WalletPop

Just because those with higher education have lower death rates doesn't mean that bachelor's degrees are all they are cracked up to be either. In an column for the Chronicle of Higher Education Marty Nemko, a college consultant and author, shares his view that the bachelor's degree may be the most overrated product in America. Marty cites many factors and studies in reaching this conclusion but the key factor seems to be under-prepared students. Thankfully Nemko provides more than a headline by linking to supporting facts and most importantly offering suggestions to fix the problem!

Doesn't the under-preparation of students for college speak more about the job high schools are able to do than the job that colleges are doing? Not that I can blame the high schools who have to spend a significant chunk of time on standardized test taking rather than instilling knowledge in children. Sadly even a high percentage of students who are prepared coming out of high school won't make enough in the long run to justify the cost of a bachelor's degree. Another one of the facts Nemko cites is that the literacy rate amongst college graduates is currently declining. Take a second to absorb that; the number of illiterate college graduates is rising!

I grew up working (grudgingly) in my parent's garden. Every year, as I hilled potatoes, I wondered why we grew the same vegetables that were on sale dirt cheap in the grocery store. I still wonder that as I see people plant zucchini, tomatoes and green beans, veggies that are practically given away during the height of the season.

Instead, perhaps gardeners should concentrate on those items that they pay a hefty price for. If I were planning a garden strictly on saving the most money, I'd include--

• Yellow and red peppers: no harder to grow than green ones, and sliced and bagged, they freeze well.
• Basil, cilantro, and parsley: A friend makes his pesto in huge batches and freezes it in ice cube trays, a perfect one-meal size. The cost of buying fresh herbs is many times its cost to grow.
• Brussels Sprouts: An easy crop to grow and infinitely better fresh than frozen, the price never seems reasonable at the grocery store.
• Jalapeno and serrano peppers: Also sold at a premium, these will last a long time in the crisper, especially if stored in bags specially made to prolong the life of greenstuff. Note: keep them well away from your other peppers, so they don't cross-pollinate and provide a hot surprise.
• Sugar snap peas: another vegetable easy to grow but expensive to buy, it is delicious raw or cooked.

What veggies could you save the most money on by growing yourself?

A church in Georgia has come up with a great new idea to get people to come to church: A gas card giveaway. Yes, worshipers are being lured in by the possibility of winning one of two $500 gas cards being given away by First Baptist Church of Snellville.

Church attendance is generally a good idea, but if someone has to offer a prize in order for you to show up, I think you've got problems. Are we really that pathetic of a generation? It used to be a foregone conclusion that you went to church in order to pray, worship, and be a part of a religious community. Now people are only going if they can win material goods?

The cheating was simple: New England Patriots staff members videotaped the signals of opposing teams. That's not allowed by the National Football League. The team got almost no punishment for their cheating. (A relatively light fine and the loss of a first-round draft pick.) End of story.

Unless you're a United States Senator. Then you must suggest that taxpayer money be spent investigating these football shenanigans. No, I'm not kidding. Senator Arlen Specter says he wants an investigation done because the NFL hasn't done enough about the cheating.

Is he serious? The cheating was bad. The lack of punishment was worse. But it's football, for pete's sake. Are any other teams really complaining? No. (Although I promise you if it was my beloved Green Bay Packers who cheated, we'd never hear the end of it... ever.)

But no one really cares anymore. So just leave it alone. There are plenty of other uses for our tax money. And the fact that there was a huge investigation into steroids in Major League Baseball does not mean that we should throw away more taxpayer money on an essentially meaningless "investigation" of professional football. Next issue of national importance, please.

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.

This post is part of our series ranking the top 25 bygone products and trends we'd like to see return.

Devotees of M*A*S*H will remember Radar O'Reilly's devotion to the purple soft drink Grape Nehi, a soft drink that has sadly disappeared from shelves of American grocery stores. Since the mid-1920s, it was iconic of rural America, the America of ice-chest coolers where bib-overalled farmers parched from the fields dropped a couple of pennies on the counter and fished an ice-cold Nehi from the icy water depths.

