Budgets

Move over men of America: There's a woman running the family finances.

A landmark study released today by Prudential Financial concludes that a record number of women in the U.S. - 95%, to be exact - are financial decision-makers.

What's more, 84% of married women are either solely or jointly responsible for managing their household finances, according to Prudential's 2010 study on the Financial Experience & Behaviors Among Women.

The study, administered by Harris Interactive, is significant for several reasons.

Forget the coupon clipping. A straightforward, realistic budget is the best deal you'll ever find.

Why is a budget the best deal? Because, just like your childhood puppy your budget will always be there for you, no expiration dates, no fine print to yank away the savings after you've already been whipped into a furry of consumerism. If you care for your budget it will take care of you so that "saving" isn't just not unnecessarily spending an extra $5 at the grocery store this week; but actually saving money in a high yield savings account. Another great thing about a budget is that, again like your puppy, it will take you back even if you screw up.

Think outside the sale. For years I chased after deals and discounts like they were the oxygen keeping me alive. It didn't matter if I needed an item or not -- if there was a sticker advertising 60, 70, 80 or 90% off a gadget, I wanted to buy it. How could I pass up the savings?

It wasn't until recently that I realized a budget is the best deal you can find. After taking a few minutes to look at how to put together a budget I realized that it takes less time to set up and follow a budget than it does to look for deals every day of the week.

Thanks to great free personal finance management (PFM) tools from sites such as like Mint.com, Rudder and others you can easily create a budget and track how well you are following it each day. These tools will even send you a notification when you go outside of your budget so you aren't shocked at the end of the month. If you don't already have a successful budget don't start creating one yet. First go read these tips for setting realistic budget.

Advice on Budgeting

• Reverse Budget - A savings first solution from FiveCentNickel
• Budgeting basics - a Budget primer from Consumerism Commentary including suggestions on how to get started.

My personal favorite and current method of budgeting isn't so much a budget as it is smart spending. Ramit Sethi explains the model in his book I Will Teach You to Be Rich, calling it, "Conscious Spending." Instead of focusing on the minutia Sethi concedes that it is in fact OK to, "Spend extravagantly on the things you love, and cut costs mercilessly on the things you don't."

A budget may be the best deal, but that doesn't mean you need to give up on coupon clipping and bargain hunting; just make these tools that support your plan instead of the main focus. If you plan for your purchases, by saving up at SmartyPig or setting a goal in Rudder, you can still go looking for a deal on your next purchase and pay in cash. Trust me, there's something really incredible about paying in cash for the new camera that you've researched and found the best deal on.

I wrote a story for WalletPop last week on how to prepare your child for an allowance. For those who prefer video to reading, here's a TV interview I did the next day on "The View from the Bay," a San Francisco TV show.

One man's trash is literally another man's treasure. Maybe it's the recession, or maybe it's just a new twist on the old sport of recreational shopping -- where you hunt down bargains because doing so just makes you feel good -- but curbside scavenging has gotten greater respectability lately.

Cindy Bagwell, an assistant news editor at the Dallas Morning News and part-time jewelry-maker, recently discovered the sport. She was working a late shift and had the morning free and decided to investigate what some neighbors who were in the midst of a major remodel were discarding. Taking her dogs out for a walk was the perfect camouflage for the scouting mission.

Her score: a five-drawer wicker dresser in excellent condition and a solid wood door that with some refinishing and sealant will make an excellent dining room table top. Buoyed by the experience, Bagwell roamed a little further into a neighboring community with bigger homes and better cast-offs. This trip yielded a stack of old books that when sold into her favorite used book store got her an $18 credit. Not bad for not much effort.

It's funny how government budget cuts trickle down to everyday people. I live in California, which ranks second on U.S. News & World Report's "pain index" of states that have suffered the biggest budget pains and have been forced to institute both tax increases and spending cuts. I can say firsthand that I see the effect of those cuts every day.

Our local pool is closed some days due to city budget cuts, the nearby city of Oakland is laying off more police officers a week after a major riot, and I'm not watering my backyard. That last one is more to save me money and the state some water in a drought. But spending cuts are the reason the road medians in my town aren't being kept up (that said, they look far better than my backyard). Look around, and you're likely to deal firsthand with federal and state budget cuts as they trickle down to your neighborhood.

U.S. News & World Report''s pain index takes a look at places like my hometown, where residents are spending more on taxes yet seeing less in services. It takes into account state tax increases and spending cuts in each state since 2009 and notes that over the past three years, states have cut their budgets by nearly $50 billion -- the biggest reversal of state spending since the Great Depression -- and raised taxes by another $30 billion or so. All of these measures have been taken despite the $250 billion in stimulus aid that the federal government doled out to the states in 2009.

Where does all the cash you carry in your wallet or purse disappear to during a normal week? And how did you end up with an extra $100 charge on your credit card when you don't remember making any significant purchases? Our friends at Mint.com created this snappy feature that helps you visualize just how that small drip, drip, drip from your pocketbook ends up draining your account.

For a larger version, click here and you'll be transported to the Mint.com page.

