Frugality Forever

Whoopee, people are finally saving again and they may - just may - keep saving even when the recession ends. Frugality may become the new fad, in particular among people who haven’t been hit hard by the recession, report Jeannine Aversa and Bernard Condon.

In an Associated Press survey, 44 leading economists were asked whether the recession created a “new frugality” and if that mindset will continue after the recession. A majority said saving is here to stay. At the height of the savings boom last year, people saved 6.4 percent of their disposable income compared with less than 1 percent before the recession hit.

“Consumers will not run up multiple credit cards to their limits, and when buying a house the objective will not be to get the maximum square footage for which they can afford the payment,” said Sean Snaith, an economics professor at the University of Central Florida. “A higher savings rate will be in place for several years.”

3-D Dollars

I enjoyed watching the movie “How To Train Your Dragon.” My kids liked the movie too. And we didn’t see it in 3-D. Nope, we saved the money and put it toward popcorn. (Yes, people as frugal as I am I do splurge on the movie popcorn, but I bring baggies so we take advantage of the free refills for the super tub.)

From HD to Blu-Ray, there’s a constant evolution of new technology that is supposed to provide a more lively and personal cinematic experience. But is that experience really worth the extra dollars?

Roger Ebert, a film critic for the Chicago Sun Times, doesn’t think so. In a Newsweek column, Why I Hate 3-D (And You Should Too), Ebert says, “It adds nothing essential to the moviegoing experience.”

I especially agree because of the added cost seeing movies in 3D. Ebert explains that the 3D craze is “driven largely to sell expensive projection equipment and add a $5 to $7.50 surcharge on already expensive movie tickets,” Ebert writes.

Online shopping fee

A new bill is looking to lay claim to the millions of dollars in online sales taxes, reports Ylan Q. Mui in Cash-strapped states go online, hoping to tax sales.

How to Save With Cutting-Edge Tech

Believe it or not, new gadgets can actually slash your spending over time

David LaGesse

An economy in the dumps has taught many consumers to live without the extras. And that would seem to include the latest in gadgets: New HDTVs, MP3 players, and game consoles can cost a bundle. But some of the best in fresh tech not only comes cheap; it can even save cash over time. Here’s how savvy buyers can cut their budget and still brag that they’re on the cutting edge:

TRIM THE CABLE.

One of the best ways to save on tech is to trim your monthly cable subscription, which often exceeds $100. Simply cutting out extra movie channels can save consumers as much as $600 a year. A cheaper alternative is to purchase a Netflixsubscription for $9 a month and get as many DVDs as you can watch, one at a time. There’s typically a two-day delay between shipping a disk back and receiving another.

Netflix also offers instant Web streaming of more than 17,000 TV shows and movies. Watching those streams on the living room TV is easy with a Roku box, which starts at $80. Roku owners can also pay a few dollars to stream a movie from an even larger selection at Amazon, and Roku recently added about a dozen “channels” that offer video from other Internet sites.

A variety of Blu-ray players, flat-panel TVs, and other boxes such as Apple TV also can stream Web video to the living room, “but Roku is the simplest out there right now,” says Chicago resident C. J. Chilvers. “It also offers the most diversity.”

Cut the cable completely.

Chilvers lives in a condo that doesn’t have good over-the-air reception. Otherwise, he says, he would have taken the next step of cutting out cable altogether. Digital broadcasts now offer crystal-clear video and audio with an old-fashioned antenna, including what videophiles claim is an HDTV signal that’s sharper than cable or satellite. Cutting the digital tier, or basic cable, altogether can mean the loss of live news and sports that aren’t yet available online. But it can also save consumers another $600 a year.

Pull Yourself Up By Your Bootstraps!

Benjamin Franklin once said, “He who spends less than he earns truly has the philosopher’s stone.”

Now, that might sound like common sense to you, and it is. You’d be surprised, though at how many people actually live way beyond their means. If you don’t believe me, how do you think we got into this economic nightmare in the first place?

This past election year we heard chants about change (in mind set, way of life, belief)? I can’t say. But one idiom stuck with me during one of the speech by a candidate, “Pull Ourselves up by the bootstraps” I am omitting “the dusting” part of it. Anyways what is this?

