Feed items

The cheapest online vacation deals can come with added fees or risks, so read the fine print carefully. Photo: Kevin Dooley

Planning a vacation can be overwhelming if you don’t know exactly where you want to go. After all, the world is a big place with an infinite amount of beauty and culture to explore. When you can basically go anywhere, whittling down your choices can become an arduous task.

Fortunately, the Internet has more than enough online vacation booking sites that can make your task immeasurably easier. They make it easier for you to book anything from luxury digs to a space on someone’s couch, all while letting you compare pricing and other features. But which site — or combination of sites — should you use? And what’s the difference between them?

There’s a simple way to gain more control over your spending. Got a pen? Photo: Markus Rodder

What did you buy today?

No, really. I want to know everything you bought.

Sit and think about it. Did you buy a meal out, school supplies for your child, a bathing suit online, or, ahem, a new “control” key for your Macbook Pro after your 1-year-old ripped it off? Well, perhaps that last one is just me (and it was way overpriced, mind you).

Using a 529 plan to save for college doesn’t limit you to just state colleges or schools within your state. And you don’t even have to use your home state’s plan. Photo: Ohio State via Facebook

By Kathryn Flynn

A college degree is worth more today than ever before. In fact, according to a study by Pew Research, young adults with a four-year degree earn around $17,500 more per year on average than those with only a high school diploma. So the question for most families is not “will our children go to college?” but rather “how are we going to pay for it?”

Spring cleaning is one of my favorite tasks of the year. It gives us a chance to freshen up our home after a long Midwestern winter.

However, the part that I enjoy the most is simply going through all of the stuff we own. The boxes in the garage rafters. The items stowed away in closets. The kits and other things hidden on utility shelves in the garage. The bags that end up hidden behind the shoes and clothes in the closet.

What I most enjoy is that when we go through the items, I always find a bunch of items related to things that I really enjoy doing, but those items got stuck out of sight somewhere and forgotten.

My disc golf set ends up stuck behind a box on a garage shelf.

My home electronics stuff ends up in a cardboard box under our box of paperwork to file and scan in the closet.

Three books that I want to read wind up behind a few of Sarah’s novels on the bookshelf in our bedroom.