This post is part of a series about real-life signs we're in a recession.

Tobias Buckell tells me that the dojo in his hometown has added a new side business to its martial arts; balloons. This is one example of a growing movement of small businesses compensating for falling sales by adding new business products, sometimes with comedic results.

In my neighborhood, the local model train shop is now also making banners. Signs announcing the lure of 'free internet inside' are on every business door except the portable toilets.

I see the potential for ancillary businesses as a great way to weather the recession. For example-

• A combination funeral parlor and Ebay shop (sell off the estate)
• Why not cross Terrier breeding with ditch digging?
• A diaper service / defumigating service would be a natural.
• Tobacconists could make a mint selling bottled oxygen.
• Why don't laundromats sell deodorant?
• How about a combination pizza parlor & Weight Watcher's center?
• An optometrist that runs a car body shop on the side.
• And pick your politician – shouldn't they be selling bottled gas?

What is the funniest or oddest business combination you've seen?

This post is part of a series about real-life signs we're in a recession.

Picture this, thrift store brethren: A woman in a late model Mercedes parks next to you and wanders into your favorite thrift store. Once inside, you notice her picking through the clothes, the bags, the belts, and eyeballing one of several interesting pieces of furniture.

What's going on, you wonder, not a little put out by the sight of an apparently well-off member of society making use of "your" affordable consumer items.

What's going on here is an over-all belt-tightening. As the economy loses steam, people fear for the jobs, and the house-ATM machine dries up, people are looking at all the ways they can save. Frugality has suddenly become "in."

This post is part of a series about real-life signs we're in a recession.

Move over Pampered Chef and Mary Kay. The latest in-home sales "party" concept has reversed the usual guest-to-rep cash flow. Instead of pixie-sized portions of a demonstration omelet, or a makeover that makes your dog bark at you when you get home, the new guest takeaway is cash.

So claim the many "gold party" services cropping up (curiously, overwhelmingly headquartered in Detroit). Companies like My Gold Party and Gold Party by ADI offer to help convert your friends' gold to cash, either by supplying you (for a fee) with the equipment and training for do-it-yourself appraisals or by sending a representative to your home who will set up shop in your kitchen.

Trading your bling-bling for cash is nothing new, of course. Many folks have turned to the jewelry chest when times are hard. Traditionally, you don a scarf and dark glasses and do it quietly in a back room across town. What's new is the idea that parting with Mom's locket or Dad's pocket watch is a rollicking good way to spend a Friday night, accompanied by spinach dip and boxed wine.

As has been reported by WalletPop previously, would-be gold brokers should proceed with caution, particularly if they are required to make an investment upfront. And there are compelling arguments for keeping the lid on your jewelry box for now.

Kyran Pittman blogs at Notes to Self.

This post is part of a series about real-life signs we're in a recession.

As a city dweller, I've always found visiting Costco with my parents something of a treat. The cheap food at huge quantities, the surprisingly affordable gadgets, the mounds and mounds of remarkably affordable clothes.

I would make an afternoon of it a couple of times a year, bring my kids, wander the aisles with my folks and sample the free goodies. At check-out time, the bill would inevitably come to something in the $200 to $300 range, I'd write a check to my Dad, and we'd leave feeling like we had a kind of expensive but amusing family outing. I didn't join Costco since the idea of paying a fee to save money on purchases just didn't make sense to me. And how often would I really get there?

But finally, just a month or so ago, in my own personal sign of recession, I decided that it was time for me to join Costco myself. I know I'm not alone. Costco is one of the few retailers doing pretty well these days. Lots of Americans are worrying about the rising price of food. No matter how secure my husband and I feel in our own jobs, we see rising job insecurity all around us. Given that backdrop, I decided it really is worth it to pay $50 to join the Costco club.

This post is part of a series about real-life signs we're in a recession.

It has been fun for the past year, since my son was born, driving around in a 1999 Ford Taurus with three kids crammed into the back seat. But the plan has long been to buy a minivan.