Nobody really knows the origin of the idiom, “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” It doesn’t really matter where it came from or who said it first. The point is in the meaning. To pull yourself up by your bootstraps is to improve your own situation without any help from anyone else.

 I’m guessing that the idea behind it is that if you get yourself into a mess, you can get yourself out. Well, at least that’s how I’m interpreting it.

So you got yourself into a mess. So, you want to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, but you don’t wear boots with straps, could care less what the idiom means, and just want someone, somewhere to give you the tiniest bit of hint on what to do to get yourself out.

 Your Faithful Frugal Friend is here to help. Read on for some strategies you can use to help improve your financial situation in this week’s top picks:

The best sites for saving money

Bargaineering. Jim Wang’s blog offers plenty of good personal-finance content along with reviews of banks, credit card offers, books and products.

Consumerism Commentary. Track blogger Flexo’s net worth as he and partner Smithee write about saving money on everything from banking to travel.

The Dollar Stretcher. If this site has had a major redesign since its launch in 1996, I missed it. But you don’t need fancy graphics when you have a huge library of articles and tips about saving money. Even black-belt frugality experts will find new information here.

Are You Due For A Financial Tuneup?: Here is How To Do Your Own!

Last year, Ron Lieber of the New York Times devoted one entire weekday to tackling activities on his   financial checklist, like signing up for a higher-yield savings account and upgrading a cash-back credit  card. But I am advocating a set in stone one day a week solely dedicated to one financial matters, The Money Day!!

This day, preferably one outside your busy routine would serve to catch up on personal finances, maintenance, research, education, and more.  Mr. Lieber just introduced a new concept called Your Money: A Financial Tuneup, it contains a number of articles with practical advice for putting (and keeping) your financial life in order. (See all the articles here).

In “Take a Few Hours and Unlock Some Cash,” Mr. Lieber explains the basic idea of taking a financial health day, shares what he accomplished during his own financial tuneup this year and offers advice for how you might go about planning your own.

To help with the planning, they’ve created an interactive checklist, “31 Steps to a Financial Tuneup,” with a number of activities to consider. They range from saving another percentage point of your pay and automating your savings to finding a better bank.

You can customize the list based on your own needs and print it out as a guide for your own financial tuneup. The tool also includes video tips as well as a calculator showing how saving one more percentage point can impact your savings.

Other articles in the section cover topics including how to self-diagnose your financial health, why it’s important to review legal documents about your estate, new high-tech ways to track your spending to the penny, how a line-by-line scrutiny of your last tax return can help you formulate a better personal finance strategy and why you might want to switch banks.

For those who have lost jobs, homes, and saw their dreams turn into nightmares will never look at all things financial the same way again. And for the rest of us, the recession, Wall Street greed and vanishing investment portfolios have but awaken/created financial wizards.

So there is not better time than now to create a Money Day as boring as it sounds. The peace of mind, the knowledge and control of one personal financial matters are crucial to one overall well-being. Would’t you agree?

Marriage and money: What’s working for you?

Couples argue more about money than about sex, but not as much as they fight about the kids or taking out the garbage. 84% of our respondents note that money causes tension in their marriages, and 13% say they fight about money several times a month. The leading cause of dissension is disagreement about financial priorities.

Husbands and wives divvy up money-related tasks along very traditional lines. Men still tend to do most of the big-picture, long-term planning while women manage the household’s day-to-day finances. The gender divide seems to conform to some of our hardest-to-shake stereotypes. Man hunt food; woman make cave pretty.

In the poll’s most eye-opening findings, men and women had dramatically different ideas about who does what with the family money, and what their partners care about. Husbands were especially clueless, tending to underestimate how much women care about almost every financial issue, from saving for retirement to paying off debt. A hundred years after Freud, and men still don’t know what women want.

The gap between the financial issues that people care about most and what their spouses think they hold important may not be the Grand Canyon. But some couples will need an awfully big bridge to get across it. Women come much closer in gauging what matters to men. If anything, they tend to give guys too much credit, believing their husbands care more about paying off debt and saving for big purchases than men actually do.

PHOTOS: KATHERINE LEDNER