My wife and I have differing philosophies when it comes to Christmas cards; she likes to choose beautiful cards and send them to everyone we know, whereas I look for cards in bulk and try to shave the list down each year. Because of my Christmas card habits and the fact that I am constantly turning off the tree to save electricity, I've been dubbed "The Grinch" in our household. But this year my "heart grew 3 times larger" when my wife shared her new idea to save money on sending out cards!

Amber had a great idea, to write out all of our cards before we go to Thanksgiving celebrations this week so that we can hand them out when we see our families on Thursday. Since my parent's families are large enough that they could each field their own football team, we'll save quite a bit on postage. We'll also be handing out cards to friends as we get together over the next month, rather than having the mailman deliver them.

The Post Office will still be delivering cards to people who live far away, but we'll be hand delivering close to 80% of our cards. On top of saving over $20 in postage, hand delivering the cards is another great excuse to catch up with friends and family. If you plan to save postage this year, you only have a few days left so you better get writing!

Magazine and catalog publishers know that everybody hates blow-in cards -- the postcards that fall out when you read. Yet they keep on putting them in. I just got a new WIRED Magazine with three blow in cards and a fashion supplement I won't read, all bound up in a polybag.

Like many consumers, I'm tempted to send the blow-in cards back blank. Many people have suggested this over the years. But how much will it really cost WIRED and dissuade them from these totally annoying, eco-unfriendly tactics? How many people would it take to do it? According to Direct Marketing Magazine, they do it because the cost of blowing in a card that I'll ignore is about half the cost of sending out a letter I'll ignore. But the response rate is abysmal: only 0.35%. That means they have to do 300 cards to get one back. The 2006 story put the cost at $30 to $40 per thousand.

If WIRED conformed to all those norms, it would be spending about 3.5 cents per card put in the magazine and roughly $10 for every card it gets back. (It's offering subscriptions at only $8 year, but that's part of the fuzzy economics of magazines today, which are supported more by ads than sales.)

I checked with the post office to see how much postage they would pay for every card returned. A high volume mailer like WIRED has to pay several thousand dollars a year in fees, then 24.7 cents per card actual postage and .006 cents for processing under its special Business Reply Mail permit. So, basically it's a quarter for every postcard. Let's assume WIRED wouldn't consider the blow-in cards attractive if the cost doubled -- making it the same price as mailing a letter. What would it take for the process to cost $30 more per thousand? At 25 cents a pop, it means that 120 of 1,000 postcards would have to make it to the mailbox. That's what I think it would take to get the blow-in cards to stop: better than one in 10 people sending the cards back blank.

Are you up for joining me?

Although New York is definitely not the book wonderland that it once was, it still has quite a few places for the hard-core bibliophile to curl up, search the stacks, and find a great book at a great price.

However, as a cheapskate and recovering bookaholic, I tend to check out books from the library first, choosing only to buy the ones that I really, really need. By following this method, I've managed to cut down my yearly book purchases to only a few dozen volumes; by my standards, this is just a small fix, a little something to get me through.

This, by the way, is the bibliomaniac version of methadone treatment.

First class postage is going from 41 cents to 42 cents for a regular sized envelope on Monday. And the U.S. Postal Service is selling tons of "Forever stamps" to people who want to save a penny. I'm all for being frugal, but rushing out to buy special stamps that will save me a penny per envelope isn't high on my priority list. (Especially since I use so few stamps these days thanks to online bill pay.)

Since the Forever stamp was created, the USPS has sold about 6 billion of them. The stamps are sold at the current postage rate, but can be used at any time in the future. So you can buy them today for 41 cents each and still use them when the rate goes up to 42 cents or higher. And there are lots of people doing just that this week.

I guess it makes sense. That penny you save is 2.4% of the current postage rate. Depending on when you use a Forever stamp, that could be considered quite an investment. But I'm not impressed enough to go buy any. I probably mail about 5 envelopes a month. I'm not wasting my time going to the post office to buy special stamps just so I can save 5 cents a month. I'll leave the Forever stamps for the other postal customers who are excited about them.

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.

I don't know about you, but for some reason, every time postage goes up, I feel like it "just" went up! I know it only happens about once a year or something like that, but it seems like it just happened.

Starting May 12, postage is being increased again. My sarcastic self thinks this must be as a thank you for the awesome, magnificent service we get from the United States Postal Service. You know... that envelope I got today that was black and looked like it had been run over by a car about six times? Yeah... thanks for that one.

So here are the new rates: 42 cents to mail a first class letter, 27 cents for a post card, and certified mail is $2.70. Assorted other prices are going up as well. And you can now plan on an increase every May, as a new law called The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act says the post office has to adjust prices each year.

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.