You would think that a country with the lowest savings rate amongst all of the other industrialized nations of the free world would do more to encourage its citizens to save money. After the US Treasury Department's announcement of higher I bond rates on November 3, you start to ask yourself: Should I spend my money, or save it and earn more?

On December 3, 2007 the US Treasury Department announced it would be reducing the limit on the amount of savings bonds an individual can purchase, to $20,000 annually, effective January 1, 2008. This means that one person can purchase up to $5,000 out-of-pocket of paper EE, paper I, electronic EE and electronic I bonds.

The limit prior to the change was a grand total of $120,000, (or $30,000 each type,) six times greater than the new limit.

The smart people are currently looking for ways to cut their expenses to save money and feel more financially secure. Today I found a way to save $33 a month without even giving up anything. I looked at my cable bill and decided to make a change.

My cable bill is paid each month via a credit card which I pay in full every billing cycle. I wasn't paying much attention, until I saw that my cable bill for the month was $151. Huh? My bill wasn't that much. I took a look, and saw that my bill used to be $135 a month, until I got a mysterious increase in my internet access. I thought I'd give the cable company a call and see if I couldn't get that extra $16 a month removed.

By the time I got off the phone, my monthly bill was down to $118, and it didn't hurt a bit. As I talked over my bill with the customer service representative, I was reminded that I was paying $13 a month for HBO. If I had to guess, I'd say I watch HBO once a month at the very most. Time to give up the HBO that I won't even miss anyway.

Laundry has always been a chore I have a hate-hate relationship with. It seems that no sooner do I get a load out of the dryer that I'm doing the whole darn process all over! Not only do I seem to waste lots of time on laundry but I've found that we also waste a lot of room in washer loads which translates into wasted cash. We try to always run loads of laundry which are full but since we don't have a lot of space we kept all of our laundry in one hamper which made it difficult to figure out what we had the most of as opposed to what's easy to grab.

Last week we splurged on a $20 collapsible hamper with 3 compartments and I'll never look back! After only a week I can honestly say this is the best $20 I've spent on a household item for our apartment. The new hamper takes up only slightly more space than our old hamper but the way we do laundry is transformed. We no longer need to guess at how many towels lie hidden below our work clothes; each type of laundry has its own spot which is conveniently 1 load's worth of laundry.

I don't have any hard data from my experience to back up the savings yet but the cost of one load of laundry depending on utility costs and detergent ranges from $.60 to $1 so even if I only save one load a week I've paid of my hamper purchase in 2-3 electric bills. That doesn't even factor in the reduction in time spent sorting laundry or dealing with moving a half load through the entire laundry process which I can use to do other things like write posts like this one. Finally, since the basket is collapsible it takes up less space than our old one and I feel a sense of accomplishment from finishing a load!

Despite my Ivy League MBA and my role as a founder of a personal finance web site, I haven't done much in the way of planning my financial situation. All of my financial milestones in the past decade or so have been accidental, serendipitous, or just a gut response to a disaster.

I was pregnant pretty much the moment after I was engaged, at 28. Through the birth of three boys (all of which came along a little sooner than I expected), I worked in a unusual career that I made up out of whole cloth, starting out in dotcom operations management, finance and product development and ending as a professional blog producer. While it paid fairly well, it did not pay nearly as well as the jobs of my business school peers; and it became very difficult to make extra room in my budget to pay my huge student loan payments. Instead of paying down my student loans, I've only compounded them.

One thing I did brilliantly was to buy a house in an up-and-coming neighborhood immediately upon getting pregnant with my first child, and never refinancing it. Buying it was a gut reaction to the nesting hormones, but it turned out wonderfully. Four years later a Starbucks went in two blocks away, and my home's value doubled. Early on, I took out a home equity loan to (hiding my head in shame) pay for our wedding; I'm thankful I never refinanced the house, keeping my ARM that was garnered at the peak of my credit score. While I was seriously guilty of living outside of my means as a young bride and mama, after I became pregnant with my second son I buttoned down the hatches, canceling all my credit cards and vowing to live on what I made.

That one really good decision -- never to refinance my mortgage -- has paid off with a low-ish monthly payment and a fast-reducing principal balance. And with my new philosophy of "no debt no way never," I know at least I won't be facing a tough credit review at my local bank.

Let us all shed a tear for disgraced Lehman Brothers Holding Inc. chairman Richard Fuld Jr., forced out from the helm of power and now forced to do what the rest of us do when money gets tight: Cut expenses and sell off assets. He's just put a block of post-war artwork up for November auction.