To tell the truth, cold was the salient word, because the flavor of Grape Nehi was to real grapes as lightening bugs are to lightning (Thanks, Mark Twain.) The flavor was much closer to summer-camp bug juice, cloyingly sweet. Cold, though, it poured down a boy's throat like ambrosia.

Nehi changed its name to reflect the popularity of its premier brand, RC Cola, many years ago, Grape Nehi is still available from Hometown Favorites, but unless they deliver it in its own floor cooler, it just won't taste the same.

What sodas were part of your childhood?

Restaurants are feeling the pinch in two directions. With money tight, consumers are cutting back on how often they dine out. Meantime, food costs more. Way more.

Egg prices have doubled in the last six months. Dairy, chicken, beer and bread crumb prices are all climbing higher. Even when the core commodity escapes the trend, packaged ingredients and other restaurant supplies are more expensive as the costs of transportation climb due to higher fuel prices.

When people do go out, they are ordering less. "Appetizer sales are down. Dessert sales can almost disappear," says Dan Simons, principal at Vucurevich Simons Advisory Group, a restaurant consulting firm. "And the most expensive items on the menu aren't sold as much."

Restaurants know there's a limit to how much they can raise prices without driving off already broke customers. So for now, many are looking for ways to raise prices and cut costs that won't be too obvious.

The next time you go out -- if you can afford to go out at all -- see if you can find your favorite restaurant working any of these old gimmicks. Read on and you may even learn some tricks you can use to stretch a buck in your kitchen at home:

Cut back on portions:

Restaurants normally spend between 25% and 40% of their budgets on food, according to Barry Brown, president of Profit Strategies Solutions, which sells software for restaurants to manage inventory and profitability.

So if they can make a smaller hamburger and still sell it for the same price, their profits go up. Milk shakes at family diners that could once be split three-ways may now truly be single serve. There are reports of some restaurants buying smaller plates so customers won't notice they have reduced portions and chefs won't be tempted to heap on food to make dishes look appealing.

Eric Arthur, president of Marketplace Management Group, a restaurant procurement company in Collierville, Tenn., expects to see more junior-sized portions offered on menus. "You might have a shot-glass-sized dessert. It gives the customer the opportunity to say 'I can still have some dessert' and it gives the owner the opportunity to still add a dollar to the bill," says Arthur.

"Americans have been kind of spoiled. We have supersized everything," Arthur says. "That's not necessarily the way it is in the rest of the world."

Cut back on the most expensive ingredients:

Maybe the recipe calls for five sticks of butter. In good times, the baker adds six because she thinks it tastes better. But in tough times, she'll stick to five (or worse, substitute a stick or two of margarine in the recipe). The chef may prefer to load up on shrimp when preparing his signature gumbo, but he knows his job depends on restricting the number to four or five per serving.

Every day, WalletPop will be bringing you information about a fantastic freebie. Like what you see? Check back tomorrow for more!

Dunkin' Donuts is making a big push to capture a bigger share of the grocery store coffee market, and they're giving away coffee to make it happen!

Just fill out this quick form and they'll mail you a 1.1 ounce Original Blend sample pouch.

Want more free coffee? Seattle's Best Coffee is also offering free samples.

When it comes to humor, I have to admit that I'm not proud. While I love to spend hours setting up elaborate practical jokes, and will often compose brilliant double, triple, or even quadruple-entendres, I'm not above going for the low-hanging fruit. I will, if the opportunity arises, resort to fart jokes, idiotic puns, and even slapstick. Anything to get a laugh.

