Penny-pinching Citibank will put the squeeze on small-fry customers, charging them up to $90 a year by demanding a fee every time their average monthly checking account balance sinks below $1,500.

Starting in February, Citibank will no longer automatically waive its $7.50 monthly fee for its "EZ" and "Access" checking-account holders who make either a direct deposit, or two bill payments online monthly.

A management consultant told the Post that if customers stay with Citibank even after they implement the new fee rule, it will send a signal to other banks that they can do the same with low-balance checking account customers. Hmm, maybe it's time to start looking around for a good credit union?

"Really Citi treatment" [New York Post] (Thanks to Kearas!)
(Photo: Mike McCaffrey)

Consumer electronics, appliances, toys and games are sold at www.lay-away.com, which charges no service fees to consumers because revenues come from sales commissions paid by retailers. A $35 fee applies on canceled orders.

Consumers who go to www.elayaway.com are charged a 1.9 percent transaction fee on merchandise purchased from retail partners that include Apple, Bass Pro Shops, Best Buy and Home Depot. Cancellation fees are $25, or 10 percent of the cost of the merchandise, whichever is less.

I can't recommend either site without knowing more about how well they work, but a quick comparison of a Nintendo DS Lite at eLayaway.com showed one available from Best Buy for $129, the same price being offered on the official Best Buy site. As always, read the fine print and make sure that any hidden costs aren't being bundled into the total price.

"Layaway makes a return as stores court strapped consumers" [San Jose Mercury News]
(Photo: No Trams To lime Street)

"Extended Unemployment Benefits: F.A.Q." [New York Times]
(Photo: Kapungo and laurenatclemson)

Mint founder Aaron Patzer, who is now the new vice president and general manager of Intuit's Personal Finance Group, told TechCrunch, "Over the next 6 to 9 months we will end-of-life Quicken Online and their customer's data will be migrated over to Mint." Patzer also talked a little about what Mint might look like in the future, as Intuit weaves products like Turbo Tax into the service:

Patzer has other ideas for connecting Mint and TurboTax as well: "What I want to do is to take your stock transactions and everything you've tagged in Mint as a medical expense or business expense and push that over to see if you should itemize deductions. If we pull in your 1099s and deductions, we have done half your taxes for you. We could reduce the time it takes you to do your taxes to 20 minutes or less."

"Mint's Aaron Patzer: "We Will End-Of-Life Quicken Online" In Six to Nine Months" [TechCrunch]

The biggest advantage is that whether you currently own a home or are renting an apartment, you can get far more bang for your buck with a mobile home. Single wide mobile homes (even ones of recent manufacture) can often be had for under $10,000 used, in a mobile home park.

You'll also be building equity in something you can re-sell, and—if you find a good neighborhood—mobile home parks tend to have low car traffic, meaning your kids can have more freedom outside.

As for the biggest disadvantage: oh look, a tornado.

It's not really true that tornadoes are attracted to mobile home parks, but it is true that when a tornado his a manufactured home community it generally leaves a real mess, and what that attracts is news crews and their cameras.

"The affordable housing option you may have never considered – but perhaps should"
(Photo: mattza)

Sinegal told the Seattle Times that once they got the software in place in their trial-run stores in NYC, "it became relatively easy to roll out the program nationally."

The company says at least half of the 410 US stores will start accepting the food stamps by Thanksgiving, and that they're focusing on getting stores in economically hard-hit areas, like Michigan and the central valley of California, up and running first.

"Costco plans to accept food stamps nationally" [The Seattle Times]
(Photo: David McKelvey)

If you've got photos of past costumes as proof that it can work, that's even better. To post an image, host it somewhere else first, then use this code in your comment:

<img src="the-url-to-your-hosted-image-goes-here"

(Note that you shouldn't use the closing HTML tag if you want the image to show up.)

"25 Frugal Halloween Costumes" [Moolanomy]
(Photo: Jayel Aheram)

"Site of the Week: Jeans and Accessories" [ShopSmart]
(Photo: rileyroxx)

From Anemona Hartocollis at the New York Times:

The study... tracked customers at four fast-food chains - McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken - in poor neighborhoods of New York City where there are high rates of obesity.

