WalletPop

It's pretty well-known that far too many baby boomers are ill-prepared for retirement, but rising gas prices and a weak economy are exacerbating that problem. Here are some of the scary statistics from a new survey released by the AARP:

• Nearly 40% of people 45 and older have helped a child with expenses, including one-third of retirees.
• 8% have helped a parent keep up with bills.
• 1/3rd have stopped funding their 401(k) and 14% have cut back on medication.
• 60% have cut back on entertainment expenses like eating out.
• More than 25% are having difficulty making mortgage or rent payments.

If nothing else, these statistics are indicative of the perhaps ill-advised generosity of many baby boomers. 40% are helping children with expenses, and 1/3rd have stopped putting money aside for retirement. I wonder how much overlap there is there.

I know that people want to help their children. But underfunding your retirement to help out a younger person who has a lifetime of work ahead of them isn't noble: it's silly.

Just like they tell you on the airplane: Secure your own oxygen mask before you attempt to assist your child: you'll be more helpful to them that way.

As I have written many times before, I hate Donald Trump. But as I discussed in my review of Trump Style Negotiation, his unfortunate status as the most prominent figure in real estate has attracted some great collaborators for his books. A book with Trump's name on it sells better than a book by someone nobody's heard of and, consequently, some of the best real estate minds you've never heard of have lent their work to Trump's name.

Trump: The Best Real Estate Advice I Ever Received is a perfect example of this. Basically, this book contains 100 short essays written by some of the most successful real estate people in the world, all sharing the best piece of advice about the business that they ever received.

Happily, the book is free of get-rich-quick charlatans like Robert Kiyosaki, and includes passages from the likes of Barbara Corcoran, Robert Boykin, and Steve Bollenbach. If you've never heard of these people, that's the point: they're real real estate tycoons who've focused on creating wealth and value rather than ego trips, unlike the man whose visage appears on the cover.

True: a lot of the advice is trite and obvious. But it's a book that you can't read without learning something, which is more than can be said for most investing-related books.

If you're more interested in stocks than real estate, check out Liz Claman's very similar book The Best Investment Advice I Ever Received: Priceless Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Jim Cramer, Suze Orman, Steve Forbes, and Dozens of Other Top Financial Experts.

Well, it's happened: postage has, once again, gone up. If you're like me, you probably send a letter through the mail once or twice a month, which means that the postage rate increase is now burning a massive 2¢ hole in your pocket. On the bright side, I generally pick up any pennies that I see on the sidewalk, so I should be able to make up the difference with about a half mile of walking.

I'm joking about this, but there was a time when the postage change would really have upset me. For a while, I used to sell a lot of items on eBay. One of the ways that I set myself apart from my competitors was by offering a standard fee for shipping and handling. If my buyer lived in the next town over, I made a fair bit of money; if he lived in Montana, I ended up losing dough. When the Postal Service used to up its rates, I had to up my rates, which made my flat rate fee seem a little less like a deal.

My fellow Walletpoppers have suggested some solid ways of undermining the postage increase. For example, Tom Barlow noted that, currently, "Forever" stamps are outperforming numerous stocks, and that buying large amounts of them is a nifty way to save a lot of postage money. However, as Tracy Coenen noted, it really doesn't make that much of a difference for "casual postage users" such as myself. Moreover, as my daughter has a tendency to affix stickers to the cat whenever she gets a chance, I prefer to minimize the number of stamps that I have laying around the house.

We should be used to this by now. Yet another money grubbing directive has surfaced from mother eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY), As covered in a story in The New York Times, eBay has decided to test market the strategy of allowing payment for transactions on its site solely through its wanton money portal, PayPal. The company intends to run this test on Australian eBayers. I wonder if our mates Down Under would be willing to tell us how they feel about this strategy?

eBay is claiming that this change in operating procedure will lower the incidences of fraud on the site. That's funny coming from them, when you consider that the worst eBay fraud nightmares generally run through its own PayPal system. I can believe that eBay's own fraud exposure might be cut by funneling everything through PayPal, but that's about eBay's bottom line. It's not about the bottom lines of its loyal patrons. The matter is further examined in this Associated Press article.

BloggingStocks reports that, as it stands right now, PayPal collects 2.9% from every sale which runs through its system in the U.S., plus another .30 cents for any sale under $3,000. The picture gets even gloomier for Australian eBayers, where PayPal charges 4.4% on sales, plus the additional .30 cents. What percentage of eBay Australia's sales currently run through alternate payment means? That's what I want to know.

If this change is enacted by eBay against the entirety of it's operations, it will be just one more step in the inevitable creation of "Wal-Bay", a site where large volumes of foreign made junk will be peddled by a thin crust of well protected sellers. In the meantime, alternate online selling strategies continue to take hold and grow as eBay's own growth has stalled. eBay can fake revenue growth for just so long. It's only a matter of time before things really start to get ugly over there.