First there is talk of dropping a day of mail service. Now the U.S. Postal Service is proposing to raise the price of a stamp to 46 cents from the current 44 cents, a 4.5% increase, and it has a big fight on its hands.

Mailers of all stripes are gearing up to fight the increase, which the USPS announced today. It last raised rates on first class postage May 11, 2009. The USPS blamed declining mail volume and cost increases as the reasons behind this latest proposed hike.

Mailers suggest the hike is 10 times the increase allowed by law.

"This proposed rate increase amounts to another tax imposed on Americans at a time when the economy can least afford it," said Tony Conway, Executive Director of the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers and a spokesperson for the Affordable Mail Alliance in a statement. "Consumers everywhere will pay more for the letters and packages they need to send; struggling businesses – large and small -- will suffer and even more jobs will be lost."

As summer temperatures lure us out into our yards, it's hard not to notice all those landscaping tasks we let languish all spring. When hiring a gardener is not in the budget, or when there is no gardening budget at all, here are some simple and inexpensive tasks garden experts recommend.

Michael Podlesny, president of Mike the Gardener Enterprises, says hay is a great mulch for your vegetable garden. "A $5 bale of hay works wonders for the way the vegetable garden looks," he says. "Put this down and it not
only makes the garden look nicer but also serves a great purpose to keep weeds to a minimum and holds in moisture."

Susan Palmquist, author of The Budget Smart Girl's Guide to the Universe, says use a new layer of mulch to spruce up your garden. "You can sometimes buy a 3 cubic foot bag for just $2," she says, "and it makes the garden look new again."

Mint.com is arguably one of the most popular personal finance management tools out there. For all that it has done well, up until this week, it hasn't been the best place to track financial goals. Now, with the introduction of Mint Goals you can link all of your financial goals with the accounts that you have connected to Mint to better track your progress.

Mint Goals improves on the Planning section, which Mint users had until now used for goal-setting. The new Mint Goals section provides users with eight goal areas which can be tailored to the individual so that the goal is realistic and achievable. These eight goals include getting out of debt, saving for an emergency, saving for retirement, buying a home, buying a car, saving for college, taking a trip and improving your home; you can also set a custom goal.

Mint Goals Video from the Wall Street Journal:

Being 50 and broke isn't so unusual these days. There are a lot of Boomers whose savings was devastated by the decline in the stock market; whose jobs went out from under them; and who leveraged themselves to the extent that they lost their house or even had to declare bankruptcy.

If that's you, what do you do next?

Here are six steps to solvency, some of them inspired by Investopedia:

• Get up off your duff. Just sitting there and feeling sorry for yourself doesn't help.

The modern American couple starts life with a heavy financial burden: In a big city like Chicago, the average wedding costs between $22,500 and $37,500. Yet in the 1930s, it was cheap, costing around $400. There's no question that wedding prices are out of control. What went wrong?

I went to the Chicago History Museum's "I Do! Chicago Ties the Knot" exhibition, whose historians have figured out how it happened.

And you thought we were just thinking small.

A recent Gallup poll said that 62% of us would rather save money than spend it, up significantly from 48% of us in 2001. That would seem to confirm what most of us here at WalletPop have been trying to tell you lo these three years: Thrift is good.

Remember thrift? Your grandparents probably do. Thrift used to be a great American value, but somewhere in the early '80s it got lost in the cult of all that glitters and surpassing the Jones's.

For more than 20 years, thrift became synonymous with "cheap," or "poor." Also, "pathetic." And we naturally thrifty sorts wondered why we were considered so outside the mainstream. Why would anyone want to drive a used car? they asked us. How can you live in such a small space?" And thrift stores? Oh we are so embarrassed for you.

And then came the Great Recession. Remember that? Of course you do.

Suddenly, nobody in the middle class had any money. And suddenly, thrift wasn't a lifestyle choice anymore. It was a necessity. Hard to keep up with the Joneses when your house has been foreclosed on and you can't find a job for all the resumes in China.

What's black and white and read all over?

Yep, the answer is still the same as it was when you were 6. A newspaper.

Despite declining circulation, 80 million Americans still read a newspaper in print or online every day, according to research for Parade magazine, which is about to launch a monthly food publication distributed by newspapers. The publication will be called Dash, with a digital version, DashRecipes.com.

Parade is a tabloid-size general-interest magazine printed on heavy-duty newsprint that about 550 daily and weekly newspapers insert in their weekend editions. Dash will look similar, but it will be circulated online on Wednesdays or Thursdays and in print monthly on the same day in 100 newspapers – just in time for shoppers to read along with the end-of-the week food advertising.

Parade says its food advertising is up 60% compared to 2009, which was a very bad year. That and the statistics that follow, culled from Parade's market research, are what persuaded the publisher, Advance Publications, that a new newspaper-distributed food magazine aimed at ordinary eaters is a good idea:

Who needs a U-Haul when you have the 7 and 1 trains?

Young Min, who became an underground symbol of frugality by moving a truckload of possessions to a new apartment via the New York City subway system, has no regrets. He told WalletPop that he saved about $1,100 in relocation costs. Beyond that, he shared a laugh with friends who reluctantly helped.

"It was too hard but we made a memory which will never be forgotten by us," he wrote in an e-mail.