Girl Scouts Teach Girls to Get Real About Money

Filed under: Family Money, Personal Finance

Most of us understand intuitively that the Girl Scouts of America aren’t just about selling cookies. What you might not know is that the green-sashed entrepreneur who preys on your weakness for Thin Mints is also preparing to be your son’s boss.

A new curriculum of merit badges proposes to teach the GSA’s more than 3 million members everything from good credit to budgeting to the ins and outs of savings and investing. In all, there are 13 Girl Scout badges and awards related to financial literacy.

Can I please get an “amen”? As the father of a soon-to-be-9-year-old girl, I call this a welcome detour for those too often caught up in the Kardashian Age of glam slamming.

Starting Early

The new badges are part of a rebranding campaign designed around what girls want to learn. Money management ranks high on the list. Or as GSA spokeswoman Michelle Tompkins put it in a Credit.com interview: “Girls want to feel financially independent.”

Desire is a good start, but financial independence also takes work — a difficult truth that, thankfully, the badges don’t ignore. The “Financing My Future” badge requires girls to create a plan for paying for college, a task many parents still struggle with. The “Financing My Dreams” badge requires demonstrated skill in budgeting, while “Good Credit” requires an understanding of the various ways to borrow money and what goes into building a good credit score.

In each case, the GSA is asking girls to rise above their peers. According to the most recent survey of the Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy, American high school students scored just 48.3% on the organization’s test of basic money knowledge — the lowest score in the survey’s history.

In Good Company

The troubling data doesn’t end there. Only 16.8% of high school students and 19.2% of college students surveyed felt that stocks were likely to produce higher returns over an 18-year period than either savings bonds or checking and savings accounts, and that’s in spite of decades of research that show stocks outperform every other class of investment vehicle over the long haul.

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Got Hitched Too Fast Like Kim and Kris? Say ‘I Do’ to a DIY Divorce

Filed under: People, Family Money, Personal Finance

You wed on a whim, on a bender, or whatever it was that compelled you to commit to love, honor and cherish. Now you want it over. Sound familiar?

While we hate to bring up Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries’ union gone bad in a hurry, for the non-famous, there’s a way to end a marriage on the cheap. It’s relatively fast, and couples can part with their dignity intact.

Reverse your walk down the aisle with a do-it-yourself, uncontested, no-fault divorce. In many states you can simply download the forms, submit them for between $200 and $400, and wait two to six months for the court to grant the divorce.

“It’s certainly the quickest and cheapest way to get it,” explains Steven Goldfeder, a New York matrimonial lawyer at Blank Rome LLP, which handled the divorces of Donald Trump and Howard Stern.

Here’s the catch: An uncontested “pro se” (lawyerese for DIY) divorce is a good way to go only if you have neither children nor considerable assets to protect, Goldfeder says. Custody, alimony and property issues can get tricky without professionals involved.

“If both sides have very little money, it doesn’t pay to retain lawyers,” he explains. Goldfeder draws the DIY line at around $50,000 in the bank and home ownership.

But Ed Sherman, a California attorney who authored Make Any Divorce Better!, recommends avoiding lawyers at all costs. “Getting lawyers involved is a very good way to have high conflict,” he says. “The legal system is adversarial. Lawyers are trained to fight.”

As many of you know, splitting couples can fight without any training at all. Resist the urge. You and your short-term sweetie will have to collaborate on your divorce. You will have to agree that it’s the right thing to do, and that everybody moves on with what they had before the marriage. The law means what it says in stipulating “uncontested.”

We don’t know of many divorce-related arguments that end with “Gee, honey, you’re absolutely right” — but do your best. “It’s much less expensive if people are going to cooperate regardless of how the divorce is done,” says psychotherapist and divorce coach Micki McWade.

The moment either of you lawyers up, you can kiss your discount divorce goodbye. “Sometimes, the only way that you can reach someone is through the wallet,” McWade says. “People don’t want to spend more than they have to. But there are some who are just too angry and don’t care how much it costs. That often ends when someone starts writing retainer checks for a lawyer, when they realize it’s tens of thousand of dollars.”