Except Fuld's assets are a bit richer than yours or mine, I suspect. Fuld and his wife Kathy are longtime art collectors, and Kathy, in particular, is noted as a collector of American modern art. She's a trustee of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and is known to have a keen eye for undervalued master works. But she's known more as a collector, not so much a seller. I guess sometimes you have to sacrifice.

The auction house Christie's gave a pre-sale estimate for the block of 16 drawings as between $15 and $20 million. It's shopping the lot around to buyers in Europe and Asia, where they still have that kind of money for things to hang on their walls. Indeed, today's art market is dominated by these buyers.

The twist here is that newly-wealthy art collectors in these places like to chase trophy paintings -- impressionists and modernists, that are practically household names. Mrs. Fuld has sought out drawings by American masters, and in particular their more subtle works and studies. While beautiful and valuable, these pieces tend to fly under the radar of the noveau riche. The American collectors more likely to snap this collection up are now, well, probably nursing their net worth for the time being. A condition that Mr. Feld didn't help along when he rode Lehman Bros. to collapse and set off the credit panic.

In the book, Are You Normal About Money?, author Bernice Kanner outlines responses from a public survey posted on the Bloomberg Web site. According to respondents, sixty-five percent would live on a deserted island for a year for $1 million dollars. Sixty percent would even admit to a crime that didn't do and serve six months in jail for that amount--and 10 percent would lend their spouse for a night. For $10 million, most of us would do just about anything: one-fourth would abandon our friends, our family, and our church. And for that amount of money, 7 percent--one in every fourteen of us--would even murder.

Part of the problem with money is that people want more. Thanks to fifty plus years of mass media pushing merchandise at us, we are convinced that more will make us happier. For decades, Lewis Lapham has been asking people how much money they would need to be happy. "No matter what their income," he reports, "a depressing number of Americans believe that if only they had twice as much, they would inherit the estate of happiness promised them in the Declaration of Independence. The man who receives $15,000 a year is sure that he could relieve his sorrow if he had only $30,000 a year; the man with $1 million a year knows that all would be well if he had $2 million a year"..."Nobody," he concludes, "ever has enough."

Over the past weekend it was announced that IndyMac was being taken over by the FDIC after customers began a run on the bank, which had denied any solvency issues. Many customers had their life savings in the bank, whose accounts are protected by the FDIC, but not all of their funds were insured. In one instance a man had been told if he simply added the names of several relatives to his account the insurance amount would be increased to cover his deposits of over $300,000. Instead he found out that initially the FDIC will fully cover the insured funds but only cover uninsured deposits to the tune of 50%.

Hopefully things will work out for everyone -- even those whose accounts went over the insured limit. If you have over the insured amount in your current bank account I highly suggest you take the needed steps to make sure you are fully insured. This could be creating a joint account with your spouse to gain coverage up to $200,000 or it could be creating several trusts for your children in order to gain the protection they are entitled to as beneficiaries. If neither of these options work, spread out your money at other institutions. As my colleague Zac Bissonnette pointed out recently, most banks are offering the same services these days.

If you have enough money to be over the FDIC limit, you should really spend some time with someone who can provide an expert opinion on keeping your money safe as well as growing it. The FDIC provides an explanation of the protections afforded to different accounts as well as how your protection changes based on the beneficiaries of the accounts. If you are an IndyMac customer the FDIC has also set up a specific site to keep you up to date on the fate of your loans and deposits. While I'm not predicting a huge bank run in the near future, why not take a few minutes to make sure your savings are covered? The FDIC insurance is free so take advantage of it!

It was an argument that I lost with my husband when the kids were young and money was tight. The kids aren't so young anymore, but money is still tight...and I still think it was a really good idea.

"How about learning to give the boys haircuts?" Their father -- a carpenter by profession and, well, good with his hands (which I am not) wouldn't consider it.

But if he had (or if I could have risked it) here's how I would have proceeded:

It goes without saying that carpooling saves money, especially with gas now averaging above $4 a gallon. Last month I posted about how you can use Ridesearch.com to calculate your carpool savings as well as find others to carpool with. Even though I have been carpooling for 2 years now, just recently I realized that while the money I save carpooling is excellent but the non monetary benefits can be a huge bonus as well!

This week we added a third person to our carpool and my immediate thought was, "Awesome, more money saved.", but as I was driving home today I realized that I don't have to drive to work for the rest of June! That realization floored me, making a bright spot in a rather dreary day. Rather than take my time as a passenger to enjoy the scenery, I am already planning what I can do with this extra hour of time each day.