It found that about half the customers noticed the calorie counts, which were prominently posted on menu boards. About 28 percent of those who noticed them said the information had influenced their ordering, and 9 out of 10 of those said they had made healthier choices as a result.

But when the researchers checked receipts afterward, they found that people had, in fact, ordered slightly more calories than the typical customer had before the labeling law went into effect, in July 2008.

There are two things to note before gloating that the policy doesn't work, or railing aginst the inability of consumers to look out for their best interests.

The first is that the study focused on poor neighborhoods where people are possibly more concerned about immediate food costs than long-term health costs:

"Nutrition is not the top concern of low-income people, who are probably the least amenable to calorie labeling," said Michael F. Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit health advocacy group in Washington.

The second is that the study took place right after the law went into effect, and there has been subsequent nutrition education by the city. However, that also means there's been more time for consumers to grow used to the labeling and stop noticing it at all.

Times says the city is doing its own, broader study and will release the results "in a few months."

"Calorie Postings Don't Change Habits, Study Finds" [New York Times]

"Slash Your Insurance Costs" [Kiplinger]

Like any good potluck, you never know what you're going to find in a Carnival, but there are always at least a few useful, thoughtful, or just entertaining posts you probably wouldn't have heard about otherwise. The curatorial duties are passed around to a different blogger each week, which helps mix things up.

This week, Emily Starbuck Gerson at CreditCards.com assembled the collection, and you can see from the list below the wide variety of topics you'll frequently find:

• "What it Costs to Own a Home" [The Money Mythos]
• "How Margin Trading Works" [Narrow Bridge]
• "Four Fifteen-Minute Financial Fixes" [Good Financial Cents]
• "Another fantastic unintentionally low-cost weekend" [Beyond Paycheck to Paycheck]

Carnival of Personal Finance
(Photo: kevindooley)

Kubacki, the family breadwinner, was laid off July 1 from a job she loved — software project manager at Accenture, where she had worked for 15 years. At first, she was stunned. "I had this impression that someone had grabbed a big vacuum and sucked all the air out of the room. It was like I couldn't get my breath," she said.

Her husband, a former schoolteacher who is a stay-at-home dad and a woodworker, feared for the family's financial future.

"At first there is the panic, 'Oh my gosh, we are going to lose the house tomorrow and live in a cardboard box,' " Chris Kubacki recalled.

Yet his wife was determined to make her loss an opportunity to spend more time with the family while taking time to find another job she would love as much as the one she had just lost.

So the Kubackis are trying to make Karin's severance, unemployment checks and some extra cash Accenture provided to pay for an extension of her health insurance last a full year. They are determined to keep paying the mortgage on their home in Crystal Lake, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, and not dig into savings — all on an expected pre-tax income of $54,000, a little less than half of the family's normal earnings.

One thing they've learned that could apply to anyone trying to live on a budget is that if you reduce your luxuries to only one or two things, instead of the half dozen you probably enjoy now without even realizing it, they expand to take up the extra space. Karin, for example, now says bubble baths and Hershey candy bars are her two special treats: "If you have a lot of luxuries, then they become necessities. But if you only have a couple, boy are they terrific."

Other things to consider include making more use of your library system, finding free public and community events to participate in, and steering clear of restaurants.

The Kubackis have only been at this for a couple of months now, however. We wish them luck, and we hope CNN checks back in a year to see how those bubble baths held up.

"Battling recession with frugality, positive attitude" [CNN]
(Photo: blogdnd)

Naturally, they suggest you closely track where your money goes, which is an easy thing to do in this era of free personal finance websites like Mint and Wesabe. But they also address the issue of understanding why you spend (or don't spend) money, so that you don't end up being a slave to your emotions or habits:

• Know yourself. Nathan Dungan literally wrote the textbook on personal finance and speaks at colleges nationwide. What does he think is most important for students to understand? Themselves. "Know your money temperament ... the lens through which you view and do money," he said. If having money makes you want to spend it, it's best to know that and figure out a way that works for you to keep that natural tendency in check.
  
