Retirement expert Dan Solin is the author of The Smartest Investment Book You'll Ever Read (Perigee Books 2006) and The Smartest 401(k) Book You'll Ever Read (Perigee Books, June 24, 2008).

Ask him your questions in the comments box and he will answer as many as he can. You can visit his website at Smartestinvestmentbook.com.

Read his most recent "Naked Truth" posts here. This column is designed to provide information about investing for retirement that will be relevant to a large group of readers. If you require legal service or other expert assistance, please seek the services of a competent professional.

Mortgage expert David Reed invites Walletpop readers to ask him questions about real estate financing. Leave your questions in the comment section of this post.

Isn't it time you started reaping the benefits of your local congressman's clout? Not yet ready to ask for a letter of recommendation for West Point? Have no fear because if you are the bearer of student loans and your loan company is shafting you, your congressman may be the key to a happy ending.

Getting some satisfaction with the help of your congressman or woman is so easy anybody can do it. Granted, like all problems and lending issues, it helps if you are in the right and have been paying your lender what the terms state. But this strategy may work even if you are close to being handed off to a collection agency.

As a little background: My wife had all of her student loans through Sallie Mae, affectionately referred to around our house as the devil. Several of these private loans which Ms. Mae was holding on to were pulling in 13.25% interest! We had included some of these loans in an initial federal consolidation which never worked out. Apparently the incoming fax line at Sallie Mae was hooked right up to a paper shredder because they never received our requests to consolidate. We tried again to consolidate my wife's private loans with Wells Fargo, who, just like our federal consolidator, never received a response from Sallie Mae. Fed up with the problems we were having, I did what any rational person would, I called my local news stations call for action. This is where I found out I could contact my congressman to get some satisfaction.

Mortgage expert David Reed invites Walletpop readers to ask him questions about real estate financing. Leave your questions in the comment section of this post.

Q: I am 54. I currently have a 15-yr mtg. 10 yrs left as of this month. Should I consider refinancing to a 30 yr and using the 700+- to invest else where? 5 yrs to have enough equity in house vs. vs 45k in cash to invest in 5 yrs-
thanks. -Steve

A: Two things I noticed: Your current note is five years old, meaning you obtained your current mortgage in 2003 when 15 year rates were in the 4's. Second, in ten years you'll be close to retirement age. Without knowing anything else about your financial picture and assuming you're going to retire in that house, I would hold off from refinancing into a 30 yr mortgage, you'll be paying on that note until you're 84.

If you continue to pay off your current note and retire mortgage free that's like giving yourself an automatic "raise" when you retire. Instead, consider an equity loan on your current property and invest that. That's my take.

Real estate finance expert David Reed is president of CD REED Mortgage Bankers in Austin, TX and author of Mortgage Confidential: What You Need to Know That Your Lender Won't Tell You and Mortgages 101: Quick Answers to over 250 Critical Questions About Your Home Loan.

Mortgage expert David Reed invites Walletpop readers to ask him questions about real estate financing. Leave your questions in the comment section of this post.

Q: David: I applied for a mortgage and got turned down because I didn't have enough income for the house I wanted. My loan officer suggested that I take out a part-time job to get me over the hump. I did get a part-time job but now the lender says they won't accept the part-time income after all. Who's right? The lender or the loan officer?

A: The lender. Unless you can show a two-year history of part-time employment a lender most likely won't use it. When a lender evaluates your loan application they want some sense of certainty your new part-time income is likely to continue well into the future to help you pay the mortgage. Without a history of part-time income, the lender won't be convinced of your intentions to work two jobs.

Real estate finance expert David Reed is president of CD REED Mortgage Bankers in Austin, TX and author of Mortgage Confidential: What You Need to Know That Your Lender Won't Tell You and Mortgages 101: Quick Answers to over 250 Critical Questions About Your Home Loan.

Years ago, my littlest sister and I used to go on summer vacations together. Although we usually ended up with family on Cape Cod or friends in New York City, we would generally plan our routes around out-of-the-way places that we wanted to explore. One year, attracted by its weird name, we decided to visit Poughkeepsie. It was a bust.

The trip, though, was a lot of fun, and we discovered New York's amazing Hudson Valley. We returned a few times that summer and over the ensuing years, and have never failed to be awed by the amazing array of beautiful vistas, outstanding shopping, and wonderful little tourist attractions that lay just off the beaten path. Best of all, the area isn't a major travel destination, which means that it is still relatively inexpensive and not too crowded.

Hyde Park: Ella and I were never all that great at getting an early start, so we reached Poughkeepsie long after dark. We decided to bypass the city and continued to travel north on Route 9. When I saw a sign for Hyde Park, I thought it sounded familiar, so that's where we stopped for the night. The next morning, I walked out to discover that my motel was across the street from Springwood, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's mansion. My sister and I spent a leisurely morning wandering all over the place, checking out the Presidential library, the stables, and the extensive grounds.