The only one my eight-year-old daughter, who loves our Taurus almost as much as my husband, would consent to is the new Dodge Grand Caravan, for 2008. That's because it is the one with the seats that spin and face backwards and the little pop-in table for in-van picnicking.

Am I a sucker for swivel and go seating? Yes! I thought we had an easy decision and I even joined Costco (more on that decision) to take advantage of their no-haggle car buying program. I had my special incentives and zero percent financing deals all lined up when I went to the nearest participating dealer, ready to buy.

Only problem: I thought I could buy a car for about $22,000. But when I got done talking to the salesman, he had me convinced I needed a model that cost $36,000. With my cheap financing deal, that was still $1,000 a month.

This post is part of a series about real-life signs we're in a recession.

My brother-in-law recently wound up paying a lot more than he expected when he left my nephew's Toyota Tacoma in the Oakland Airport's long-term parking for the weekend. When he returned from his trip and turned the key in the ignition, the truck let out a roar that would deafen even the most hardened Harley driver, and David knew he'd joined the growing number of victims of catalytic converter theft nationwide.

Thieves have taken to removing catalytic converters, which help control emissions, from the underside of parked vehicles. The converters contain trace amounts of platinum and rhodium--which go for about $2,054 and $9,278 per ounce, respectively--and can be sold on the black market for a couple hundred dollars each. Victims, however, pay much more than that for replacement parts: My brother-in-law shelled out almost $2,000 for a new converter for my nephew's truck.

While David has pledged to use only short-term parking at the airport from now on, that precaution might not be enough. For one thing, trucks like the Tacoma and SUVs like the Toyota 4Runner--the vehicle David owns and drives to the train station each morning--are among the hardest hit since they sit high off the ground, making their catalytic converters easy to remove from underneath. For another, those who are of the mind to slide under a vehicle with hacksaw in hand don't seem to be picky about where they strike: Reports of catalytic converter thefts have come from day care centers in Memphis, carpool lots in Michigan and car dealerships in Ohio.

Since this is a crime of opportunity--and since thieves are grabbing every opportunity they can--prevention is tricky. Seems the best way to avoid becoming a victim is to drive low to the ground. Or maybe just ride a Harley.

When you want tips on what to do when you're low on cash, talk to a freelance writer. We're all very well-adjusted to the feast-or-famine lifestyle, thank you very much. Some months we're out of debt and investing our extra. Other months, we're digging through coat pockets for milk money.

Tragically, there's a lot more famine than feast most years. So we know how to live close to the bone. Below I outline a few trade secrets developed over the many years I've spent living on the edge of financial disaster. These might sound pathetic, but hey. They work. And I've never once been late with the rent.

Stash your Cash -- In feast times, plan for famine. In other words, stash your cash. When times are fat, always tuck away cash reserves, maybe a couple of hundred, in twenties, for that rainy day. When you have NO MORE money at all, this stash will buy your kids' milk and you a gallon of gasoline so you can drive to that temp job.

Parents of college-bound seniors everywhere are blanching. A lot of financial ugliness is coming down the pike, and here you are, ready to be hit with a whole new phalanx of expenses. What's a parent to do?

Start by debunking the stereotype of having to pay full ride for your child. There are lots of options for getting your kid educated without having to bust the bank. You and junior just have to be prepared to think out of the box.

First, strongly consider the community college option. Unless your kid got a full ride to their first pick university, It makes too strong financial sense not to examine this opportunity closely.

My PhD reads psychology, not economics, so I won't bet the house on the Bush stimulus package's chances of preventing or softening a recession.

But I have counseled and coached many who were outright terminated, downsized out, or who feared a pink slip in their next pay envelope. The conversations typically move from money to the things that more fundamentally bring us fulfillment -- or that should. The menu usually includes priority setting and value re-ordering, with a healthy side of blessing counting.

