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• More than two-thirds (68.1 percent) of the elderly poor are women.
• An October 2012 study by the American Association of University Women found that over the course of a 35-year career, an American woman with a college degree will make about $1.2 million less than a man with the same education.
• More than 70 percent of nursing home residents are women, whose average age at admission was 80. In 2006, the average annual cost of a private room in a nursing home was $75,000 and a shared room almost $67,000.
• It is a well known fact that women live longer than men.
• A 2010 survey by Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies shows that just 8 percent of women feel they are already educated enough to successfully reach their retirement savings goals.

Where am I going with listing all these statistics? Women need to take their retirement planning seriously.

A broken leg is a bigger bummer when you don’t have insurance to pay for it, so make sure you’re covered. Photo: Ted Eytan

Life after college graduation can be an overwhelming experience. Your whole world is changing. You may be both thrilled and sad to be done with your college days, excited for the new beginning, and nervous about what the future holds.

College may have been the first time you were somewhat on your own financially. But now it’s a whole new ball game as a young adult. Now you’re repaying those student loans you took out, hopefully managing a full-time income, and navigating a life that’s far different from your dorm days.

Like it or not, Christmas is less than six weeks away. If your family is anything like our family, the weeks around Christmas are jam-packed with events with friends and extended family members, wrapping and exchanging and opening gifts, preparing and eating meals, and generally fighting off the winter blues with a huge dose of Christmas cheer.

The problem, of course, is that it can be really expensive. The little expenses during all of this really add up, which can result in some very difficult and stressful moments as the holidays pass through.

I’m not going to argue for or against philosophical changes to the season. Some families I know have certainly taken a very different approach to the holidays, such as giving each other only handmade gifts or restricting all gifts given or received to the $10 limit. Others skip the big Christmas dinner altogether and have a very simple meal.

Welcome to Wise Bread's Best Money Tips Roundup!

Thanksgiving can be a really fun holiday — If nothing gets burned in the oven, or your uncle doesn't get too drunk, or your mom doesn't put you on her charades team... Why add more stress to an already jam-packed day?

To me, personal finance is about far more than just dollars and cents. Not only does the money you earn open a lot of doors and give you a lot of opportunities, those things are connected to almost every element of your life.

It’s not surprising, then, that making a change in one little part of your life can have a much bigger impact than you originally thought.

A Change Is Like a Stone Tossed Into a Still Pond

I like to think of my life as being like a pond.

The realities of my life are the bottom of the pond. My children, my wife, my personality, my career, my internal challenges – things like that make up the rules and boundaries of how I live.

The pond is filled with the time and energy and skills and resources that I bring to the table. There’s only so much area that I can cover with what I have, and some areas have to be covered more deeply than others – those are the deeper parts of the pond, like family.

You can often find good prices on fresh produce at local fruit stands and farmers markets. Photo: John Tornow

If you’ve been trying to cut costs to stop living from paycheck to paycheck, the food category was probably one of the first to take a hit. You may have tried slashing your grocery budget to an unrealistic amount and clipping coupons to make ends meet.

If this approach is working, kudos to you. But if you’re struggling with it or even failing miserably, don’t throw in the towel just yet. Establish a realistic figure and keep reading — I’ll offer you some creative ways to feed your family without breaking the bank.

This article is by editor Linda Vergon.

Nearly two thirds of Americans are planning to travel at least once between Thanksgiving Day and New Years Day this year, according to the Orbitz Holiday Travel Insider Index. The survey is based off the popular site’s consumer research and booking data, which also indicates that 60 percent of travelers are willing to spend as much as $2,500 on their getaway. Most travelers (68 percent) plan to spend Christmas away, with Orlando and Cancun being the destinations of choice.

Welcome to Wise Bread's Best Money Tips Roundup! Today we found some great articles to help you quickly save money for a trip, avoid overspending traps, and form good money habits that stick.
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