Shelling out for brand names when a cheaper alternative would do is the first sign that you might be spending a needless amount of money on your child. It’s scary to realize just how much influence brand merchandising has on the youngest of consumers, but it’s not exactly surprising – a 2004 study from the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies found that the US food industry alone spends ten billion dollars a year marketing to children. Kids are not as discerning of consumers as are their folks, so that advertising can be devastatingly effective. Stanford University found that a ten-to-thirty-second exposure of advertising to food, drink, or other advertising can influence children’s preferences. Because of what is commonly called “the nag factor” in marketing science, advertisers can be sure that kids will bug their parents into buying the four dollar tubes of neon-hued, portable yogurt instead of the store-brand cups that are fifty cents apiece. The problem is that, as kids get older, this factor only intensifies – soon it isn’t a two-dollar difference in food products, it’s a seventy-five dollar t-shirt instead of Old Navy chic that your kid insists on you buying. Experts say that parents should expose kids to blind taste tests at a young age, so that they can understand the similarities between brand names and generic substitutes before marketing has warped their brains too much.

Closely associated with this in terms of what makes parents spend too much money on their spawn is the “keeping up with the Jones” element that is so commonplace among school-aged kids. Peer pressure is, as we know, a relentless force on young lives… and that is to say nothing of jealousy. That’s why, if your children’s peers have the newest electronics (iPad, e-reader, laptop, gaming console, cell phone), clothing styles, or even cars – you can expect your kid to be begging you for equal treatment. Kids have little concept of their parents’ long-term financial wellbeing, and if they do, they might simply be too young and immature to care. Even if you can afford to give your kid the best of all material things, perhaps you should think twice before whipping out that credit card. You could be inadvertently setting Junior up for a deeply-ingrained standard of living that he may be unable to uphold later in life, when he moves out on his own. That’s why parents need to give kids serious talks about things that they might find impenetrable or boring, even at a young age. Tell your children about your own financial plan, and explain your goals for retirement savings and other things you value more than keeping up appearances, says Laura Scharr, principal of Ascend Financial Planning LLC in Columbia, S.C. If that doesn’t work, tell them that they are free to save up their allowance for a special purchase.

Curbing impulse purchases is another big step towards making sure that your children don’t sink you financially. It’s a proven, industry-acknowledged fact that getting kids to appeal to parents will directly increase sales. According to the Institute of Medicine study, advertisers specifically place those items at kids’ eye level to get their attention. Kids between the ages of three and nine are easy to please. They ask for a bag of gummy bears at the grocery store and you buy it, because, after all, it is cheap and it will make them happy. Unfortunately, as kids get older, satisfying them will not be so inexpensive or easy. If you add an extra purchase to every shopping trip and the kid gets used to it, you will soon be staring down a teenager who pesters you for dessert at every restaurant, a video game each time you are at the mall, and a piece of clothing when you are at the store for something else entirely. Financial experts suggest taking the money you might blow on impulse purchases and saving it up in a glass jar to fulfill a specific goal. That way, your children can see how saving for something they want can give more satisfaction in the long run than frittering away money on small items.

Two ways that parents of adult children end up blowing a LOT of money, even after a lifetime of reasonable budgeting and judicious application of the word “no,” is on their kids’ educations and weddings. College is expensive nowadays – and that’s assuming that your child graduates in the typical four years, which sixty percent of students will not. It’s normal for high schoolers to select ultra-expensive private colleges as their dream schools” with little regard for cost, expecting parents to pay, says Scharr. The college costs come often at a time when parents are starting to really sock away money for retirement, leading to an uncomfortable conflict of interests and parents ultimately putting off their retirement. Experts say that parents should, instead, examine what they can realistically give their children in the way of college spending and be clear from the start about that number so that expectations don’t get out of control. For example, you could offer to pay tuition for any in-state public university. If the child wants to go to a pricier school, make it clear he or she will have to come up with the difference by applying for scholarships or taking out student loans, Scharr says.

