I stumbled upon a long-forgotten Starbucks gift card the other day and rejoiced. Here was $10-worth of coffee and treats -- luxuries I no longer allow myself in the name of frugality -- just begging to be spent. And a week before payday, too. Bonus!

Why is finding a gift-card better than finding that proverbial $5 in your pants pocket? Because unlike the five-spot, you can't do anything BUT spend the gift card. No saving it. No redeeming it for cash. No trading it in. You're forced to go out and spend it on what it was intended for. Coffee. Books. Music. Home electronics.

When you've taught yourself to do without, it's a sinful luxury. Not to mention an exciting taste of the way things used to be. For example, I long ago weaned myself off the expensive habit of buying new hardcover books. When something comes out I want, I either put my name on the list for it at the library or borrow it from a less frugal friend. But with a $30 gift certificate to Borders..well? My hand is forced. And doesn't it feel wrong, oh, so deliciously wrong to walk out of there with the latest bestseller in a crisp paper bag? Oh yeah, baby!

As we've reported here on WalletPop, gift cards are growing in popularity. Many retailers are also doing away with pesky expiration dates as well. With the economy going further south every day, I predict these little squares of plastic will take on a new cache. A license to spend, if you will.

So go ahead and give your loved one a vicarious thrill. Hand over that $50 gift certificate to Victoria's Secret or Best Buy and bid them spend, SPEND! On whatever they want!

This time next year, they'll thank you for the experience.

Researchers are now identifying what many of us in mental health already knew -- sometimes people's money problems are a part of their psychological makeup. Their attitudes, beliefs and expectations about money are developed in childhood and can affect how a person handles money their entire life.

Some experts like the Financial Consulate in Hunt Valley, MD., recommends that people recognize their history with money by participating in an exercise called their "Personal Money Story." This historical review can uncover the habits, trends and decisions that work for or against a solid financial standing.

I have long noted in my private practice that people who struggle financially often make the most ridiculous decisions; buying a new aquarium when they can't make the mortgage payment, taking an expensive trip when they just lost their job, etc. They may be able to rationalize, explain and justify what they are doing but it still does not make financial sense.

Take a few minutes to take stock of your financial health. At a minimum you should know how much you need each month to break even, how much you bring in, and what your net worth is. I highly recommend using a financial software program like Quicken or Microsoft Money to keep track of all spending. You will be amazed how money gets frittered away on impulse buying or poor decisions.

Barbara Bartlein is the People Pro. For her FREE e-mail newsletter, please visit: The People Pro.

The Environmental Group WildEarth Guardians says an anachronistic part of the Department of Agriculture spent $117 million last year to kill 2.4 million animals. The Wildlife Services has changed names plenty of times, but dates back to the days when the prevailing wisdom was just to wipe out any animals that got in the way of people. In its defense, the agency says it saves up to four times what it spends in agricultural losses. Of course, those would be private losses and we're spending tax money.

The agency just agreed to start putting out its data in a readable form after pressure from WildEarth Guardians. Meanwhile the animal group estimated that about half of those exterminated were starlings (an invasive bird) but 122,000 were carnivore mammals (like coyote and bear). The Wildlife Services program accidentally knocked off reindeer, pronghorn sheep, foxes, and bald eagles, says WildEarth Guardian's Wendy Keefover-Ring. Their sloppy application of poisons has killed off pet dogs, like Jenna, a lab mix poisoned while hunting rabbits. Most tragically, 10 people have died in aerial shooting programs.

Sure, some ranchers should be compensated for wildlife losses. The government should cooperate so frustrated ranchers don't take matters into their own hands. But the wildlife bureacracy has spread to cover all kinds of entrepreneurs from the cost of doing business. They also kill bears to protect logging companies (bears like seedlings). Federal agents bumped off 300,000 blackbirds who's big crime was eating sunflowers grown for birdseed. Fish farmers get protection from birds, too.