  
• Keep money out of reach to stay out of trouble. Each year, Solheim asks students about a bad financial experience. "I have quite a few that will say ... 'The first time I got my financial aid I just had a good time ... and then was stretched at the end to make ends meet,'" she said. If you're a student receiving a lump sum from the Bank of Mom and Dad or the financial aid office, figure out how much you'll need each month and put the rest in savings. That way you won't feel artificially flush when you see that big bank balance.

"Experts offer advice for college and beyond" [San Jose Mercury News]

None of the advice is snow globe shattering, but it's fundamentally sound and timely because now that we're into the final third of the year, you may as well begin preparing for the oncoming succubus of holiday spending.

One of the tips:

• Create a plan to stagger your expenses. This will allow you to pay for Christmas expenses using the income that you have coming in rather than putting it all on a credit card. You can plan to make some specific purchases every two weeks or every month in accordance to when your paychecks arrive. Doing this allows you to avoid the interest rates that you'd accrue if you wait until December and put everything on a credit card that takes months to pay off.

The pitfall to staggering Christmas gift purchases is that you may buy gifts that become obsolete and unreturnable by the time you're set to give them. But the tactic is probably worth a gamble to avoid the end-of-the-year sticker shock.

What measures do you take to prepare for Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Festivus?

Less Than Four Months ‘Til Christmas: A Money Saving Plan [Money Saving Blog]
(Photo: Paxton Holley)

"Casual Fridays returns: Who's thrifty? Who's REALLY thrifty?" [Cognitive Daily]
(Photo: frankieleon)

"How healthy are your finances?" [Money] (Thanks to jscott73!)

This kind of savings doesn't come without a cost, of course; expect to spend about 5 hours each week cutting coupons and hitting up grocery stores, which means added fuel costs as well. But hey, $4 dinners!

"Mom Feeds Family For Under $10 A Week" [WCVBTV Boston] (Thanks to Christopher!)

"Color Me Persian Brown" [doubleX]

"Where Does the Money Go?" [VisualEconomics via FlowingData]

"It's an obvious way to cut back," said Joan Holleran, director of research for market research firm Mintel. "People might still be buying bottled water, but you can bet that they're refilling those bottles."

The news delighted environmentalists, who have long berated the industry for wasting natural resources and stuffing landfills with plastic bottles. "I thought we'd never be able to impact sales of bottled water, and all of a sudden it's really gained momentum," said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of advocacy group Food & Water Watch. "I think we're making real progress."

We think it's more likely that a lot of consumers who buy bottled water have started to figure out that:

• It's hugely expensive—a back of the envelope estimate puts it at 5 cents an ounce versus less than 1 cent per gallon from a municipal water supply;
• It might be loaded with bad things you don't want to ingest, like disinfection byproducts, fertilizer residue, and pain medication;
• It has less safety oversight than plain old tap water, which is why bottlers don't have to tell you where the water came from or what's actually in it.

"Bottled water sales see a drought" [Los Angeles Times via Olevia]
(Photo: Nexeus Fatale)

Amid the rows of crumpled cereal boxes and past-prime meat, customers may stumble upon everything from gourmet cheese to rattlesnake sausage. It all depends on what Palumbo's broker ships him - some of which must be thrown out because it's stale or the packaging is opened.

"I haven't brought my older son here - he'd probably frown on it," said Stacey McQuown, a Friday customer who recently walked out with a box of crackers, energy drinks, frozen beef and ice cream toppings.

—which she promptly made into a casserole, we hope. After all, that's the only way to truly honor the anything-goes spirit of a salvage grocer.

The article also notes that as they grow more popular with budget-minded shoppers, prices are creeping up.

As salvage stores seek more product to meet rising demand, some items have become more expensive, said Evangeline Anderson, who opened Anderson's Country Market last year. Palumbo said he has had to raise prices, but tries to keep them lower than bigger grocery stores by monitoring their weekly newspaper specials.

Here are a couple of links from the Associated Press article to help you find a salvage grocer near you.

http://www.bananaboxwholesalegrocery.com
http://andersonscountrymarket.net/directory

Update: Check out this video on expiration and sell by dates.