One thing I will plan on doing is writing posts to share with you here on WalletPop which replaces the time I had spent writing papers before I graduated in May. A 30 minute commute is also an excellent time for me to catch up on the many science fiction books I want to get through. If I run out of books or productive activities I can even use the time to play some Sudoku on my Nintendo DS.

The point I am trying to make is that even with the inconveniences that carpooling may bring, the rewards are bountiful. Imagine what you could do if you had an extra hour every day on top of cutting your fuel bill in half. For me it's the difference between getting by and putting my money towards debt and savings. If my carpool fell apart, I would need to move closer to work or get a new job!

What would you get done if your daily commute became free time?

Ken and Daria Dolan, America's First Family of Personal Finance, answer your money questions every Friday.

Dear Ken and Daria,

My daughter just got her first job and I'd like for her to begin saving and investing. I suggested a Roth IRA but she's wary of the market. How do I get her started?

-Cliff

Feeling wary about the current unstable world of investing? Ken and Daria Dolan show you how to jump in at any age with advice on proper investment strategies and planning tips for a fruitful future. Get started now at Dolans.com.

Click here to ask Ken and Daria your question.

The first time I heard about e-books, I was in journalism school back in the early 1990s. I remember lively debates about whether newspapers, magazine and books would be rendered obsolete by the turn of the century, replaced by electronic versions you could hold in the palm of your hand. At the time, these predictions seemed both blasphemous and futuristic.

Last year, when I read about Kindle, Amazon.com's e-book reader, I still didn't believe wireless reading devices would catch on. Kindle sold out in hours after it was released in November, 2007, and remained out of stock for months.

Now Kindle is back, and I read in paidcontent.org that Amazon has lowered the price by $40, which is surprising, given its success when it was launched. It's now going for for $359, still more expensive than Sony's competing digital book, which sells for about $300. Apparently, as production of the Kindle reader increased, manufacturing costs decreased, in turn lowering the retail price.

Open any cookbook published before, say, 1965. The recipes all make mention of how to make the dish cheaply, using affordable cuts of meat, and canned vegetables because they were cheaper than fresh. The idea of "Thrift" was alive and well, and the idea that a housewife should look for ways to stretch the family budget was lauded as a virtue.

We snicker at such old-fashioned values today, even as we hold dear the nostalgia for a "simpler" time. Sometime in the last few generations, the fiscal conservatism our grandparents practiced as a matter of course went out the window with the rotary phones. A provocative article in Canada's Financial Post asks what happened?

The Daily Deal for May 16, 2008 is the Slip Dress at Hanes.

I have a habit of looking through every catalog that ends up in my mailbox. The latest one to appear, unsolicited, is the Hanes catalog, which I assumed was mostly underwear. While there are a lot of bras, panties, boxers and briefs for men, women and kids, at reasonable prices, Hanes also carries some surprisingly cute and affordable clothing.

The Slip Dress is a cotton, spaghetti-strapped dress available in chocolate, heather gray or white, in sizes small through extra large. I like the Slip Dress because it's the perfect casual summer dress, in a flattering cut with trendy pleats along the bust line. All you need to go with it is a pair of flip-flops.

For $20, the regular price, you may as well go for the Strappy Dress as well, or try out some cute camis or undies, because Hanes is offering free shipping for customers who spend more than $50 and order online.

Soon after my wife and I decided to move to the big city, I realized that I would have to leave my beloved washer and dryer behind. On the bright side, though, I discovered one of the wonders of urban living: drop-off service.

For a small amount of money (in my neighborhood, it's $0.65 per pound), someone else will wash, dry, and fold your clothes. Given that my wife, daughter, and I generate between 20 and 30 pounds of laundry per week, this ends up being a fairly cheap luxury.

A few months back, however, I switched to a lower-paying job and began looking for ways to cut fat out of the household budged. One of the first things to go was the drop-off service, as I realized that I could wash my family's clothes for roughly half the price that Lula, the Albanian lady at the drop-off service, charges. Feeling self-righteous and fiscally responsible, I began toting my family's clothes to the local laundromat.

Drink this up. Despite what the marketers of bottled water have almost convinced us of, there remains little scientific evidence that drinking eight cups of water a day does anything more for your health than make you pee a lot.

A piece in last week's Health Section of the New York Times cites a new study in the June issue of The Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, which reports that researchers can't even find where the "at least eight cups of water a day" rule came from.

"Under normal circumstances," Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, a co-author and a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania told the Times, "drinking extra water is unnecessary. I want to relieve people of the burden of schlepping water bottles around all day long."