Springwood isn't the only mansion in Hyde Park. There's also Eleanor Roosevelt's retreat, Val-Kill, and the Vanderbilt Mansion, both of which are only a few miles from Springwood. Val-Kill is intimate, while the Vanderbilt home is a huge, beautiful Beaux-Arts masterpiece, designed by McKim, Mead, and White. On the other hand, if mansions aren't your thing, you could always try visiting the Culinary Institute of America, which is also located in Hyde Park. In addition to an impressive bookstore, it has four amazing, incredibly well-priced gourmet restaurants.

Our man Abelicio Padilla has been blogging about his personal financial situation and he has been seeking advice for making sound money decisions. I wrote this piece as my input into his situation. If you'd like more background before you proceed, read Abelicio Padilla's interesting blog posts here.

Now here's my input:

It sounds like you have a plan Abe. However, I'd like you to think a little more about if you really want to sell that house. The market is down right now which means you probably won't get your best selling price for it. Also, did you consider that if you sell the house, you'll lose your mortgage interest deduction when you file your taxes? That deduction loss will cut into the monthly savings you expect to get by selling. Even though you won't notice it month to month, you'll feel it when you file your yearly income taxes. Consider also the upset that moving can cause. It's expensive. It will disrupt operations. In the long run It could cost you more than you think.

We need a new refrigerator. We need one badly. The old appliance was given to us by a scrap dealer. It works, but it seems to run absolutely forever and ever and ever. Yeah, it keeps stuff cold, but since we've had it, our electric bill has gone up about 10%. This thing has got to go.

The problem is that we live a very rural lifestyle and shopping for a major appliance means lots of road travel for comparison shopping. So I thought that since this wonderful Internet helped us make the money to purchase the new appliance, I should give it the chance to make the sale. This is where you come in. I am looking for opinions about brands, models and prices. What can you tell me?

Where are the best places to shop online for appliances? Does anyone deliver? What do those energy star ratings really mean? Which brands have the best performance ratings?

Here's your chance, all you appliance dealers and would be consumer advocates. My budget for the appliance is an absolute maximum $2,000, but I'd like to spend significantly less than that. Twin doors would be nice but not critical. We don't need much in the way of fancy interior bins. Now someone out there sell me a brand new refrigerator.

I dare ya.

A reader recently commented that she is sick of hearing financial gurus admonishing people to give up their lattes and save the money toward retirement, buying a house, kid's college fund, etc.

Lillian wrote that "Well if getting a Starbucks every day is the only real luxury I afford myself, I feel that I can afford to miss out on an extra $3,600 that takes five years to save."

I agree with her completely, but here's the thing: the only way to save money is to not spend some of the money that you earn. One of the best ways to reduce spending is to look for little things that slowly but surely drain your bank account but don't provide you with the value that you want for your money.

If spending $3500 a year on lattes is something you want to do -- and are willing to spend less on something else to do it -- go for it!

Think of the "latte factor", as David Bach calls it, as an example of a way that a lot of people spend money without realizing how quickly it adds up. In order to cut back on frivolous expenditures, it's good to look at how much they cost on an annualized basis: and then you can decide which ones you want to cut out. If lattes don't qualify as something you want to cut out, that's fine as long as you can find another way to save some money. $1.69 per bottle Vitamin Water perhaps?

In order for multi-level marketing companies not to qualify as pyramid schemes, you have to believe that people participate to acquire products. Skeptics, including myself and WalletPop's Tracy Coenen, believe that in many cases, the products simply serve as cover for a scheme that is not different from a chain letter in any meaningful way.

The strength of multi-level marketing recruiting efforts in times of economic weakness and uncertainty seem to reinforce my belief that these "business opportunities" are little, and often nothing, more than endless chain recruitment schemes.

In 2002, Entrepreneur columnist Michael L. Sheffield responded to a reader who was worried that her network marketing business would suffer in step with the general economic malaise that was gripping the country at the time:

A friend e-mailed me with a question about a home equity loan her family is considering. They're going through a credit union, and weighing whether to get a loan at a 15-year term, with 6.75% or Prime minus 50 bps, or a 30-year term with 7.00% or Prime minus 25 bps. "But we'll probably be selling the house in five years!" she said. "What should we do?"

I explained to her that when she was selling really shouldn't weigh into this decision; the terms of the home equity loan almost certainly indicate that it will be paid off whenever the house is sold (it's a "material change" and you can't use the equity of a home you don't own anymore as collateral). Mortgages, home equity loans, and home equity lines of credit are rarely carried to the 10-, 15-, 30- or 40-year term on the contracts, as most homeowners sell their houses or refinance their debt every five years or so. As long as the payments for the 15-year term could fit in her budget, I said, she should take that option; the interest rate was lower and that's all that really matters in the medium-term outlook.

Then she explained the unusual terms of this credit union's loans;

Lots of us look at December as not a time of cheer and goodwill toward men, but as a season of dread and resignation. The reason: Just when we're getting a handle on our personal finances, the holidays come along and busts the budget into a million jagged pieces.

Holiday dinners. Decorations. Travel. The notion that you have to buy gifts for everyone, including the postman and your kids' teachers. It all adds up to a sickening sucking sound from you wallet, come your January bank balance and credit card statement.

But with a little forethought, you can manage to escape the holiday season reasonably unscathed. How? Here are a few tips to consider.