"At end of food chain, salvage grocers thrive" [Associated Press]
(Photo: djuggler)

But who believes crazy old newspapers anymore? Here's a Daily Show clip of Nobel Prize winning Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, Steven Chu. (The NYT told us about it). Around the 6:25 mark, he says when you're re-roofing, make it white:

"White Roofs Catch on as Energy Cost Cutters" [New York Times]
(Photo: Christopher Dick)

"Do you get a deal at the dollar stores?" [Blogging for Change]

Governor [Strickland] wants to cut the budget for public libraries by 50%. About 70% of public libraries in Ohio are funded solely by this fund, so cutting the already shrinking budget means library closures, layoffs and cutbacks in hours and materials.

If you live in Ohio, you can visit the website Save Ohio Libraries for information on how to contact your representatives to protest the cuts.

"Ohio - Save Your Libraries" [The Shifted Librarian]
Save Ohio Libraries
(Photo: noellium)

Chase Bank sent me a notice they are hiking minimum payment fees from present level of 2% to 5%!! This means on my account, where I took their balance transfer offer for over $25K several years ago at a fixed 5.9% rate, that my monthly payment is now going to go up $558 to $930 !!!

This is insane. More people will claim inability to pay or declare bankruptcy with this "strategy." My wife and I are trying to make ends meet with both our salaries reduced by our companies, costs for everything increasing as usual. This news from Chase causes us immediate financial stress, as it will others.

Isn't this behavior the exact kind Congress is trying to prevent???

Greg doesn't specify, but some customers who are subject to this hike aren't given the option to close their accounts at the previous terms. They're just stuck with the new supersized payment.

If you're a Chase customer carrying a large balance who has been hit with this minimum payment increase and you simply can't afford it, consider starting some sort of debt management program. The credit counseling website Vision Credit says that Chase in particular has become very responsive to requests for payment reductions for customers who are in debt management programs—in fact, Chase now gives some credit counselors the ability to lower monthly payments automatically.

Entering a debt management or credit counseling program may seem like a serious change in your financial situation, but it sounds like Chase has already put you there. It's also a lot less nuclear than declaring bankruptcy, and a lot less damaging than letting a balance that large go into default.

Take action now, though—don't struggle to meet the new payment requirements for the next month or so if it's just putting off the inevitable.

"Chase Improves Credit Counseling Benefits" [Vision Credit]
(Photo: Logan Antill)

Lynn Lawrance of the Financial Network Investment Corp. in Dallas told the paper that answering the following questions will help you get a feel for where you stand financially:

• Divide your current gross annual salary by $10,000—the result is how many months, on average, it will take you to find a job with an equivalent income should you lose your current one.
• Now divide your emergency savings by your monthly expenses to see how many months you can pay for everything. Do you have enough months covered?

That's just a quick summary of the stress test, however. You can complete the whole thing at the Dallas Morning News website, and even get a final score between 0 and 100 that will help you get a clearer picture of how worried/smug you should be.

"Face the numbers with personal financial "stress test"" [Dallas Morning News]
(Photo: stuartpilbrow)

How to create a zero-based budget [Getting Finances Done] (Photo: riot jane)

Mitchell writes:

I've faithfully diverted all of my drugstore business over the last few years to Walgreens because of their super EasySaver Rebate Catalog. Where else could you buy stuff, collect all your receipts and send them to one place each month and get your rebates back plus a 10% kicker on a Walgreens gift card. Late last year when they went to full online submission, this was awesome. No postage, no writing out forms and circling receipts.

The first of May, my local Walgreens had a black xerox'd sign saying the program had been abruptly discontinued. I sense they want to punish those coupon kickers instead with lots of addtional hoops to jump through.

Now I have to shop at other drugstores again.

Mitchell, shopping at other drugstores again is a good thing, if you do it correctly! In fact, with a little planning you can actually make special offers pay for the other necessities that aren't on sale.

Cathy at Chief Family Officer calls this "The Drugstore Game," and says the best place to start looking for advice on how to do it is read the posts at Money Saving Mom. In its simplest form, your goal is to take advantage of affinity programs and weekly specials at CVS, Rite Aid, and Walgreens to earn discounts that are bigger than the cost of the product(s). For an example, here's a CVS tip from last week's Money Saving Mom blog:

When you buy 2 Neutrogena sun care of or sunless tanning products, you get $10 ECBs [ExtraCare Bucks] (Limit 1). Buy 2 Neutrogena Ultra Sheer SPF 55 1 oz. tubes at $1.99, you'll earn $10 ECBs. So you'll pay $3.98 plus tax out of pocket and get $10 ECBs back!