Anyone chafing at the $50-plus it now takes to fill up a car will chuckle at this latest bit of data. According to the U.S. Bureau of Analysis, Americans spent more on gasoline than on vehicles and parts in May and June of this year, when gas prices were reaching new records.

That's the first time that's happened in 26 years. The last time gas exceeded cars and their parts as a percentage of spending was in January 1982. One analyst cited in news reports noted dryly that the trends of higher gas with lower car and truck sales had finally crossed.

U.S. refiners will likely pay an average of $111.11 a barrel for imported oil this year, compared with $67.02 a barrel last year, and $27.21 a barrel in 2002, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

Meanwhile, the auto industry is looking at its worst year since 1993. As of August 1 when companies reported data, sales of cars and light trucks fell 29% at Chrysler LLC, 26% at GM, 15% at Ford, 12% at Toyota and 1.6% at Honda Motor Co.

Last time this happened I wasn't paying as much attention, being in high school and all. There was an energy crisis triggered by the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, which itself came on the heels of the 1973 Arab oil embargo. I remember the gas lines, but none of the belt-tightening. My mom put gas in my car and paid the household bills.

Ignorance is indeed bliss. Now that I'm in her shoes, I'll have to ask her how she actually managed the last time the economy was in this bad of shape. Something tells me it's going to get a lot worse.

Wesabe is an amazing useful personal finance site which provides access to all of your checking and savings accounts under one site in order to better track your finances. I had a chance to chat with Marc Hedlund, the CEO of Wesabe about security, user rights, features, upcoming and the community focus of this excellent site. This article is longer than our normal fare but stick with it if you want to get to know your money using a cool online tool.

The first thing you'll want to know before handing over your banking information to a company is how secure they are. Wesabe provides its users with industry standard encryption to protect your financial data. Unlike their competitor, Mint who uses a third party to handle security and data Wesabe has taken the processes in house and developed their own system. The decision is actually a great one when it comes to security and the rights you have over your data. Marc shared with me that one of the main reasons they built their own system was to be able to offer users a Data Bill of Rights, allowing you to completely delete your data at any time, something third party vendors would have kept. Aside from keeping your passwords and financial information from a company you don't have a business relationship with the Wesabe system also has the ability to get updates about your transactions as often as your bank provides updates providing you with more accurate information.

Another cool feature of being a Wesabe user is that there are currently 4 ways to upload your data based on how much information you want to trust Wesabe with. Three of these methods don't require that you provide Wesabe with any of your banking credentials and the fourth is an automatic uploader which logs in and updates your account information throughout the day after you provide your login information to Wesabe. Many users begin with the manual upload and as their trust in Wesabe grows, move to more automatic methods of uploading. The fully automatic uploader came about from user requests and is the method that Marc uses to upload to Wesabe.

One woman spent it on training her puppy. Another couple spent theirs fixing their car. One woman bought a fancy Dyson vacuum cleaner and commented, (I paraphrase here) "I hope it sucks as good and long as this president and administration has." Ouch. But, you know, a valid observation, nicely tied into the current political/economic morass which produced such notions as economic stimulus checks in the first place.

How'd you spend your stimulus check? Before you tell us, check out others who've gone before you. It's all here at Howispentmystimulus.com.

Started by a Park Slope (Brooklyn) resident Rudy Adler, the site is a collaborative effort to collect the stories of ordinary Americans and their decidedly un-ordinary windfalls. It's fascinating reading. And everyone is invited to post their own tale, along with a photo of the purchase.

Even more interesting are the category breakouts. There are 40 entries for Gifts and Donations, 63 for Invest/Savings, and 104 for Travel/Vacation. There are 80 posts under the Debt/Credit Card category. And 95 classified as "other." What's the story here? You'll just have to go investigate yourself.

Did you know that, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, consumer spending actually increased by 0.4% in March? That's right: statistics show that the United States' economy, as indicated by consumer spending, is actually growing!

Well, that's a little bit of an exaggeration. Actually, if you were to account for inflation, consumer spending has risen by an anemic 0.1%. The other 0.3% increase was due to rising prices, specifically the increased cost of food and energy.