Sometimes, the parties have to overcome the shame of making such a big mistake before they can reach an accord, the psychologist adds.

At least the blame doesn’t have to swatted back and forth like a tennis ball. Every state is now “no-fault,” meaning couples no longer have to cite specific problems such as infidelity or cruelty. For states that offer DIY, you wait the state-prescribed amount of time to file (usually a month to a year) and express that the marriage is irretrievably broken. Residency rules also apply.

One party will often play the role of petitioner, who will file the papers, and the other the respondent, who will be served with the papers. A joint Appearance, Consent & Waiver can assure the judge that both parties concur, cutting the chances of a court appearance, according to Help Abolish Legal Tyranny, a 20,000-member nonprofit devoted to legal reform. In short marriages with no kids or property involved, a hearing is often not required. The court merely signs off and you get the notice by mail.

Some state courts also offer DIY forms for annulment, which wipes the marriage from the record. In those cases, you have to prove your grievance. It’s usually fraud, such as a spouse confessing he or she never really wanted children and just said so to induce marriage. Sometimes it can be incapacity, such as “I had eight vodka gimlets on the Vegas Strip before we entered the chapel.” Some states, like New York, do not post annulment forms online, and direct visitors to consult with attorneys. Annulments can be more difficult, our experts say.

As long as you can be nice through the process, a DIY divorce will work for the impetuously hitched. It took Kardashian and Humphries a whole 72 days to figure out they weren’t right for each other. Following through on their breakup in Hollywood fashion will require an army of lawyers and a whole lot of reality-show money.

You, on the other hand, will get to live happily after with your finances and sanity intact, and no tabloid attention whatsoever.

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Can Credit Unions Make a Success of Bank Transfer Day?

Filed under: Banking, Family Money

After becoming increasingly frustrated with her bank’s poor service and expanding array of nickel-and-diming fees, 27-year-old Los Angeles gallery owner Kristen Christian went where many of her generation go when upset: Facebook. On Oct. 4, she created a Facebook event called “Bank Transfer Day,” which urged participants to move their money from banks to credit unions on Nov. 5, and sent out invitations to about 500 people.

The event itself bore the hallmarks of something conceived of on the fly rather than the result of careful planning. The designated date, it turned out, is a Saturday, when many banks are closed and have limited hours, and the call was changed from withdrawing money on that date to withdrawing money by the fifth. Additionally, despite Christian’s public claims that the event was independent of the Occupy movement, its location was listed as “Occupy Wall Street” for the first several days that reference was removed.

However, such minor details seemed irrelevant to the flood of people who began RSVP’ing and spreading invitations in the days after Christian first posted the page. Three days into its existence, almost 9,000 people had indicated their intention to attend, and as of Oct. 31, that number had ballooned to about 68,000. Obviously, the ideas behind Bank Transfer Day have struck a nerve, but why did it become so popular and in this particular form?

A confluence of trends

First, and most obvious, has been the spread of the Occupy movement throughout the country. While protesters in Liberty Plaza can march right over to the actual Wall Street to express their disapproval, supporters of the Occupy movement in the rest of the country don’t have such obviously symbolic targets.

Virtually everyone does, however, have a bank account, and moving one’s money from a “Wall Street” bank to a local, cooperatively owned credit union is a fairly simple step that sympathizers who live far from Lower Manhattan can take. As such, despite Christian’s attempts to put a bit of distance between the event and the growing Occupy movement, the networks that have formed since Occupy Wall Street began have been vital to spreading the Bank Transfer Day’s message.

Additionally, Bank Transfer Day is built upon a protest model that has been developing and evolving since the bailouts. Shortly after the Troubled Asset Relief Program was passed, there were a few scattered pro-credit-union protests of bailed-out banks, but the idea of politicizing the choice of financial institution picked up steam when The Huffington Post wrote about the “Move Your Money Project” in late 2009.

