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So this is sort of a bizarre promotion but here's how it works: You answer vocabulary questions (They start easy and get tough) and, for every question you answer, a few grains of rice are donated to the UN World Food Program. The program is sponsored by Unilever and I think it's awesome: send this post to anyone who needs to study for the SATs and has an altruistic side.

Click here to get started.

Employers everywhere are tightening their belts in response to the current financial crisis. A good deal of employers are already past cutting travel and other expenses and are looking at payroll to keep costs in check. This complicates matters for any employee who is up for a raise right now, myself included. Thankfully CNN has a list of six benefits to barter for if a pay hike is out of the question.

The benefits compiled in partnership with Careerbuilder.com include the following:

• Time off
• Relaxed dress code
• Education opportunities
• Going green bonuses
• Flexible schedules
• Wellness benefits

I found this list to be quite useful since the timing on my negotiation for a raise is what can be referred to as unfortunate to say the least, and I may have to settle for perks rather than cash. While I am a big fan of using perks such as the ability to work from home, flexible schedules and a relaxed dress code to retain employees during good economic times they are a poor substitute for cash when expenses are rising. Have you tried paying your mortgage in casual Fridays? The banks aren't that desperate....yet.

Sadly with the bailout having little positive effect on the stock market it looks like employees looking for compensation will have to make do with perks rather than payment for the time being. Then again if you work for AIG, a recipient of government funding, the perks may be worth it!

Even if we don't like it, students and parents have grown accustomed to the fact that the cost of higher education has, for many people, exceeded what can be covered out of pocket.

While federal loans help many people bridge this gap and are all but guaranteed to anyone who demonstrates needs, in order to make up the difference students, including myself, have taken to the private education loan industry in full force. Private education loans aren't guaranteed, but were readily available when I was a student several years back.

Now that the economy is in dire straits, lenders are facing cash shortages, and as a result it it is becoming tougher for students to get private loans, adding to the list of people and businesses facing a credit crunch. CNN tracked down Eric Hahn, a student whose lender, MyRichUncle, stopped writing private loans, leaving many students to scramble for a new lender while still trying to manage their class work.

If you build it, they will come. But not necessarily.

A recent three-part report in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reveals that the building spree by Milwaukee Public Schools is a dismal failure.

The $102 million initiative to revamp buildings was supposed to get students into local neighborhood schools and improve education. Instead, newly furnished classrooms are used for storage, and half-empty buildings are sprinkled throughout the district. Many specialty teachers in the fields of science, art and music have been downsized in budget cuts while enrollment has continued to tumble.

Like many urban school districts, Milwaukee Public Schools works with some of the poorest children in the city. Many of the children literally do not have parents. They may be living with a grandparent, uncle, aunt or other relative. At the school where my husband works, more than 20 children are bused to school from a homeless shelter. Even those who are lucky enough to have a biological parent often have only one. At a recent open house at an elementary school of approximately 200 children, only six fathers showed up.

It is clear that what these children need are parents, not just buildings. And if they do not have parents involved in their education, someone else better be available. Instead of facilities and expensive buildings, the money would have been better spent with additional staffing in the classroom, mentors for individual development, and tutors for special help. The $102 million could have purchased a lot of services for these children and their families.

New York City's new program to pay students for passing Advanced Placement tests just got its first report card, and the results were nothing to brag about. The privately funded program by Rewarding Achievement (REACH) is one of many around the country that try to incentivize students to do well on tests, show up or behave. The New York City students at 31 high schools got $960,000 this year, according to the New York Times. More kids took the test, fewer passed. (The test is graded on a scale of one to five, with three and above passing.)

• Number of students taking an AP test: UP 4,275 to 4,620


• Number of tests passed: DOWN 1,481 to 1,476


• Number of tests scored 5 (the highest): 184 to 207


• This year's pay for scores: 3:$500 4:$750 5:$1,000


• Next year's projected payouts: 3: $250 4: $500 5: 1,000

Obviously the program didn't get the improvement in scores it was hoping to inspire, but it points out that it started started after kids had already signed up for AP classes. That does seem like a huge handicap. Fellow Walletpopper Bruce Watson made some compelling arguments in favor of these programs last month.

When I was a kid, my parents sent me to private schools, which meant that, not only did they pay a pretty hefty tuition bill, but they also had to pony up dough for school trips, lunches, after-school programs, textbooks, tissues, PE uniforms, and hundreds of other expenses.