Basically, people are buying the exact same things that they were buying a month ago, but are now paying more for those items. And, to be honest, there doesn't seem to be a light at the end of this tunnel. Energy costs are probably going to keep on rising, at least for the time being, and food prices will probably keep pace. Basically, as economists keep telling us, we are at the tail-end of a boom cycle and we can look forward to an economy that will now readjust to reflect its actual dimensions.

Yes, we all know that food prices are rising. It's worth remembering that this isn't just happening in the United States but that food prices have risen worldwide. If you look at the global picture, you won't complain about paying $4.00 for a gallon of milk. Bottom line? We are still food rich and we have lots of alternatives if we don't want to pay more for groceries.

Thinking about food purchasing and preparation is another opportunity that the recession brings for recalibrating how we live and spend. We eat and spend too much and move around too little.

Here's a challenge.Take a small spiral notebook and use to it keep track of what you eat and what you pay for the next week. Include the bottle of diet coke that you buy at the gas station, the $28 you spend on take-out, the totals at the grocery store, the five cups of coffee or vitamin water. At the end of the week, sit down with the local store circulars and see whether you can't easily feed your family for less than 2/3 of that amount.

Relative to the operations of my own household, rising oil prices have had little negative impact, although we have had to change the way we do some things here. We now group our motor trips better to make better use of our miles per gallon. We also think a little harder about our power usage, but that's what we Americans do, we adjust.

Basically, up to this point, rising fuel costs have increased the expense of our household operations here by perhaps ten to fifteen percent. We've absorbed that increase quite nicely by planning our driving more carefully, by making sure lights are turned off in unused rooms and by cutting out a few foodstuffs which we probably shouldn't be eating anyway. I'd like to think that rising energy costs are leading us to give greater consideration to our spending and energy usage. In some ways perhaps increased energy costs have done us a favor, yes? Personally, I estimate that my household could withstand an increase in the price of gasoline up to $6 a gallon before going into serious stress. I hope it doesn't come to that, but it could.

It's a collection of little things which make up the body of our readjustment. I pick up items or do errands on my way to work, whereas in times past we would probably have made an extra trip into town. We more closely estimate usage of certain grocery items such as bread, toilet paper and milk so purchases will last through until the next weekly grocery shopping trip. We think about what things we're going into the refrigerator for before going in there to get them and we try to keep things in there somewhat organized so we can find what we need and get out. My wife is the light switch police and she reminds my daughter and me to turn off the light as we're leaving rooms. She does it almost intuitively even before we exit. Doors get closed tightly the first time. Telephone calls have been shortened. We spend more time together in the same room. Leftovers get fed to the dog less often.

Online banking saves us trips to the bank. Paying our auto insurance quarterly rather than monthly saves us about $125 every six months. Coffee is made at home and carried out in thermal cups. We use our debit cards religiously, saving us money on the reordering of checks. It's a matter of giving logistical scrutiny to the things we had previously been taking for granted. The real upside is that fiscal, social and consumer responsibility come with their own silently compounding benefits and we're building the savings accounts to prove it.

In my last post I told you of my problems. About how I love "things." I also talked about how I would track my spending for a week and post it here, for ALL to see. I must say I was a little hesitant in the beginning. "Do I really want EVERYONE to be able to see my bad habits," I told myself. I even delayed this post a few days while I tossed around the idea of doing this. But look no further...here it is...7 days of spending...courtesy of the lax spender.

02/13/2008 breakfast: $7.
02/13/2008 Carlene lunch: $4.
02/14/2008 water bill: $132.
02/14/2008 lunch: $9.42
02/15/2008 lunch: $30.
02/15/2008 New Phone: $300.
02/15/2008 Shaq Jersey: $100.
02/16/2008 new phone: $360.
02/17/2008 dinner: $12.
02/17/2008 lunch : $34.