With that in mind, it's hardly surprising that I sometimes descend to the lowest of the low: cheap translation humor. For example, I have a Scottish cookbook, passed on to me by my mother, that has a recipe for "Roastit Bubblyjock wi' Cheston Crappin." While there's nothing funny about roasted turkey with chestnut stuffing, roastit bubblyjock had me laughing for months. Frankly, it still brings a smile to my face. The same goes for "Spotted Dick with Custard," which was a standard dessert at my office canteen when I worked in the UK. Am I immature for giggling like a schoolgirl whenever it was on the menu? Yes, I am. Did that stop me from offering to let co-workers take a bite of my spotted dick? No, it didn't.

Recently, one of my Walletpop colleagues gave me a link to a site that carried a list of foods with funny names. The really funny thing was that I had tried many of the products that I saw featured there. Mental mints? Check. Jamaican Cock soup? Been there, done that. "Smack My Ass" hot sauce? It's on my shelf.

What luck. For anyone who wishes that they were 10 years younger, it's officially happened to all of us. Sort of.

The Boston Globe ran a fun story earlier this week, written by staffer Meredith Goldstein, about how business groups for young adults have been upping the age limit of their members. While most organizations generally cater to adults from 21 to 39, some have bumped that up to a ceiling of 40 -- and even 45.

This change in thinking among those who call the shots at young business professional organizations is happening for two reasons, apparently. First, you join a group in your 20s or 30s, you like it, and then you hate to leave when you hit age 40. That's perfectly understandable. There's a great quote in the piece where one guy heading a group says: "Are you going to treat it like 'Logan's Run' and take them out back and shoot 'em? We try to be realistic about it."

Things have been tough for Taco Bell lately. First there was the whole E. coli scare in 2006, which people are still talking about. Then there was the chain's new grills, which it claimed were "green" because they used less water and electricity than traditional steam tables. One of Taco Bell's execs even went so far as to state that "Whether you take shorter showers, turn off the water while brushing your teeth or purchase a Grill-to-Order menu item at Taco Bell, you can save water and impact the environment without even thinking about it." In point of fact, as CNN pointed out, Taco Bell's heavy reliance on beef makes it far from green. Finally, who can forget about Taco Bell's famous rat infestation video, which featured dozens of the furry little critters taking over a New York restaurant.

Still, even with its bacteriological and environmental shortcomings, Taco Bell is my go-to restaurant when it comes to fast food, for the simple reason that it consistently offers relatively healthy (compared to a Big Mac), surprisingly flavorful food for a very low price. My loyalty to the place dates back to when I was a poor starving college student. There was one semester in which I was particularly broke and could only spend about $50 on food. Throwing variety to the wind, I subsisted on plate after plate of hummus, lentils, tuna macaroni salad, and ramen. Whenever I could, I'd find some change in my couch and wander off to Taco Bell, where I could get a burrito for 59¢. It became a lifesaver. Many were the nights when I'd grab a table, pick up a burrito, load it with hot sauce, and savor the joy of something other than my regular fare. When I had an extra couple of cents to splurge, I'd pick up a bottomless cup of soda and revel in my wealth.

Over time, of course, Taco Bell phased out the super value menu. By that point, I had a little more money, so it didn't hit me too hard, although I remember feeling a pang when I discovered that my favorites were now a little more expensive. However, in addition to its push for green cred, Taco Bell seems to be returning to its roots. On May 15, it is rolling out its new "Why Pay More" menu, featuring items that cost 79¢, 89¢, and 99¢. Given that many customers are currently concerned about their ability to pay for gas, the super-cheap menu is coming out at the perfect time. And, to be honest, I will probably be taking advantage of the new offerings.

And I'll remain a Taco Bell regular as long as the rats remain among the patrons, not the ingredients!

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. A recovering fast food junkie, he still dreams about Wendy's "Big Dave's Deluxe" burger.

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.

Life used to be so simple. If you drank a lot and found the bottle talking back to you, you know you've had enough, and that it's time to stop. Conversely, if you were a bartender, and you saw one of your patrons having a conversation with the bottle, you knew it was time to call a cab and send the lush home.

