Every weekend, newspaper inserts around the country provide coupons, giving you opportunities to get a wide selection of products for even less than what your local paper offers in its supermarket ads.' To tap into this vast source of discounted food and cleaning products, there are Web-based services that give you easy access to the discount coupons.' Some of the sites allow users to print coupons directly, while other services, for a fee, clip the coupons from newspaper inserts and mail them to you.One of the best of these is thecouponclippers.com .' Fees are 50 cents per order plus 10% of the face value of each coupon, and shipping is 58 cents.' They have an extensive selection, including a health-food section.' You can shop by department or via search tool.' If you are buying huge volumes, you might want to check centsoff.com .There are others, like grocerycoupons.com , onlinecoupons.com , and grocerycard.com , but they require a fee for the year that ranges from $10 to $100, and then 10% of the face value of each coupon and 75 cents for postage. More >>

Gas prices are going up over $4 per gallon in some areas of the country. The solution?' Get a scooter!'One "scooter-ite" bought a Vespa GTS that uses about $7 of fuel every two weeks.' Wow!Consider the cost of a 50 mile round-trip commute based on a fuel price of $3,79 a gallon:' the scooter (Vespa S) would cost $2.65 per day; a Honda Accord, $6.10 per day, and a large SUV (Ford Expedition), $10.50 per day.' A Vespa can travel 80 miles on a gallon of fuel.There is a downside to scooters, however:' dealing with potholes, having to get a motorcycle license in most states, no protection in bad weather, and vulnerability around other vehicles, which are usually a lot bigger.' Nonetheless, scooter sales have gone up 25% in the past year.' Scooter prices range from $3,000 to $9,000, depending on size and "fanciness."In 2005, the latest year with complete data, the death rate for scooter riders was 129 per million scooters registered, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.' In comparison, the death rate was 78 for cars and light trucks, and 645 per million motorcycles registered.'I believe this is a growing trend.' It's not an accident that you've been seeing so many more motorcycles and scooters on the road.' In addition to being more cost-effective, it's fun and "cool" to be on a scooter.' I have a Harley-Davidson Road King that's been converted to a trike for safety.' I had it "muralized," and it's a show-stopper.' I've had a Vespa scooter, too, and that's also a fun ride. More >>

Back in the day, people believed it was morally correct and pragmatically smart to save for a rainy day.' These days, folks prefer to spend what they have to "enjoy the moment."' It turns out that most Americans say they're not saving as much as they should, but apparently, they're not very worried about it.' Talk about living in dreamland!It is sad to receive a call to my daily radio program from a hard-working young couple with children who are frustrated with their parents who spend, spend, and spend some more and don't worry at all about retirement or medical issues they might face as they age.' These young families are frantic, concerned about their obligation to parents who are doing nothing to provide for themselves.' And then there are the young men who are making babies, "shacking up," and/or marrying young women they are in no financial position to support.Somewhere along the line, we've lost the notion of personal responsibility, and have substituted a sense of entitlement - i.e., that our families or our tax-paying communities should be paying our way.According to federal economic data and a recent survey by the Pew Research Center's Social' and Demographic Trends Project, 3 out of 4 Americans admit they aren't saving enough.' While you constantly hear people complaining about their finances, these feelings don't seem to motivate action:' Americans now save, on average, less than 1% of their incomes , and the saving rate has been in almost continuous decline for more than twenty years! This lack of fiscal planning is equally evident for men and women.' From the lowest income level to the highest, the admission of not saving enough ranges from 78% to 71%, indicating that level of wealth is irrelevant to notions of saving.Interestingly, the group most involved in saving is....senior citizens!' Only a narrow majority (54%) of those ages 65 and older say they aren't saving enough.'Necessity is the mother of frugality. More >>