It's a buyer's market, they say. You can get a house for a really low amount of money, they say. In fact, they say, it's a wonderful time to purchase a home.

(Who are they? I'm not sure, actually. But I know that they say this sort of thing a lot, and besides, it's a useful device we writers employ when we don't quite know how to begin writing.)

Anyway, I've been wondering -- with banks tightening their policies for lending and being reluctant to give anyone a loan, is it really a buyer's market if people aren't given home loans so they can buy?

Ernestine Crews is the founder and president of eCrews Enterprises, which is what she calls a wealth building academy and opened last month. And Crews, who hosts "The Road to Wealth and the Guide to Financial Freedom" on KLSX-FM in Los Angeles, says, "The easy lending with low FICO scores -- the party is over. If you don't have prestige 700-plus credit, you're going to have a difficult time."

Well, sure, tell me something I don't know.

But then she did.

Planning your summer vacation? Then perhaps this is the time to discuss places that you don't really want to visit. Askmen.com recently posted its take on the world's 10 worst vacation destinations, which should provide a convenient starting point. It's ten places to avoid like the plague:

10. Baghdad, Iraq: duh! Yet hundreds of thousands of Americans are spending their summers there. Go figure.

9. Dhaka, Bangladesh: pollution, proverty, overcrowding, and occasionally the entire country is swamped by a cyclone.

8. Yakutsk, Russia: winter temperatures drop to almost 60 below zero. But it's a dry cold.

7. Mogadishu, Somalia: Unless you're a fan of anarachy. If so, this is your spot. No gun laws!

6. Chernobyl, Ukraine: On the other hand, you won't have to fight crowds or provide your own night light.

5. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Does the sobrique 'Hurricane Alley' whet your vacation appetite?

4. Pyongyang, North Korea: Like the movie Brazil without the laugh track. Welcome to Kimseyland!

3. Bujumbura, Burundi: The poorest city in the poorest country in the world.

2. Linfen, China: Coal mining and coal burning make Linfen the city of perpetual darkness.

1. Port Morseby, Papua New Guinea: Rampant HIV, gang wars, overpopulation, murder, this city has it all.

What is the worst place you've ever vacationed?

Recently, Bournemouth became the first English city to get a new form of super-fast internet. While that's great news for the 88,000 homes and businesses that will get new 100 Mbps connections, the real news is how they're going to get it. H2O Networks Ltd, the company that's funding the project, will be bringing the internet cable through Bournemouth's sewer system.

While I appreciate the humorous potential that a sewer-borne internet system offers, the truth of the matter is that this is an amazingly brilliant idea. Having spent years dealing with incredibly slow dial-up connections, I finally sprung for a cable connection when it came to my neighborhood. In addition to the considerable monthly cost, I also had to pay to have the cable laid across my (landlord's) lawn. Now that I live in the big city, I don't have to shell out cash to have cable laid, but my area of the Bronx only has one internet service provider, which means that I'm stuck with paying the monopoly rate for my internet.

I'm not sure what's more heartbreaking about Cyclone Nargis, the military's junta's failure to forewarn residents of Myanmar about the deadly storm or the regime's reluctance to allow western governments and relief groups into the country to provide assistance during the crucial early days when victims need food, water and medicine. I suspect that this gives many would-be donors pause -- people don't want to give if they're not sure the food and supplies purchased with their donation will get to those in need.

I contacted Michael Forhan, a friend's father, who has lived in Myanmar and runs Burma Border Projects, a non-profit group founded to aid refugees along the Thai-Burmese border. "Some aid may be allowed in, but the bulk of the aid that's waiting to go still hasn't and may not ever make it in time," he said in an email. "My fear is that giving to larger international organizations may not be as efficient or timely as so many of them are having difficulty getting their aid into the country."

I am hopeful that pressure from the United Nations will persuade the junta that the crisis requires urgent international assistance or else famine and disease could increase the death toll, which is already in the tens of thousands. Meanwhile, Michael suggested donating to two grassroots organizations already on the ground and helping:

Here's a way to have your casket and drink it too...

Aaah, PBR! Let Budweiser claim to be the king of beers; Pabst Blue Ribbon doesn't aspire to such lofty heights. Pabst is the beer of the working man, the hard-core drinker, the one that I'd pick up at the bar when I'd already gotten drunk and couldn't feel my nose. Pabst doesn't waste time on things like flavor or bouquet. No, it's a no-nonsense, get-you-drunk-and-happy beer.