The biggest mental block to doing this sort of thing is the resistance to buying stuff you don't need right away, or at all. For the "don't need right away" problem, the solution is to learn to love stockpiling; you'll need that third tube of toothpaste someday, so it's not a wasted purchase. For the other problem, you can always give away or donate the things you don't need. As long as it pays for itself and offsets the cost of what you really need, it's a good deal.

MSN Money's moneyblog says that actually, Walgreen's new Register Rewards can net you bigger savings than the old EasySaver program if you shop carefully:

Tara [at Deal Seeking Mom] provided some [Walgreens] examples. For instance, buy Colgate Sensitive toothpaste for $4.49 and get $4.49 in Register Rewards. Combine that with a $1 printable coupon for one tube and it's "better than free after coupon and RRs," she said.

It takes some planning and consistent monitoring to maximize your savings, but our point to Mitchell and others who miss the old Walgreens system is that you shouldn't shop exclusively at one drugstore chain anyway—the best way to save (or even make) money is to bounce back and forth among all of them depending on what you need and what deals they're offering this week.

(Just make sure that your CVS cashier gives you the entire receipt when you pay.)

"A fond farewell to Walgreens' EasySaver rebates" [MSN moneyblog]
"CVS and beyond: The superstars of 'The Drugstore Game'" [MSN moneyblog]
(Photo: Stephen Cummings)

"A real change, a real change from the past would be a plan on food safety that identified the foods at greatest risk," said DeLauro, who chairs the House spending panel that oversees the FDA budget. She also called for new performance standards, sampling to detect contamination and requirements for industry to report when problems were found.

The FDA is getting a 19% budget boost this year, in large part to help fund measures to derail the Chinese Poison Train. Beyond the extra taxpayer cash, Congress will let the agency charge food producers fees of almost $100 million so they can hire over 200 new food safety inspectors.

The acting head of the FDA says that they're busy working on a plan to make food safer, and should have answers "in the next several months." Ready, fire, aim!

Congresswoman seeks food safety specifics [AP]

10 Things To Do Before Creating Your Next Budget [No Credit Needed]
(Photo: erichhh)

Looks like we won't have to suffer through any more People magazine articles suggesting you eat brussels sprouts and stick up a poster of Big Ben if you can't afford to fly to London.

Check out our posts under the "travel cheap" tag for bargain hunting tips.

(Photo: TedsBlog)

"Scratch That" [Slate]
(Linda N.)

We're also going to give Beauty and the Beast a pass (it shows up near the end) because we're pretty sure they were paying homage to Sleeping Beauty in the ballroom scene.

"Disney's Double Takes" [The Big Money]

Originally, Orman's goal was maintaining a high FICO score by having paid-off credit cards on your account. This served a second purpose, too: your active, paid-off cards provided a source of quick cash in case of a huge life emergency.

Now that credit card companies are slashing credit limits and unexpectedly closing accounts on customers—even ones with stellar payment histories and low debt-to-credit-limit ratios—Orman says all bets are off.

So here is the problem. If you do not have a stash of cash in an emergency fund and you have been using all your extra money to pay down your credit card debt and they keep closing your cards down-what are you going to live on if you lose your job? Chances are you may not have any available credit, or too little credit, to use in the event you are laid off. Nor will you be able to get a new card if you are unemployed.

So what's the right size for an emergency account? Orman says 8 months of living expenses, and even if it takes you a couple of years to build that up, this is no time to trust that your credit cards will be there for you in the months to come. Once you've hit that magic number, go back to clearing off those credit cards.

What do you think is the right amount of an emergency savings to build up, especially if you remove the safety net of open lines of credit from the picture?

"A Change in Credit Card Strategy" [SuzeOrman.com] (Thanks to Greg!)