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Unemployed and Eager to Shop on Black Friday … for You

Filed under: Economy, Wal-Mart Stores, Target Corp, Retail, Best Buy, Family Money

Laurie Black, a 32-year-old preschool teacher from Auburn, Mass., finds herself out of a job this holiday season for the second year in a row. But she’s not going to let it stop her from shopping on Black Friday.

Along with a few other enterprising — and out-of-work — shoppers, Black is offering her services to those who don’t feel like hitting the stores and standing in lines on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. Black will score you the “doorbuster” deals that come only for those willing to dedicate hours of waiting in cold, New England parking lots, in exchange for just 15% of your total purchases — and she’ll take cash or even prepaid Walmart gift cards.

Though the recession has ostensibly passed, unemployment is still high at 9%. And for many of the 13.9 million Americans still out of work, shopping on Black Friday has become a luxury they can no longer afford. But a few of the jobless with an entrepreneurial streak, like Laurie Black, are refusing to be left with empty bags.

Last week, the single mother of two posted a Craigslist ad advertising her services. She has yet to receive any calls, but it’s still early. As the holiday gets closer, Black will post fliers around her town. Nursing homes should be a good bet, Black says, as elderly people desire good deals as much as anyone else, but might not be up for the Black Friday trip.

Black, who has shopped on Black Friday every year since her first son was born 15 years ago, tries to be optimistic about this year’s holiday. “I love shopping and love shopping for other people,” she writes in her ad. “Lets help each other shall we …”

She would also love to buy presents for her two sons and her disabled sister, whom she supports. But with no income and an eviction looming, the family’s shopping will have to be done in the discount aisle in January, if at all.

“It’s a tight Christmas,” Black says. But then again, Black Friday isn’t just about the money. “I’d go shopping not even for the deals. You meet the nicest people.”

Desperation Discounts

Retailers are counting on Black Friday this holiday season, investing in ad campaigns, seasonal hires, and ever-earlier store openings to get Americans shopping again. Target’s (TGT) 1,767 U.S. stores will increase their staffs by 67% and open at midnight for Black Friday this year. Walmart (WMT) has instituted a price-matching program: All shoppers who find an item they’ve purchased at Walmart advertised for less at another store will receive a gift-card reimbursement for the difference.

Still, retailers acknowledge that spending isn’t what it was before the recession. “Persistently high unemployment, an erratic stock market, modest income growth and rising consumer prices are all combining to impact spending this holiday season,” said National Retail Federation Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz.

Melissa Wolford, a 27-year-old student at Lincoln University from California, Mo., also plans to work as a Black Friday personal shopper to make up for lost income. Over the past eight months, business at her wedding-planning service has dried up.

“I went from having a steady stream [of customers] to nothing,” says Wolford, who is also an ordained minister. “We’re a small town in a rural area. There’s not a lot of opportunities.”

But even if people don’t have money to throw big weddings, they still go Black Friday shopping in nearby Jefferson City, says Wolford. “Whenever I’ve been really low on money, I’ve always tried to go,” she says. “So I thought — why not offer to do it for other people?”

For every person like Wolford who can’t afford to shop at all, she guesses there more who desperately need to get the best deals possible this season. “The economy is bad,” she says. “People want to be able to buy their family stuff and can’t afford regular prices. It’s the one time of the year you can shop for a big purchase.”

Wolford, like Black, has been doing Black Friday for years, starting when she was a little girl tagging alongside her mom. While she doesn’t mind missing some of Thanksgiving to shop, many families don’t have time to do both. This year, with stores like Target, Kohl’s (KSS) and Best Buy (BBY) opening at midnight, people who want the hottest deals will have to get in line as early as 9 p.m. Thursday, Wolford estimates.

Kristal Braley, who also plans to work as a Black Friday personal shopper, says she expects the personal shopping service idea to catch on. The holiday season already creates around 500,000 seasonal jobs each year, according to the National Retail Federation. Braley, a 23-year-old student at the University of Texas, came up with her personal shopper plan on Black Friday last year, when she was hired to hand out fliers at 4 a.m. at the San Marcos Outlet Mall in Austin, Texas.