I know this is a tough concept. And I've mentioned it before. And it goes something like this: If money that doesn't really belong to you ends up in your bank account, don't plan on keeping it and don't spend it. You have a moral and legal obligation to return that money to the rightful owner.

Today's rocket scientist is Benjamin Lovell. It turns out that Benjamin Lovell #1 received $5 million in his bank account, which was really meant for Benjamin Lovell #2. Number One claims he tried to tell the bank the money wasn't his and they told him it was. Okay, I can see how this conversation went (if it even happened). "Hello bank... this is Benjamin Lovell. You gave me $5 million that's not really mine." Bank: "Benjamin Lovell? Oh yes, that's your money." And it was a different Benjamin Lovell's money.

But the guy knew it was a mistake and ran out and promptly spent $2 million. He was wrong, and he knows it. I think with $5 million on the line, there are several things he could have tried to give back the money. And by all means, he knew he should not spend the money. It wasn't his. He knew it. And now he's being charged as a criminal. Good.

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.

As if the government doesn't get a bad enough rap -- admittedly, frequently deserved -- now there's this. The Federal Times just reported on a new survey that just came out on Tuesday, which suggests that contractors don't profit from government work as much as is commonly thought. The survey was conducted by Grant Thornton, who isn't some suave movie actor or a relative to Cary Grant. Just in case you thought so. Obviously, I didn't. I knew from the start that it was a huge accounting/consulting firm. Really.

So, anyway, 69% of government contractors last year made profits of less than 10 percent from their government business, and seven percent of those contractors actually made no profits. Only 12 percent of the more than 100 government contractors queried brought in more than 15 percent from their government contracts in fiscal 2006.

And some of the reasons companies aren't making profits? Surprisingly, there's an awful lot of red tape involved when working with the government. I, for one, as Captain Renault in Casablanca famously said, "Shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here." OK, the quote doesn't match up completely to this example.

I don't know anyone who enjoys living on a budget. I do know some that believe this necessary evil is what helped them get out of debt and is keeping them debt free. Yes, putting yourself on a budget does sound like a grim thing to do, but if you want to get a handle on your spending it's an absolute necessity.

In the post, "Finding the cash to pay down debt," I talk about the importance of keeping a spending journal for the month and how you can use that exercise to find the extra cash you need to pay down debt. After you get that debt pay-down started, you can solidify your decision to get your finances under control by developing a budget based on what you find in the analysis of your spending. List all the 1s and 2s. They will become the core of your budget. Decide which 3s you want to leave in as part of spending.

I finally figured out how I can save a lot of money.

Become Amish.

Or at least start living like the Amish. Now, hear me out for a moment. I'm not thinking I would do this forever, maybe just a year. I could save a bundle on electricity, and there would be no Internet, telephone or cable charges to pay for. In one year, I will have saved up plenty of money, and I could use it to pay off debts and sock into savings. I don't see a problem with work. Sure, I need the Internet, but I could use my laptop and work from libraries, coffee houses and restaurants with free wi-fi service. Of course, my daughters and wife would probably stage a mutiny, and so I need to think about this.

$1600. That is the total of our monthly bills. That number doesn't sound too bad, until I tell you that it doesn't include utilities, bills, and all those other glamorous things we all must have. Nope...that is for the mortgage, the wife's car and the Harley Davidson. $1600.

In February of 2007 this was no problem. I had a great job with great pay. I also had this degree with $20,000 in student loans behind it that I wasn't using. I was also away from home a lot. I missed my family. So I did the logical thing; found a job closer to home, and it was a much better job.

Currently I am an IT Technician for the local school district. I actually received a pay raise with this new career. I earn almost $4,000 a year more now. Strangely enough, I get less on my checks, about $200 a check less. There is a lot of mandatory deductions in education. Like the mandatory retirement account (which is a great thing, and my employer matches about 9% of my salary) and the insurance. That's a kicker. Almost $300 a month. I think I need to get sick more often...get some of that money back. So as you can see, I got a raise, but in reality I got a pay cut.