Fear of job loss or not, times like these are ripe for thinking ahead to how we'll feel, and what we'll do when we retire, and the regular paycheck stops. (Yes, there are Social Security checks, pension benefits and annuity streams. But trust me, none of these feel as "earned" as a paycheck.)

When my wife and I moved to New York from the relative comfort of Southwest Virginia, we were optimistic about our job prospects. She had a verbal promise of employment from a major cosmetics company, and I had a placement coordinator who was very excited about my options. However, her cosmetics job evaporated, my coordinator disappeared, the movers cheated us, etc., etc. Bottom line, we soon found ourselves counting pennies and scrambling for employment. We landed on our feet, but there were a few scary months in which we got behind on the bills and found ourselves questioning our decisions, our move to New York, and even our sanity. In the process, I learned a little bit about the hierarchy of needs.

I was already familiar with Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which organizes human growth according to needs, with food and air at the bottom and morality at the top. However, as my wife and I were watching our resources dwindle, most of Maslow's higher needs went straight out the window. I'm not saying that I don't place a high price on morality. I'm just saying that when my family is hungry my morality goes on sale.

After I dispensed with Maslow, I developed the following hierarchy of needs. If you find yourself out of work and watching pennies, this little list might be of some use:

Physiological needs: Food, water, air, shelter. Luckily, air is usually free. For the other three, though, there is a lot of leeway. To put it bluntly, food is a need; fillet mignon isn't. If you're looking down the barrel of poverty, cut back on eating out and consider foods that are less expensive. Salmon steaks are out and hamburger is in.

We may or may not be headed into a recession. It depends upon which economist you believe, but it is time to assess your risk exposure and possibly reallocate your portfolio holdings. Don't panic and start selling just because you hear warnings of a recession. You may be locking in loses that are not necessary, especially if the assets in your portfolio are being held for the long-term and you won't need them for ten years or more years.

Step 1 - Take Stock of Your Stock/Mutual Fund/Bond Holdings: Review your holdings and ask yourself these questions: Did your holdings perform the way you expected them to do when you first bought them? Did they do better? Did they do worse? Do you think they are still a good choice based on your investment horizon? Is your allocation out of whack? For example, did you buy some aggressive growth stocks or mutual funds that are now a much larger portion of your portfolio than you think wise.

Step 2 - Sell any stocks or mutual funds you determine don't match your current goals: As you look through your portfolio and find holdings you really don't want any more, bite the bullet, take the loss (if there is one) and don't risk an even greater loss if we do end up in a full-blown recession. Hold on to any cash generated for buying opportunities once the current stock market correction has finished doing its damage.

With so much talk of recession, many retirees I talk to are in total panic and fear that they will run out of money during retirement. Take a breath, slow down and carefully assess your time horizon for when you'll actually need the money. Many retirees are living 20 to 30 years in retirement, so they need to have stocks in their portfolio -- even if the market is extra risky right now.

Cash equivalents and bonds will not have enough growth to offset inflation. So unless you have enough cash already saved to live on until you die and you don't need that cash to grow to keep up with inflation, you should have a portion of your portfolio in stocks.

How do you assess how much should be in stocks, how much in bonds and how much in cash equivalents? That's a difficult question to answer. If you haven't already figured that out given your current financial picture, I strongly recommend you sit down with a Certified Financial Planner now. I recommend that you find a fee-based planner and not a planner who will earn commissions based on what they recommend. If you don't know a good planner, search for one in your area at the Financial Planning Association.

Keep assets in cash that you need in the next two years. For safety and to avoid being forced to sell holdings at a loss just because you need cash, always be certain that you have at least two years of your cash requirements in the most liquid types of holdings -- money market funds, CDs or savings accounts. With these types of holdings, you never have to worry if the country slips into a recession. As you figure out how much cash you need, consider monthly income such as Social Security benefits, pension benefits and other income you know you can count each month.