“It was a madhouse. Everyone was stressed out. Kids were tired and being dragged around,” says Braley, who has a child herself. “I felt really bad for everybody and wished I could have helped. After seeing that, I thought, ‘There’s gotta be people out there who just don’t want to deal with this.’ “

Good Fun in Hard Times

So far, neither Braley, Wolford nor Black have received any calls from potential clients. Maybe it’s too early, they speculate. Other women advertising the service on classified boards claim to have done it for years. One “Personal Holiday Wrapper and Shopper” from Phoenix, Ariz., says she has “had great success the last two years.” She promises to line up at Target, Toys R Us, Kohl’s and Best Buy for a flat rate of $50, though reminds clients she can’t guarantee she will land specific items.

Even if Wolford could afford to pay someone to shop for her, she would never do it, she says. Black Friday may stress everyone else out, but she still thinks it’s fun. “I really, really like a sale,” Wolford explains. “[Black Friday] about getting stuff you couldn’t get the rest of the year even cheaper.”

For some, Black Friday is too important of a tradition to be missed, even if the money’s not there. Black remembers what it was like in better times.

“My brother will watch the boys for me. We’ll all go at 11 p.m. and sit until the store opens at 5 a.m. with our hot drinks, chairs, umbrellas. Everyone’s talking about what they’re going to get and who they’re going to make happy. It’s nice. It’s not all about me, me, me.”

This year, Black just hopes she gets a few calls in response to her ad so she can buy Christmas presents for her kids. But she’s not overly optimistic.

“It’s the same for everyone around me,” she says. “No jobs.”

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Halloween’s Biggest Spenders? Not Who You Think

Filed under: Family Money

Halloween can get ghoulishly expensive, especially in the ‘burbs. I live on a leafy street of 90-year-old homes that’s long and flat with minimal traffic — enticing dozens of families to come trick-or-treating. This inspires some over-the-top decorating among the neighbors and requires at least nine pounds of candy. Throw in a pumpkin-picking trip and three costumes for my own goblins, and our holiday outlay is more than $150.

But many of the biggest spenders on Halloween don’t even have kids, according to a new survey by American Express (AXP). Young professionals — defined as college-educated workers 30 or younger earning $50,000 or more — spend the most, averaging $87. Three-quarters say they’ll buy costumes — compared to just 35% for the general population.

“It’s interesting to watch the evolution of Halloween to a full-blown holiday for people of all ages, especially adults,” says American Express spokeswoman Melanie Backs. “The people spending the most money are spending for Halloween parties. It’s a trend we are seeing overall in a lot of surveys — people really focusing on experiential spending.”

Overall, about seven in 10 Americans will open their wallets to celebrate Halloween this year, up slightly from last year, according to surveys by American Express and the National Retail Federation. Total spending is expected to reach $6.86 billion, the NRF found, or $72 per person. A poll by American Express estimates an average layout of $53.

“Over time, Halloween has really evolved from a one-night event focused on children trick-or-treating to something much larger,” says Backs. “The season keeps extending — retailers are doing what they can to stretch the window.”

Back-to-school shoppers who hit a big box store on Labor Day (guilty as charged) found the aisles cleared and prepped for Halloween. Meanwhile, temporary pop-up stores have proliferated in recent years, catering as much to adults as pint-sized revelers.

In fact, Americans will spend more on adult costumes ($1.21 billion) than on kids’ disguises ($1 billion). They need them for the dozens of grown-up events that have emerged in recent years. While New York City’s Halloween parade has been a celebrated spectacle for nearly four decades, of late, adult parties have proliferated in big cities nationwide. The website HalloweenParties.com promotes and sells tickets to dozens of events, include the “FangBanger’s Ball” in Los Angeles, the “Halloweekend Pub Crawl” in San Francisco and the “Heaven, Hell and Purgatory” party at the aptly named Club Worship in Atlantic City.

The travel industry is also getting a piece of the action. “Due the fact that Halloween is on a Monday, it’s a full weekend event,” says Backs.