My classrooms were habitually under-heated in the winter, my carpools often took me on byzantine routes across the DC area, and there were times when adult supervision was totally nonexistent. Even with all of this, I somehow managed to get a decent education: years later, I still remember how to do basic math, have a fairly good idea of how the federal government is structured, and rarely misspell the word "very." I think that this might put me a couple of notches ahead of Dubya.

Coming from this background, I'm not all that horrified by some of the cutbacks that school districts are using to deal with America's current fuel crisis/recession/inflation/stagflation hiccup. I think that some of them might even improve our schools; as a child, I found it hard to fall asleep in my chilly classrooms, which actually seemed to help my studies. Furthermore, bake sales and money drives could increase parental involvement, something that is sorely lacking in many areas.

According to a recent article in the Ventura County Star, business is now the number one major among college students.

That's up from, say, the 1970s, when business was a distant third. This is information that comes from the National Center for Education Statistics and the Princeton Review.

A lot of theories are offered in the article penned by Jean Cowden Moore, and she sums them up in this key paragraph: "Educators say today's students might not be as idealistic as their counterparts in the 1960s. Plus, they've grown up more coddled than past generations. Now that they're college students, they want to continue the lifestyle they grew up with, and they see business as a major that will give them a stable income."

So this isn't explicitly personal finance-related but education is related to future earnings so I'm writing about it even though it might be a bit of a stretch.

Basically, some schools have decided that since a 100 is an A and an 80 is a B, that an F should be a 50 -- even if the grade a student actually earned was a 0. That's so crazy that it just might be ... completely insane! The rationale, according to one principal, is "motivation and to give kids the opportunity to pass a grade."

Well that's great. But if you're going to call a 0 of out of 100 50%, you might as well dispense with the whole grading ritual and pass everyone.

Now for the economics tie-in. Policies like this that hand out high school diplomas in exchange for writing your name devalue the education -- and make it so that employers now will only hire based on a college degree. So students who 50 years ago could have gotten a job with a high school diploma now have to spend 4 years and $80 thousand to get the same job.

When we talk about making education affordable again, we should also talk about making a high school diploma meaningful again. Calling 0's 50's doesn't help.

Science Daily released an article today which cites clear scientific evidence showing that the better educated we are, the longer we tend to live. The study, which was conducted by the American Cancer Society and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, analyzed data from more than 3.5 million deaths occurring between 1993 and 2001. Science Daily reports that the study concluded; "People with less education have fewer financial resources, less access to health insurance or stable employment, and less health literacy." It would seem that not only do the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, but the poor get deader sooner also.

The greatest percentage increase in death rates was reported to be within the social class, white women. In that group, death rates increased by 3.2% annually for women with less than 12 years of education. The group of white women with more than 12 years of education also had a statistically significant increase in death rates of 0.7%. Men on the other hand, have seen increases in longevity. Well educated black men showed the greatest improvement, with a 36% decreased death rate. Well-educated white men also posted longevity gains, with a 25% decreased death rate.

My street level analysis is this: The education factor speaks for itself. Well educated people have the knowledge and resources to take better care of themselves. This is not to minimize the fact that they also tend to do fewer stupid things. Women, as they increase their power, leverage and exposure in this world, also increase their stresses and risks. Black men are beginning to make up for decades of high mortality rates, by working together to enhance their socio-economic well being overall. Men in general have begun to admit their vulnerability to the ravages of life and more of us are willing to admit when we need help.

As for us educated white guys living longer, well, that's probably just dumb luck.

Whenever I find myself on the subway, I'm careful to pack a book. After all, living in the Bronx, I've discovered that staring at people can be a life-threatening mistake; besides, life is short and my reading list is long.

Every so often, though, I make a mistake and forget. After I finish reading all the advertisements in my subway car, I will, occasionally, surreptitiously check out my fellow passengers. While many of them are generally checking out a novel of some sort, an equal number usually have their noses stuck in a school book.

It's cool to see so many people working on their education. Of course, the vast majority of them are studying to become geriatric nurses, which is a great idea given that the Baby Boomer generation is rapidly approaching old age. After all, these are the people who have demanded special attention for most of the last sixty years, and there's no reason to expect that they're going to get any less selfish as they take the slow walk into the great unknown. (For the record, if you're looking for job security and a good wage over the next twenty or thirty years, you might want to learn how to change bedpans and dispense Geritol.)

A privately funded program in a public school in Manhattan offers kids up to $50 for doing well on standardized tests. Schools across the country are experimenting with incentive programs that reward students for everything from showing up to school, to doing well on tests, to getting good grades overall.