Update: There are a lot of extra details in the article, but to be fair to the school for those who don't read it, let me add: the school says they sent home letters and made phone calls last week, tuition is about $8k a year, and the amounts owed varied from $750 to $5,000. Also:

To prevent losing more students, the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago announced last month that $1 million in emergency aid would be available for families that lost jobs this school year. It was deluged with requests within days.

"Marian Catholic High School students told: Pay tuition or go home" [Chicago Tribune]
(Photo: Google Maps)

Oh, and the kitten picture is just to cheer you up if you need it.

1. Learn about the Funeral Rule.
The Funeral Rule is an FTC regulation that requires several things of funeral professionals. Familiarize yourself with these points, and if a funeral home conveniently "overlooks" them, or outright refuses to follow them, run away. (But also report them to the FTC once you've got the presence of mind to deal with that stuff again.)

• Funeral directors must give you itemized prices in person as well as over the phone. You have to ask for the over-the-phone quotes; in person it's a given, and anyone who skips this is worthy of suspicion.
• They must give you itemized prices for any other services they offer, if you ask. This goes for caskets, burial containers, whatever.
• You have the right to buy individual goods and services; no funeral director or home can force you to buy a package.
• If a state or local law requires that you buy a particular item, the funeral director must state that next to the item on the price list, and reference the specific law.
• You can bring your own casket; a funeral home cannot refuse you or charge you a "handling fee."
• If you choose cremation, the funeral provider must offer an alternative container to a casket; you don't have to buy a nice coffin just to burn it up.
• Speaking of which, the funeral director must show you a list of caskets for sale, including descriptions and prices, before showing you the actual caskets. There's a reason for this—see #4 below.
• There is no technology, embalming chemical, coffin, liner, or vault that will preserve a body indefinitely. Funeral directors can't promise or insinuate otherwise.

2. Consider a direct burial with a memorial service.
A "traditional" burial is really marketing speak for a "full-service" burial—funeral providers have a vested interest in suggesting that full-service equals "more appropriate," because then they can jam a trocar right into your bank account and suck out your savings.

A direct burial, on the other hand, can still include a graveside service, a memorial, or any other rituals you feel are important to the survivors. Remember, you decide what's considered traditional for your family, not a stranger.

3. You may not have to worry about embalming.
If you're burying or cremating the body shortly after death, you can probably skip embalming. Here's a chart showing the law on embalming for each state, or just do a Google search for "embalming law [your state]". The funeral provider cannot perform an embalming without your permission, and as with other services, must full disclose whether or not it's required and how much it will cost.

4. Learn how to shop for a casket. (And a vault.)

A. You will be subconsciously led to purchase a specific one. The FTC says, "Industry studies show that the average casket shopper buys one of the first three models shown, generally the middle-priced of the three." Remember this before making a decision, and assume that you're being directed to the middle-priced casket intentionally.

If you aren't shown the cheaper caskets on the list the funeral director was supposed to have already provided, then ask to see them. If the cheaper casket that you want is in an ugly color, ask if you can order a more pleasing color—the color choice is on purpose to deter you.

B. You will be upsold on gaskets, seals, thickness, and various other protective measures that do nothing. The FTC says, "The Funeral Rule forbids claims that these features help preserve the remains indefinitely because they don't. They just add to the cost of the casket."

C. Buy your casket separately. The Funeral Consumers Alliance says "few consumers realize that caskets may be marked up 300-500% or more." They say caskets can retail for $600 or so, but a more realistic baseline these days is about $1000. If you can locate a local builder or know some basic carpentry, you can build your own and probably bring the price down some more.

Here are some places to begin your search, although we personally vouch for none of 'em:

• bestpricecaskets.com
• casketsite.com
• dignifiedcaskets.com
• tributedirect.com
• trappistcaskets.com

D. You may be able to rent a casket for viewing if you plan on cremating the body. Be sure to ask. Also, if you're cremating without a viewing, you can bypass the casket option entirely and save a huge amount of money.

E. Don't waste money on an expensive vault. A vault or grave liner is basically a concrete shell placed into the grave to keep the dirt from caving in around the casket. Some cemeteries may require it to keep graves from sinking, but no state or federal laws do. In other words, unless the cemetery requires it, you don't have to buy one. Our reader Erik notes, "Buy a cheap vault, if you need one at all. I've seen people spend $4,000 on something that will never be seen by anyone."