While for the most part people are staying home, American Express Travel saw a 50% spike over last year in bookings to Las Vegas, where Heidi Klum is hosting her 11th annual party at The Venetian, featuring a $10,000 costume contest. The Girls Next Door reality show star Bridget Marquardt is sponsoring a competing bash at Planet Hollywood to celebrate the release of her Halloween costume line, Bridget by Roma. (It includes, to no one’s surprise, a pink Playboy Bunny outfit, clearly modified to avoid a trademark battle.) New York and San Francisco are two other cities seeing a jump in travel.

As for the more traditional experiential spending, about half of respondents will decorate their homes or yards, and carve pumpkins; more than one-third will throw parties; about a quarter will visit haunted houses; and one-third will take kids trick-or-treating, the NRF found. Finally there are the 15% who will put their pets through the humiliation of wearing a costume (again, guilty as charged). Spending on Halloween pet-wear is estimated at $310 million.

Finally, the classic pumpkin-picking trip has been altered a bit this year, particularly on the East Coast, where Hurricane Irene and tropical storm Lee wreaked havoc on the crop. Talk of higher prices abounds, though the Department of Agriculture won’t have officials numbers until the end of the year. But there was clearly a shortage in New Jersey: At our favorite farm, the owners had a smaller-than-usual supply of pumpkins in the field — all of which had been trucked in from Michigan.

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The Middle-Class Squeeze: Falling Wealth, Rising Costs

Filed under: Economy, Family Money

It’s no secret that many middle-class families are in a financial bind, caught between rising costs and falling incomes. But according to recent reports by the Department of Agriculture and the Congressional Budget Office, the middle-class squeeze is not a recent development, and isn’t likely to disappear anytime soon.

On Tuesday, the CBO released an analysis of America’s distribution of wealth over the last three decades. Their findings were shocking: Among the top 1% of households, income grew by an amazing 275% over the last 30 years. In the same period, the middle 60% of households — the heart of the middle class — saw their incomes increase by less than 40%.

But rising pay only tells half the story: As the rich have gotten richer, they have also gobbled up a bigger portion of the overall income pie. In 1979, half of all income went to the top 20% of households; by 2007, they were pulling in 60% of all income. Meanwhile, everyone else lost ground.

The Other Side of the Squeeze

While the middle class’ slice of the income pie has gotten thinner, the price of real-life pie has shot up. According to the Department of Agriculture, food prices have increased by 4.7% since September 2010 and are on track to go up by another 4.5% over the next year. For certain products, the rise has been even sharper: Eggs and oils, for example, have gone up by more than 11%, while dairy products and beef have increased by more than 10%.

When prices rise, it’s common to blame businesses and investors, but the recent cost inflation has been marked by a stagnation — or even a drop — in profits. Nicole Wolfgang, director of finance and product development at financial information company Sageworks notes that the impact on grocery stores has been negative: “Our data shows that grocery stores over the past twelve months have seen a slight decline in profits: They’ve gone down by 0.85%.”

Similarly, Wolfgang points out, profits at full-service restaurants and food wholesalers have remained largely stable. The FDA notes, in fact, that the 1.3% rise in restaurant prices is the lowest annual increase in more than 50 years. Basically, food providers are lowering their profit margins to shield customers from price increases.

Competing for Food … and Jobs

Ultimately, the fall in middle-class wealth and the rise in food prices may share a root cause: globalization. One effect of offshoring has been a drop in domestic wages, as American workers have increasingly found themselves competing with labor in cheaper overseas markets. As Don Peck recently noted in The Atlantic, this process has accelerated: “The recession, meanwhile, has restrained wage growth and enabled faster restructuring and offshoring, leaving many corporations with lower production costs and higher profits — and their executives with higher pay.” Thus, as business leaders have paid workers less, they’ve been able to pay themselves more.

On the other end of the spectrum, as overseas workers have made more money, they have spent more of it on food, driving up prices, a point that the Department of Agriculture acknowledged, noting that “cost pressures on wholesale and retail food prices due to … strengthening global food demand, have pushed inflation projections upward for 2011.” In other words, food prices — and, in all likelihood, income inequality — are going to keep growing for the foreseeable future, as American families compete with people in other countries for jobs and food.