Is this just a sign of the times? Or is it something that we should frown upon? I'm a believer that kids should go to school and they should learn because it is the right thing to do. You can't get ahead if you can't read. Yet these days, it seems that fewer students and families value education the way we used to.

I will be interested to see if these incentive programs really do any good. Part of me thinks that the students who already try hard will keep doing so, while the majority of those who don't want an education will not take advantage of this opportunity. I hope I'm wrong.

I am glad, though, that the incentive programs are being paid for with private funds. I do think a case could be made for better ways to spend that money, but so long as it is not paid by the taxpayers, I don't really care. Oh, and the teacher has an incentive too: If the class improves enough, she can get a bonus up to $3,000.

Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.

What follows is a "My View" column that I wrote for the Cape Cod Times while I was in high school. I am posting it here as my response to Tennessee's decision to require financial literacy classes:

We are approaching a retirement crisis. The average baby boomer household has a net worth of about $100,000, less than one-sixth of what most experts agree is needed for retirement. According to a recent article by actor, economist and writer Ben Stein, retiring baby boomers are headed for a decline in their standard of living similar to the one that swept this country in the 1930s. With the Social Security system that was supposed to serve as a safety net in limbo, pundits are lining up to blame just about everyone for the boomers' dismal financial situation. Some blame the politicians. Others blame a materialistic consumer culture characterized by conspicuous consumption. But I think there's one institution that no one is talking about that deserves a giant share of the blame: schools.

Americans have made poor decisions with money (a savings rate of zero, compared with the average Chinese household's 40% savings rate), landing themselves in the precarious position they are now in. That's largely a result of financial illiteracy. Far from correcting this problem, the schools have ignored it, and kids still know nothing about money.

An article on Consumerist today, Report Card on Personal Finance Education Nationwide stirred up memories for me. The article was prompted by the decision in Tennessee last week to require a personal finance class for all graduating high school students, starting with this year's 7th graders. This is a decision that adds Tennessee to a list of LESS THAN 20% of states that currently have a personal finance education requirement.

Through most of last year, I listened to my son, then a high school senior, rant and rave about the curriculum at his high school. The school requires four years of a foreign language (and at the time there were only two choices, French or Latin) but, you guessed it, not an hour in the curriculum on personal finance. What this means is that students might graduate proficient in translating the Aeneid, but knowing essentially nothing about compounding, investing, stocks and bonds, mortgages etc. Huh?

It's hard to believe that in all of New England, the only state that seemed to actually require financial literacy is the State of Maine.

The Consumerist article includes a map so that you can see where your state stands. Consider sending an email to your superintendent's office.

A piece in the USA Today looks at an emerging, and I would say disturbing new trend: Kids being paid to go to school, get good grades, or attend after-school programs.

And not just parents slipping their kids a few bucks: We're talking about the government cutting kids checks for going to latchkey.

In suburban Atlanta, eighth and eleventh-graders $8 an hour for attending an after-school study program.

Baltimore is set to pay kids as much as $110 for improving their test scores, and even New York fourth graders can win $500 for improving their scores on standardized tests.

There are a few things that come to mind. First, shouldn't kids be grateful for their educational opportunities? Second, doesn't incentivizing fourth graders with large sums of money make these tests even more stressful, and is there any good reason to put little kids under that much pressure?

But a key issue to me -- as someone who was bored out of mind during school -- is that the fact that we have to bribe kids to go to school is indicative of how boring and insipid the work is. Standardized tests and textbooks have taken all the fun out of what should be a time for learning and discovery. Now it's all about drilling.

Why don't we take the money we're going to pay kids for study and use it to develop a curriculum that kid might actually want to study.

I feel compelled to followup on my rant earlier this week ("Kitty Couture: Money Down the Drain") by a reader reminding me that a preschool enrollment race is underway. This is especially true in New York City where 3 year-olds face heavy competition to be accepted at preschools with an annual tuition as high as $30,440. Forbes recently did a piece on the most expensive preschools in America.

It isn't the tuition that bothers me. Infinite money entitles people to whatever expenditures they choose. I don't care that by comparison to the Ethical Culture/Fieldston School rate, the preschool at New York City's prestigious Horace Mann is a more affordable...$26,880. I don't even care - although it is mystifying - that in a 2002 scandal, Smith Barney investment analyst Jack Grubman appeared to have raised the rating of a stock important to Citigroup just as the Citigroup CEO was putting in a good word for Grubman's twins at the prestigious 92ND Street Y Nursery School.

Grubman?