5. Find out if a military burial is an option.
Check out this comment from textilesdiva on a previous post:

If you even THINK the deceased might be entitled to burial in a military cemetery, look into it. For my grandmother's burial, the plot, facilties for the graveside ceremony, stone, "perpetual care" and all that jazz was $300 at a local military cemetery. As I understand it, my grandfather's second wife is also eligible for burial with him and his first wife. He was in service during a war, but never deployed to a combat zone.

I doubt the coffin or funeral home services were included in this, but my parent's surprise at the cemetery costs leads me to think $300 is extraordinarily cheap. This was in 2004, btw.

Here's more information on eligibility—or just call the Veteran's Benefits Counselor at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs: 1-800-827-1000.

6. Turn to religion.
Our reader Eyebrows McGee, who is an estate lawyer or something like that, points out that churches and synagogues frequently can provide help on figuring out more affordable solutions:

If there is an Orthodox Jewish community in your area, find out who they use. Generally Orthodox Jews use very, very plain coffins which cost very little, for religious reasons.

Your local church/synagogue/mosque/temple/whatever can probably also help you with low-cost planning. They usually have relationships with funeral parlors who want to keep their business more than they want to rip you off. And having a religious funeral service frequently cuts out a big chunk of the cost, since (some) funeral homes make a lot off of families with no religious "home" who have the service at the funeral parlor.

Eyebrows McGee actually has a lot of good advice on funerals and planning for them. Read these two comments for more useful tips:

• tips and advice #1
• tips and advice #2

Handouts!

We want you to save money and stick it to the man, "the man" in this case being a funeral director, so we've taken the checklist the FTC provides in html table format and turned it into a handy PDF suitable for printing. Download it here.

After we posted this, our reader Erik sent us a "funeral plan" form (PDF). He's a pastor with lots of experience officiating funerals, and he says this is one of the easiest ways to collect all the important data you need for this sort of thing. But remember to distribute it:

Put it somewhere it can be found! Don't put in a safe deposit box or with a will. Those won't be looked at until after a burial. Instead, give it to your children, spouse, clergy or a funeral director you trust. Even better, give it to all of them, so that someone can find it when it's needed.

RELATED
FAQs on Funeral Arrangements [Funeral Consumers Alliance]
FTC Funeral Microsite [FTC]
(Photo: Kpjas)

Update: by reader demand, we have increased the kittenosity of this post:

For solo customers, there's a $50/mo unlimited voice plan, with an add-on $35/mo "unlimited" data and text plan—here's the fine print that clarifies their definition of unlimited:

*To provide the best network experience for all of our customers we may temporarily reduce data throughput for a small fraction of customers who use a disproportionate amount of bandwidth. Your data session, plan, or service may be suspended, terminated, or restricted for significant roaming or if you use your service in a way that interferes with our network or ability to provide quality service to other users.

As of now, the discounted voice plans are only being offered to customers who have been with the company for 22 months. (The data plan is for anyone.)

"T-Mobile USA drops unlimited voice plan to $50*" [RCR Wireless]

• 1. Pay For Expert Advice: Google can't replace your lawyer, tax advisor, or financial advisor. Open your wallet to professionals who are familiar with your particular situation.
• 2. Pay To Reduce Debt: Now isn't the time to take on more debt, and that's what happens if you stop paying off your existing obligations. Debt also affects your credit score, making other financial services more expensive, so stick to your debt repayment schedule and work with creditors if you need extra help.
• 3. Pay Into Your Savings Accounts: Keep saving for your future by continuing to take advantage of employer matches while they still exist.
• 4. Spend On Yourself: It's ok to spend on yourself, but only for things that have a substantial impact. We also think it's important to keep giving yourself little gifts here and there to help maintain your sanity. Just don't overdo it. Think chocolate, not diamonds.
• 5. Pay For Some Things You Can Do Yourself: Keep focused on the big picture and figure out which spending is actually worthwhile. Sure, you could shovel the driveway, but if your hip's been hurting and your 60th birthday is around the corner, give the teen next door $50 instead.