Bruce Watson is a senior features writer for DailyFinance. You can reach him by e-mail at bruce.watson@teamaol.com, or follow him on Twitter at @bruce1971.

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How to Beat the Big Banks at the Fee Game

Filed under: Bank of America, Banking, Family Money, Personal Finance

I haven’t paid much attention to the hysteria over Bank of America’s (BAC) new $5 monthly fee to use its debit cards, and the announcement by competitors that they won’t follow suit. Why? Because I keep my money in two local banks that pay me for using their debit cards. And the accounts are free — no fees.

What I can’t figure out is why everyone else doesn’t do this.

I moved my entire emergency fund into two high-yield checking accounts back in 2007, a local one for convenience, and an institution with three branches in a Southern state that I opened online. Back in those days, you could get really juicy returns — up to 5%. Now, the best accounts offer half that. But hey, I still prefer to keep my money in a bank that pays me rather than me paying them.

Here’s how high-yield checking works: You must swipe your debit card, using a signature rather than a pin number, about 10 times month. You agree to get your statements by email, use online bill-pay, and make one direct deposit or ACH transfer a month. (An ACH transfer is when you sign up at the website of some entity you pay monthly — power, cable, mortgage company, etc. — and they automatically withdraw the money from your account).

In return for this, one of my banks pays 2.15% on balances up to $25,000. The other offers 3% on balances up to $15,000. There are no minimums, no fees, no ATM charges — and I get reimbursed for fees charged by other banks’ ATMs. If you blow it — as I did last month by only swiping nine times — you get either no interest or nominal interest for the month. But so what? At least I got pocket change for the parking meter, and I didn’t pay anything. (Failure to meet the requirements also means you won’t get reimbursed for foreign ATM fees, though, so I make it rule only to use my bank’s ATMs).

An Hour of Your Time

I found these accounts by entering my zip code on CheckingFinder.com, a website run by BancVue. It’s a Texas-based software company and the technology backbone of the vast majority of the high-interest checking accounts provided by small banks and credit unions. BancVue monitors and analyzes the profitability profile of each customer within each institution to ensure that collectively, the accounts offer enough profit to the bank to justify the interest rates on its checking accounts. (If they don’t, you’ll see the rate offered drop.)

Local banks can offer interest on checking because the requirements described above reduce processing, printing and mailing costs, and the debit transactions generate interchange fees — charges paid by merchants for debit swipes — for the banks. New regulations just shrank those fees, capping them at 24 cents per transaction. The previous average was 44 cents. But small savvy banks figure out how to share that 24 cents with you. Big greedy banks take the 24 cents per swipe and also charge you another $5 a month for using the card.

Now don’t give me any excuses about what a giant pain it is to switch to a new checking account. Balderdash. Of course banks want you to think it’s a huge deal, so you’ll stay put and pay stupid fees. But it’s not. One year, I switched accounts three separate times. It takes all of an hour to open a checking account online and write down the addresses of all the companies in your online bill pay and reenter them into the new account.

If Bank of America is going to charge you $5 a month, that’s $60 a year. Spend an hour changing banks and you’ve made $60 in a 60 minutes. Personally, I’d invest the hour as a matter of principle. (Repeat after me: I will never pay a bank for the privilege of keeping my money.)

If you aren’t organized, if you don’t like jumping through hoops, you’d still do better with a free account than a fee account. I jump through the hoops because it’s fun to beat the big banks at their own game, and it’s fun to make interest every month that I can spend on something fun. It helps that I’m a personal finance geek who tracks my spending to the penny using online software. (The technology does the heavy lifting; I only spend five to 10 minutes a week on it.)

And I’m sure some of you will question the wisdom of keeping my emergency fund in a checking account because of fraud issues. But most banks have the same zero liability policy on their credit and debit cards if you report the fraud promptly. The difference is if thieves steal your credit card, you can protest the charges and refuse to pay them; if they pinch your debit card and pin number, say adieu to your cash – and hello to the hassle of getting it back. I don’t really worry about this since I see my transactions every day in the two minutes I spend online with my budgeting software. (The software is linked electronically to all my accounts so transactions appear automatically within 24 hours, and sometimes in real time.)