As for weddings, you should know that the average American nuptials cost almost twenty-six thousand dollars last year, as per the Tucson, Ariz.-based market research firm The Wedding Report. Many parents feel obligated to cough up the cash for their children to get married, even if they are having money problems. In turn this leaves the adult children with little incentive for children to control costs. That can lead to lasting financial impact to parents for what amounts to a one-day celebration. Parents, again, need to be honest with their children – who are now adults! – and explain their situation, and the reality of what help they can actually afford to give, if any. At the end of the day, you don’t owe your children a massive wedding. It doesn’t make you a bad parent if you put your foot down. There does come a time when you need to stop living for your kids, and their wedding is probably as good a time as any to draw that line.

Here’s the straight scoop: buying a home with unpermitted work can really turn into a pain in the rear. Once you own the home, YOU are now stuck with the burden of disclosing the problem when it comes time to sell again, unless you also try to be discreet and sell the home as-is… and good luck with that, by the way. If you are caught by code enforcement officials, even if you yourself are not responsible for the addition(s), you will possibly be required to remedy the situation, which can range anywhere from minor changes to partial tear-downs of structures. You will need to pay for the permits that were required in the first place, and possibly deal with penalties arising from illicit construction.

Just to add to your headaches, the code enforcement authorities could, in turn, rat you out to the tax assessor for your municipality, especially if the contested addition is one that increases the square heated/cooled footage of your home. You could become liable for back taxes based on the difference in square footage dating back to when the work was illegally done, and – again – possibly pay penalties and/or interest for the time that the city or county was deprived of that tax income. Just as a FYI, one major red flag of unpermitted work in the house is of there is a difference between the square footage on the tax-assessor rolls and the square footage of the house now.

There are other problems, too. While permitted work is “grandfathered” after building codes get updated, code-enforcement officials may mandate that any illegal work be brought to current code. It goes without saying that this can get REALLY messy and very expensive, depending on how the work was carried out and what the codes specify for that type of construction. Again, let’s just say that if the previous homeowner(s) were careless enough to cut corners by avoiding permits, they may have taken dangerous, illegal shortcuts that would not pass muster with the inspection department. Let’s also talk about the fact that unpermitted additions are usually excluded from homeowners insurance policies, so if a guest is injured in a part of the house that was constructed illicitly, you might find yourself embroiled in a lawsuit if your insurer refuses to pay. And I’m not trying to be alarmist or fatalistic here, but sometimes – not often, but it happens – mortgage companies have been known to call a loan for immediate payment if they can prove you knew about an illegal addition, reasoning that they don’t want to take a chance on exposing themselves to future liabilities. Hey, it’s a legitimate concern when you have been caught breaking the law.

You might feel as if you will never run into a situation where you would get caught with illegal work on your house, but it’s a frequent thing for neighbors at war with one another to drop the proverbial dime on code offenders as a way of getting back at them for petty grievances. You never know who is watching, and this actually happened in my old neighborhood and caused a huge drama – one family living on the street had turned their garage into an extra bedroom without going through the trouble of permits, and their back-door neighbors, who had been complaining for years about kids jumping a shared fence, decided to be vindictive and turn them in. You don’t want that to happen to you. On the other hand, depending on how old the unpermitted construction is, there is a chance that you will never run into trouble with it. An addition that is thirty years old, for instance, is unlikely to stand out from the rest of the house. One way of knowing where you might potentially stand with regard to your own situation is to place an anonymous call to your local code-enforcement office and ask what its policies are about scenarios such as yours and how much it would typically cost to remedy any problems.

If you do choose to go forward and buy the house, know that you should absolutely expect a steep discount for accepting it “as is” – since you will either have to pay big bucks to make the work legal, or sell the house at a similar discount when you yourself go to leave. The experts recommend hiring a qualified home inspector to run a careful examination of the house’s structure, electrical, and plumbing work. An inspector working for you will examine the home’s physical elements for flaws and stability. You can choose not to tell them if there is unpermitted work in your would-be home, and they generally will never know the difference unless the work is pretty much a hot mess. If they do happen to question some shoddy work and find out the truth, they aren’t going to go and tattle to the code compliance team, since you are the one paying them. You shouldn’t hesitate to shell out the money for this inspection, especially now that you know the previous owner(s) cut some corners when it came to getting things done. Just know that you are walking into one of the biggest instances of “caveat emptor” out there, and go in with your eyes wide open so that you are not surprised by trouble if and when it comes knocking.

