As Melinda continues her series on cheap places, she has decided to broaden her focus area to include some of the most exciting and fun locations across the United States. However, she needs our help. If you know of any cheap places to take the family, let us know in the comments below! For now, let’s take a look at my neck of the woods: Northeast Iowa.

Once again, guest blogger Mitchell Pauly takes us on a financial definitions ride through his fun, funny and informative take on finance definitions! This week’s def: credit scores.

This week has been wonderful. My husband re-glazed our picture window, mowed the lawn, prepped the snow blower and made me dinner on Sunday. I don’t know what lit the fire under his butt, but I like…especially the cooking me dinner part.

Well there must have been something in the air; I felt the need to clean the house from top to bottom, including appliances, toilets and furniture (all my least favorite cleaning jobs). And this was all without any company scheduled to drop by.

It seems everywhere you turn these days, someone is gabbing about super- or extreme-couponing. The art of acquiring every day things at rock bottom prices by combining sales and coupons has caught fire with just about everyone in the hunt for the next great deal.

I know some pretty frugal people. They can live on very little money yet manage to enjoy every moment of life to its fullest. Now I must say that frugal living is fantastic: below-means living can be one of the best ways to make dollars stretch, to pay off debts and to save for a rainy day. But planning to live very frugally in retirement can be a recipe for disaster. Why? Well let’s take a look.

The Frugal Retirement Myth

Before we head out of the southwest corner of our amazing nation in our exploration of 529 plans across the country, we'll take a look at Arizona's offerings. As with all of our previous posts in this series, we're breaking down each state's 529 plans into things you might want to know. Here is the lowdown on Arizona's three plans:

Once again, please join guest blogger Mitchell Pauly for a fun, funny and informative take on finance definitions!

Think back to mid-2008 when the financial turmoil in America was spreading like a bad joke throughout the rest of the world: seemingly everyone was underwater in their mortgage. The water couldn’t have been that nice. We all understand now that one of the main causes of that meltdown was the average American borrowing more than they could afford to pay back — that is, they were over-leveraged.

Leverage is Important

As this week winds down and the cooler weather hits my part of the country, I’m enjoying some relaxing time running, reading fiction, taking long baths and drinking hot tea (not all at the same time, but wouldn’t that be a sight?).

Texting. Gabbing on the cell phone. Using a mobile device to update a social network or three. These days, such sights are so common that one would probably think something was amiss if you didn’t see it going on all around. I can’t help but feeling sometimes that despite all the means we have of keeping connected, there can still be a gap in “connectedness.”

In the past, we have written posts about financial mistakes. These articles are helpful; they allow those of us on the brink of a financially disastrous decision the opportunity to foresee the future, based on the problems encountered by others. However, these stories really don’t lay out what to do in an ideal life journey through finances.