That may change. Or at least in Russia, bickering with one's bottle of booze will no longer be considered odd.

As BBC News recently reported, in Russia, where drinking vodka is a national pastime, they've come up with the world's first ever talking vodka bottle top.

Every time you remove the cap off the bottle, which BBC News refers to as a vodka genie bottle top, a voice starts talking, offering a series of popular Russian toasts. The voice also encourages people to drink up.

And then proving that Russian scientists and vodka marketers have a sense of humor, every time you remove the top from the bottle, the vodka genie's speech becomes more and more slurred.

And I used to think the Hallmark talking cards were clever.

Geoff Williams is a business journalist and the author of C.C. Pyle's Amazing Foot Race: The True Story of the 1928 Coast-to-Coast Run Across America (Rodale).

When I was in middle school, I had trouble with fashion. A lot of trouble, according to my friends. I never thought about what I was wearing. I just threw something on and went to school, and for whatever reason, I was fond of wearing flannel button down shirts. And at some point, since this was before the grunge days of the 1990s when flannel became fashionable, someone pointed out to me that I looked like a nerd. From then on, I spent the rest of my middle and high school days always worrying about how I was dressed.

I've always liked the fact that ever since going to college, I've never had to really think about whether I'm in fashion or not. In college, you tend to dress down, and since I've worked in my home office for years, I can mismatch socks without a crisis erupting. That said, I get out into the world sometimes, interviewing CEOs, consultants and the like. I can't be completely fashion clueless.

All of this is preamble for the fact that Staples is unrolling what they see as fashionable accessories for the business person. They're calling their line M by Staples.

I'm sure if I had any sense of fashion, I'd know what the M refers to. Perhaps it's a parody of another fashion designer? As it is, all I can think of is that James Bond likes to hang around letters, like his gadget guru Q. But I have a feeling I'm getting off topic.

As if I didn't have enough to worry about. The Consumer Product Safety Commission, probably my favorite government agency, sent an email today, warning people about the dangers of escalators.

Granted, this news may not at first glance seem like it has anything to do with a personal finance blog, but plenty of businesspeople use escalators. You may be preparing to use one later today, when going up to see your financial adviser on the fifth floor of a building downtown. And like my recent elevator post, perhaps I should suggest investing in an escalator company. There are at least three that I'm aware of: the Escalator Company, Star Elevator and Escalator Company, and Detroit Escalator Company, or I thought that last one was one, until I logged onto a web site and discovered it's the name of a musician who calls himself the Detroit Escalator Company.

Anyway, if the musician wanted to start his own company, he'd have plenty of work. Each year, according to the CPSC, 90 billion riders use an escalator.

And while most people go up and down without a problem, the CPSC estimates that last year, there were approximately 11,000 escalator related injuries.

And, you know, at first, I was going to really send this up, and make fun of this plight, because it seemed silly and so random, but then I started Googling and found all sorts of scary things.

Back in February Tom Barlow covered 40 ways to avoid a traffic ticket which provided some great tips relating to preparation, driving, and what to do if you do get stopped. Just this month Car and Driver posted an article which contains some great information to build on Tom's original series. Car and Driver went straight to the ladies and gentlemen in blue to find out the top 5 best things to do if you are busted and the top five worst things to do! Nothing beats hearing this advice from the individuals you have to deal with out on the road and the advice comes with anecdotal experience to back it up.

Even with the best driving you will likely get pulled over at some point in your life and the actions you take may heavily influence the outcome of the traffic stop. Even those done with the best of intentions can result in unease for officers and money out of the pocket for you. When you do get pulled over be sure to put yourself in the officer's shoes and realize that someone going for a cell phone or an insurance card can look a lot like someone going for a gun. At the same time be sure you are aware of your rights when it comes to a traffic stop. Instructables recently released a guide which covers what to do if the police stop you, which is information worth knowing.