Hoehner says that she and her fellow researchers found that long commutes suck workers’ time and energy away from exercise. Their fitness suffers proportionally, with longer commuters having a higher risk of high blood pressure, higher weight and generally lower fitness levels. Yes, this is intuitive, she admits – but it’s good to know scientifically that these things are true and are actually impacting people’s health. The findings, which will appear in the June issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, determined that the number of employed Americans driving to work by private auto more than doubled in the forty year period between 1960 and 2000 – it jumped from forty-one million to almost one hundred and thirteen million. Not only that, but the average distance driven to work has increased significantly in recent years. In 1983, the average commute was under nine miles. By 2001, it was over twelve miles.

The new study focused on adult Texans living in either the Dallas/Fort Worth or Austin regions. Nobody who participated had ever had a heart attack, stroke, or diabetes, and none of them were pregnant. Every person was employed in a field that required a commute of at least some distance. At some point between 2000 and 2007, all participants underwent comprehensive medical exams, including treadmill runs designed to assess their heart and lung fitness. They also reported their level of daily exercise during the three months prior to the study. It was determined by scientists that the people who drove the longest distance between home and work were much less likely to work out than those who had a shorter commute. These people also had lower levels of cardiorespiratory fitness, a higher body-mass index (a measure of body fat based on height and weight), a wider waistline and higher blood pressure – they were much less healthy, to summarize.

In particular, those who drove over ten miles each way to work were connected to higher blood pressure levels, while those who faced at least a fifteen mile commute were associated with a greater chance of obesity and lower odds of meeting public-health physical-activity recommendations, the team found. Interestingly enough, the time spent working out was a red herring. These trends didn’t disappear even after the researchers factored in time spent exercising, which suggests that there is something about the commute itself beyond just its impact in lowering exercise rates that harms cardiovascular health. Hoehner concludes that people who have long commutes are actually burning fewer calories even when they do exercise, suggesting that the extended driving is somehow affecting their metabolism. She posits that stress could be a contributing factor, even though the study did not measure that variable, since those that have longer drives are faced with more stress due to traffic congestion and other drivers on the road.

Unfortunately, driving to work varies from other types of sedentary activity (again, like watching TV), because it is something that people HAVE to do. Since it’s not exactly easy for people to up and quit their jobs, those that have a long commute need to take pains to incorporate physical activity into their days, even if they need to get really creative about it. It could be, Hoehner suggests, that these folks simply get up and walk around whenever they can, as many times as possible. Offices could make strides towards a healthier workforce by encouraging short breaks for physical activity throughout the day, and “perhaps even flex time so people can drive to work outside rush hour,” which would hopefully shorten the time the commute takes, if not the distance. Of course, as Dr. Bryan Henry, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, N.Y., a person’s attitude makes all the difference in how much exercise they ultimately get. Those who become complacent with the amount of time they spend driving and get intimidated by the thought of adding exercise into their day will remain unhealthy, but those who commit to perhaps taking a few ten-minute walks throughout the day can make a big difference. Nobody wants to “jump on an elliptical machine” after working and commuting for ten or eleven hours, he admits, but one could try to park further away in parking lots, and try to get in little walks when they can. That all adds up, and can really make a difference in a person’s overall health.

I really related to this article, since I myself used to commute between forty-five minutes and one hour each way when I was in college, which was thirty miles away in the next town over. I unfortunately gained a lot of weight during my underclassman days, and I am still struggling with that now. I can’t imagine how people handle the stress of long commutes on a daily basis, and think it is great when they make the effort to stay healthy despite the effort of just getting to and from their job five days a week. Hopefully, this research will bring to light some of the health risks that people face with long commutes, so that these things can be dealt with.