So come over from the dark side. Even if you don’t jump through the hoops, you may still do far better in a free high-yield checking account with a small bank or credit union, where your money won’t suffer the death of a thousand fees.

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Don’t Resort to Crime to Cover Your Wedding Costs

Filed under: Crime, Family Money, Saving Money

Desperate for cash to pay for their wedding, Pennsylvania couple April Cater and Joseph Russell allegedly stripped more than $7,000 worth of copper from utility poles and sold it to a salvage company. We all know how expensive weddings can get, but there are better solutions than turning to theft. So if you’re facing a similar dilemma, but would prefer to stay out of jail, we’ve got some tips for cutting down wedding costs.

Bargain Baubles

Save from the start by shopping smart for engagement rings. If the bride’s heart is set on a diamond, we have some excellent advice here. But if she’s flexible, consider a less-pricey gem such as an emerald or sapphire. When choosing a setting, white gold has the same look as platinum at a lower cost, while traditional yellow gold is usually the least expensive.

Dresses at a Discount

Another big expense is the wedding dress, but again, this is an easy area to find serious savings. In addition to the great advice in this article, brides can also save big by browsing eBay, Craigslist, and consignment or second-hand shops for deals; borrowing a gown from a friend or relative; or hiring a tailor to make their dream dress. Remember, the dress will only be worn once for a few hours — you don’t want to be paying for it for the next few years.

Low-Cost Locations

Reception venues don’t have to be fancy to make an impact. Some of the most memorable weddings I’ve been to have been in backyards, public gardens, a church fellowship hall, even on the grounds of the grade school where the bride’s father taught. Think outside the ballroom for low-cost or free alternatives — do any friends or relatives have a large enough home to host the party? How about access to another large space? Is anyone a member of a neighborhood pool with space for a party?

Keep in mind that using a venue that’s not already equipped for a wedding may require extra coordination. You may need to bring in a tent, extra chairs and tables (borrow, borrow, borrow — they don’t have to match!), or dinnerware (borrow or go with disposables). But saving thousands on venue rental fees will be worth it!

Cheap Eats

Sticking to hors d’oeuvres, choosing chicken over steak, or opting for beer and wine over a full bar are common (and sensible) tips for saving on refreshments, but really, the sky’s the limit for creative couples. A morning ceremony followed by a champagne brunch is elegant but inexpensive, as is afternoon high tea or a late evening dessert fete.

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The Child Care Tax Break Many Parents Overlook

Filed under: Family Money

Like many people’s, my biggest expense after my mortgage is child care for my two little demons, er, darlings. And just as with my mortgage, I’ve always made sure to take full advantage of the tax breaks available to offset these massive costs.

So imagine my chagrin when I realized I’ve missed out on $200 in tax savings each year for the past five years!

Yes, thanks to confusing and often misunderstood rules surrounding child-care tax breaks, I’ve overpaid Uncle Sam to the tune of $1,000. Read on to avoid my mistake — unless you happen to enjoy filing mounds of amended returns.

2 Tax Breaks for Parents

If you have kids and need child care in order to work (this can include actively looking for work or attending school full-time), there are two potential tax breaks available to you:

• The first is a tax credit that applies to up to $3,000 in expenses for one child or $6,000 for two or more children.
• The second is the dependent care flexible spending account (FSA) — offered as a benefit by some employers — which allows you to set aside up to $5,000 a year tax-free for child-care expenses. This amount is fixed no matter how many children you have.

The “qualifying child,” in tax-speak, must be 12 or younger and be claimed on your taxes as a dependent. (As with everything IRS-related, there are all sorts of qualifiers and exceptions, so if your situation is the least bit unusual, make sure you check with an accountant. There’s also more information here on the IRS website.)

What kind of care is eligible for these tax breaks? Daycare counts, as does preschool. A full-time nanny or au pair counts, too. For school-age children, before- and after-school expenses can be deducted, but not private school tuition for kindergarten or above (private preschool is fine).