In spite of its shortcomings, PBR has a surprisingly loyal fan base, including my grandfather, my friend John, and Bill Bramanti, a 67-year old Chicago Heights man who recently decided that he wanted his burial to have a little pomp and circumstance. While the Vikings went to Valhalla on flaming ships and the Pharaohs entered the afterlife surrounded by retainers, Bramanti wanted his death to say something about his life. With that in mind, he bought a casket from the Panozzo Brothers funeral home of Chicago Heights and had it customized by the Scott Sign Company, of the same city. Now, when it's Bill's time to enter the great big dive bar in the sky, he's going to do it in style, wrapped in a great big can of Pabst.

A recent study of inexpensive earrings conducted by a pair of scientists at UC-SF found that almost a third of the under-$50 pairs they tested contained nickel. Why does this matter? In my years as a jeweler I became acutely aware of just how many people are allergic to the metal. Nickel dermatitis results in very sore, red and swollen ears and eczema-like symptoms.

The study found that a higher percentage of earrings on American shelves targeted to younger wearers contained nickel. They didn't find an correlation between the country of origin and the propensity for nickel.

Fortunately, there is a simple fix for many cheap earrings. If they are dangles, replacing ear wires made with nickel with those made with surgical steel should fix the problem. Fixed posts can also usually be swapped for stainless steel ones, although the cost of having your jeweler do so may exceed the value of the earrings.

Gold and platinum jewelry doesn't contain nickel.

Today (May 13) from 4 pm to 8 pm, Häagen-Dazs is offering a free scoop of its new Vanilla Honey Bee ice cream at participating shops. The new flavor combines creamy vanilla with just a touch of real honey. Häagen-Dazs says that honey bees are the key to creating 40% of their flavors, but that they are disappearing and no one knows why. The company created this flavor to bring more attention to the plight of honey bees.

You can find a shop participating in todays free scoop promotion on this page. Enjoy your free scoop and let us know how you like the new flavor.

Does it really surprise anyone that employers are cracking down on the use of social networking sites while at work? Much like pornography and eBay, those sites are best used when you're on your own time, not on your company's paid time.

I know, I know. Young workers need access to Facebook or Twitter like the rest of us need oxygen. It's essential to survival. How can you ever get through a day without knowing that your friend is on the way to the coffee shop to meet a friend or that your sister has just bought the cutest new shoes? Updates every few minutes are essential, because you are dying to know what everyone else is doing while you're... uh.... working. Yeah, working.

A survey in England found that employees are spending at least 30 minutes a day on Facebook or MySpace while they're supposed to be working. A couple of survey participants even admitted that they spend up to three hours a day on social networking sites while at work. Yikes.

With food costs rising at a furious pace, restaurants are looking to avoid increasing their menu prices: by serving smaller portions. In addition, many chains are offering really small servings in an effort to lure in health- and budget-conscious consumers.

It's working to the extent that the small servings have quickly become big sellers, but it isn't making people any thinner. According to the USA Today, "Instead, people are using smaller dishes as an excuse to add to their orders, spending - and probably eating - just as much as before."

That's right! No pesky fun-sized dishes are going to interfere with our pursuit of the American Dream: the 42-inch waistline. But at least ordering smaller portions makes people feel healthier -- even if they order 7 of them.

I bet those are the same people who order 2,900-calorie cheese fries, and then wash them down with a Diet Coke.

Last month I shared my quest to save money by reviewing our cell phone bill. I found that we could get unlimited texting on all of our lines without any increase in our monthly rate. This was a huge deal since my sister was as familiar with text overages as the Cookie Monster is with cookies! Due to the amount of texts already sent I decided to do something I should have avoided, I switched plans mid billing cycle. Most places this wouldn't be a huge deal, but Verizon's billing system is arranged to maximize confusion for users and profit for the company.

Since the switch occurred mid month Verizon pro-rated the text message plan on my sister's phone. Normally this means I get some money refunded and it only appears that I was ripped off on the bill. This time however was different. Even though the plan she was on was for 1,500 text messages and we switched to an unlimited plan Verizon decided that the allotment of messages at the time we switched was 913, which just happened to be 403 below what she had already sent resulting in a huge overage.

According to BusinessWeek, "In recent months, peer-to-peer lending sites such as Prosper and Virgin Money USA have introduced student loans or started marketing existing offerings to families looking for college funds. Others, including startups GreenNote and Fynanz, are focused exclusively on making college loans."

It's not a surprising development. Peer-to-peer lending has been growing in popularity for years and the tightened credit market is making it tougher for some students to secure loans for college.

There may be a future in peer-to-peer student loans but I don't see it happening anytime soon. Here's why:

• Subsidized student loans are always preferable. Before exploring any private loans, college students should complete the FAFSA form and take steps to see how much they can borrow at artificially low interest rates.