Mike Schenk, vice president of economics and statistics at the Credit Union National Association, says that a neglected CD is most likely to be rolled over into the closest product possible to the CD that just matured, at whatever the going interest rate happens to be. This can be REALLY bad news for someone who took out a five-year CD in 2007 at a plum rate, didn’t keep track of the date of maturity, and comes to discover that their money has been rolled over into another five year commitment with an interest rate under one percent. This is not a hard and fast rule, however – Schenk admits that the financial institution is just as likely to cancel the CD and place the money in a plain, old savings account until the matter can be resolved.

One bit of good news is that, if you forget about a CD that has matured, it’s not as if you will lose the money. Banks and credit unions are both obligated to keep the money safe for you. The question is, of course, how they will go about doing so – their policy might not be what you yourself would have chosen. Neglect to get in touch with the bank when your bond matured, and they chose to roll it over into a new CD? You might have no recourse if you want that money back, other than to suck up the early withdrawal penalties that you would pay in any situation where you break the contract of a CD. If you wanted to try and move the money to another bank, since rates are better elsewhere, you won’t have the chance to do that if your existing bank has already transferred your money into a new CD before you got the chance to as them to cut you a check.

Kenneth Carow, professor of finance at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, confirms that banks will “generously” rollover your CD and not charge you any sort of fee or penalty for your inattention, but will almost surely punish you if you try to withdraw the fund “prior to the newly established maturity date” that was established when they opened the new account. How much you will end up paying in this instance can vary widely – Bankrate’s survey in March on CD early withdrawal penalties showed penalties varied widely. Some institutions, such as Bank of the West and Boeing Employees Credit Unions, only charged thirty days’ worth of interest as a penalty for early withdrawal. Bigger banks with less to lose by alienating customers, a la Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase, on the other hand, are charging a flat penalty of twenty-five dollars plus three percent of the principle, which will cut into your own money in every case, considering the fact that there are no interest rates above two percent to be found nowadays. Let’s say a customer makes an early withdrawal of ten thousand dollars from a CD at one of the first two institutions. They would pay only one dollar and sixty cents. At BoA or Chase, however, they would be slapped with a charge of three hundred twenty-five dollars. To say that it’s a big difference is an understatement.

Experts say that the best way to avoid getting hit with huge early withdrawal penalties on your CDs is to keep track of the maturity dates and avoid forced rollover in the first place. If you keep track of your CDs and when they will come due, you can avoid the bank making decisions on your behalf. Before you sign on the dotted line for a new CD, it really pays to find out what the bank’s policies are with regards to unattended CDs after maturity, and whether there is a grace period between the maturity date and when the bank will take action on your account. Most banks, say Carow, will give you at least one day as a grace period – and many will give up to ten days. That’s why you need to know in advance what the bank’s policies are. As Schenk says, “anything that might be important to you on the back end (of a CD transaction) is important to ask about on the front end.” Finally, find out if the institution holding your CD allows for prematurity instructions. If it does, you can simply provide in writing instructions for what to do with the money in your CD upon maturity, and you won’t have to worry about being there on a specific date to take action – it will go as you plan right when you establish the account.

Make sure that, if you move or somehow change your address during the term of your CD, you get in touch with your bank promptly to update your information. That way, when the notice of CD maturity is sent, you’ll be sure to receive it. Make a habit of opening mail from financial institutions in a timely manner, because you never know if what they are sending you is something important concerning your CD. Many banks will do you the courtesy of letting you know when a CD that you have is about to come due, but you owe it to yourself to keep your own records. Kathryn Garrison, a financial adviser with Moss Adams Wealth Advisors in Seattle, underscores the fact that you absolutely need to be able to keep track of all your financial products – even if that means sacrificing a few fractions of an interest point. “Shop around, but don’t fret too much about a 0.01 percent or 0.02 percent return difference,” she advises. After all, “the hassle of having CDs at three or four different institutions can negate the financial benefits.” And it’s not like many people need to worry about diversifying their investments between banks, since the FDIC now covers up to a quarter-million dollars in assets for individual consumers.