Parents with kids in private school should make sure any before- or after-care costs are broken out separately on their statements. Day camp fees are deductible, but overnight camp costs are not. (Obviously the IRS has no idea how much more productive parents whose kids are gone for a week or two can be!)

Which Money-Saving Option Should You Take?

Now here’s the tough part: Do you take the credit or fund the FSA? Of course, the answer is “it depends.”

Generally speaking, if you make more than $43,000, you’ll want to opt for the FSA. Above $43,000, the credit gives you 20% of the amount you spend up to the maximum (that is, a maximum of $600 for one child, $1,200 for two or more). With the FSA, as long as you’re in the 15% tax bracket or higher, you’ll save at least 22.65% of your care expenses (15% Federal taxes + 7.65% Social Security/Medicare taxes). Again, check with an accountant for specifics on your situation.

Can I Take Both? (What I Didn’t Know)

Maybe, and here’s the part I missed: If you have two or more qualifying children and your expenses are at least $6,000, you can actually benefit from both options. For instance, if you spend $6,000 on child care, you can use your FSA for $5,000, and apply the credit to the remaining $1,000 in expenses. Since the credit gives you back 20% of that $1,000, it means an additional $200 for those families.

Even more ways to save

• Max out your expenses. If you have an au pair or live-in nanny, you can deduct any costs you incur from having that person live with you. Even with a live-out nanny, you can deduct the cost of any food, insurance, or transportation you provide. You can also deduct any taxes you pay on the caretaker’s behalf.
• Double up and get a discount. Many care providers, including day camps, offer sibling discounts. Take advantage of them whenever practical and save 10%-20%.
• Share care and cut costs. Consider a nanny share. Popular in more expensive areas of the country, a nanny share — where two families share one caregiver — can actually be cheaper than daycare. The Nanny Network site offers more details.

What other ways do you save on child care? Share your money saving tips in the comments area below.

Motley Fool writer Robyn Gearey is not going to miss out on her $200 in child care savings ever again.

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Money-Life Balance: What It Is and How to Get It

Filed under: Family Money, Personal Finance

We’re familiar with the idea of work-life balance — that miraculous sweet spot where one’s out-of-office world is rich and full, and doesn’t collide with one’s career.

But how about money-life balance? According to J.P. Morgan Chase and Co. (JPM) and the nonprofit advocacy group Consumer Action, a reasonable money-life balance considers the positive emotional benefits that go along with behaving responsibly with money. In other words, you achieve money-life balance if you’re not racking up massive credit card bills during late-night online shopping binges on Zappos.com (ahem).

In a newly released survey conducted by Chase and Consumer Action, only one-third of 1,016 adults said they had money-life balance.

The Key to Good Balance

Financial planners point to budgeting as the starting point for achieving money-life balance. Besides the obvious tracking of income and expenses, having a budget means you don’t have to spend precious mental energy thinking about whether a purchase is affordable or not.

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“Willpower is a strenuous way of controlling your actions …. routines can conserve energy,” psychologist and Willpower author Roy Baumeister told DailyFinance in a video interview earlier this fall. “Set your life up so you don’t have problems in advance.”

Finding the right financial planning method for you is like buying shoes: You have to try on a lot of pairs before you find the right fit. It can be as simple as keeping a spreadsheet on your home computer or using a spreadsheet template from the Google personal finance library.

Another popular way to put the brakes on overspending and excessive borrowing is by using a prepaid debit card. Loading a card with a fixed amount — like $1,000 for the month — is an easy way to manage costs and keeping funds you intend to spend separate from the money you have earmarked for saving.

There are also a number of online budgeting apps, such as Mint.com and SmartyPig.com, that can create neat visual graphics of how much you are spending on extras such as restaurants, versus necessities like student loans, as well as helping you set savings goals.

Do you have balance in your financial life? Please share your tips for how you achieved your own money-life serenity below.

Catherine New can be reached at catherine.new@huffingtonpost.com.

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