a gallon. During those rough days of college, I'd put in $2 worth of gas, and I'd be straight for the day. Today, $2 will get you someone clowning your optimism.

The cost of everything since those days has gone up. Movies were $5; today the popcorn alone is $5. My rent was $260 a person. You have to live out in the middle of nowhere to find those prices. Even the price of items in the dollar store isn't just a dollar anymore.

Most items, though, we take for granted. Inflation kind of just happens. Now that it's in our faces, it becomes harder to ignore the fact that inflation is real. Of course the rising cost of gas has more factors involved than just inflation, but the point that I'm making is that the days of .99 cent gas are history. Inflation is real and gas is teaching us how it works. Every year, prices go up, well, because someone says so.

So this brings us to a few simple questions. Do you receive yearly raises at work that offsets the affects of inflation? Do you cut back on spending to make up for the cost of inflation? Most importantly, for those who say that's why they put money away in savings accounts: does your savings earn interest equivalent to or higher than the rate of inflation? I believe last year inflation was 3.1%. Does your savings account give you 3.1% annual interest returns on your money? If not then you lost money. If you had $7,000 in the bank, it is now worth less because the price of everything just went up, like gas.

What I wish to stress is for everyone to learn money. Not so much how to count it, spend it and how to get it. As one of my other business partners, Maalik Aal-Anubia, always says, "Money is real, but it's a lie." Learn how money works, how money grows without doing anything to it, how to make your money work for you.

As I post new entries, I'll be offering tips & advice, different sources you can tap into to learn more on your own, books I recommend to you to read and if nothing else, I'm offering the encouragement that many of us may not receive enough of about doing better for yourself - not only with money issues, but in life.

Today is the day everyone across this country can receive one free credit report annually. Congress mandated this about two years ago, but didn't tell anyone how to get the free report. To complicate matters, reports have shown there are over 100 websites posted on the Internet claiming to be able to get you that credit report, but are not affiliated with the program or the credit bureaus. Some are charging small fees to process getting the free report.

In case you are looking to get your free credit report and just don't know where to go, the official website is AnnualCreditReport.com. From there you'll find mailing addresses, phone numbers (good luck getting a live person on the phone), government websites that can provide more insight and information as well as the websites to the credit bureaus.

The purpose of the program is to allow us a free look at our own credit (gee, thanks) to help curb identity theft and suspicious activity. Also you may find some outdated issues that never left your credit which may explain why when you're approved for a credit card you're not getting the best interest rates.

Some things you may want to do is count how many open accounts you have and figure the ratio of available credit to balance owed. The more open accounts the more you appear to be a liability to a company you are applying for credit or for a loan. And if you're using more than half (sometimes 40%) of the available credit, this can also knock your credit rating. Especially if you have seven credit cards and are using 65% to 85% of the available credit on all of them.

I've spoke to several people and they mentioned they know their credit is bad so they don't even want to look at it. That's like saying you have a lump in your genitals but you don't want to know what it is.

As I encourage everyone to get their free credit report, I caution you to know it may not be as easy as 1-2-3. The Washington Post printed an article today about the high number of complaints from credit score seekers. But with anything in life you have to be determined and persistent.

Digging around the Internet figuring out the next destination during my nomadic lifestyle, I was exploring the idea of heading out west. Though I don't like the idea of watching football games at 9am Sunday mornings, I thought it just might be cool to live out west.

Seattle has always intrigued me, probably because it's about as far away as I'm going to get from here without leaving the country or living in some small town with only one stoplight. But that was until Forbes printed an article about the most overpriced cities in the country. Naturally, I would think New York and Los Angeles, maybe Chicago, but definitely Washington, DC.

Surprise, surprise!

I guess coming from the south, I experienced a little sticker shock when I moved to the nation's capital. I left a three bedroom apartment for $750 a month and moved into a one bedroom for $1,000 a month. I thought the 10% charge on my ticket was gratuity whenever I ate out (it was tax) and damn were they proud of their meats and veggies at the little organic food markets. I was thinking if you don't have to buy all those hormones, pesticides and chemicals, the food should be cheaper, right?

Well, little did I know that DC didn't even crack the top 10 most overpriced cities. New York did place second, and LA squeezed in at number 10. But who would've thought that Seattle was the most overpriced city in the country? For two years straight now!

And if you think you can head south a little and chill in Portland, Oregon, it ranks at number three! Chi-town was fourth followed by San Jose in the middle. Then, where in the hell is Bergen-Passiac, New Jersey? All that money and they can't advertise? San Francisco followed at number seven and then another New Jersey city, Middlesex, entered the top 10. Denver finished ninth.