Sara Abbott used Pinterest to organize ideas for her upcoming home renovation. The Boston-area mom of three, who works from home, had been using the site since she was first invited. At first, she used Pinterest to plan children’s parties. Her use ballooned, however, when she began pinning “everything [her] heart desired” in an updated home. Abbott shared her boards with her architect. When he brought Abbott and her husband the first set of drawings, she says, “it was as if he’d been living in [her] head.” All the small details she fell in love with on Pinterest, down to the brick pavers she liked for a mudroom, were included. Abbott is now in the midst of picking appliances for her remodeled kitchen, and she is pinning her choices to a new board. She says that this method allows her to quickly and easily compare prices and specs between manufacturers and styles, as opposed to just bookmarking pages onto her desktop and forgetting about them.

Another homeowner using Pinterest to plan her home renovation is Jessica Albon of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who is working on planning a new kitchen. Albon says that she loves the variety of Pinterest, which allows her to search randomly within a broad category if she’s “drawing a blank” so that she can browse until she finds something that she likes. Albon compares the site to “having access to all the back issues of every great decorating magazine ever — all searchable.” Whether she’s planning the kitchen remodel that’s six to eight months away or the light fixture she’s creating for her office, she says Pinterest is a great way to gather images that help her better envision a project. “It’s really helpful to see everything at a glance,” she says. “It makes it easier to see how the different things I love come together — or don’t.”

It’s not as if Pinterest is the newest kid on the block. The creators of the site first registered the domain back in 2009. The site’s popularity, however, has only recently taken off like gangbusters. The number of unique site visitors jumped by a whopping fifty-two percent between January and February of this year, says ComScore. There are now almost eighteen million pinners. Some are real estate agents who have been playing around with Pinterest as a way to help them connect with both homebuyers and sellers, and to grow their business. The National Association of Realtors’ “The Member’s Edge” blog had a post in early March for agents about how to get started using the site to drive Web traffic and build business.

One realtor doing just that is Sue Eller, an agent based in La Canada, California. Eller considers Pinterest a chance to connect with her clients on a more personal level. Social tools like the pinning site, she says, allow clients to see her as more than just a listing agent. Could there be any better use of the site than to leverage affinity marketing, she queries? Pinterest allows people to get to know one another better, to go back and forth. Not only does the site allow people to know you better, but you get to know them faster as well. If you find that you connect with a realtor on the same wavelength, she reasons, you are “more apt to listen” to them. Since buying a home is the biggest financial decision possible and people “have a tendency to be distrustful” of agents, why not use Pinterest as a way to circumvent that distrust?

Many agents use Pinterest as a way to channel traffic to their web site. One realtor doing just that is Karen Highland of Frederick, Maryland. Highland says that she pin things from her blog and website. When people click on those pins, she gets more traffic to her site. After just two months of pinning, she says, she has seen a “little bump” in the volume of traffic to her site. Mike Bowler of Lansing, Michigan, is quick to say that, while getting traffic is important, agents should be sure to also repin content from others. After all, he reasons, you are not on Pinterest to sell a home. You are there to build and nurture relationships. You need to pin other people’s things to build relationships, and not just your own. Despite their different uses of Pinterest, both Highland and Bowler are teaching other agents about how social media can help them in their business.

As far as buying and selling homes, Bowler says he believes Pinterest will be more effective in marketing communities rather than specific properties. “Normally, on a resale home, (buyers) are shopping lifestyle more than the home itself,” he says. So agents can use Pinterest to help brand themselves as community experts. Highland has several pin boards about things to do in Frederick and its neighborhoods, and Eller has posted about interesting architecture, parks and activities all over her city – things that are of interest to current residents as well as those thinking of relocating.

It remains hard for agents to tell for sure whether Pinterest is truly helping as of yet. Highland says that it is hard to measure whether a lead was actually generated by Pinterest, and yet she still counts the site as being helpful. The agent says that her presence on the site is, by her own estimation, contributing to her overall social media presence as part of “getting out there and being known.” She hopes to stay “top of mind” with those who follow her, so that, if the time comes that they are looking to either buy or sell a home, they will remember that she’s a realtor and maybe call her up.

Agents may also be able to use Pinterest to help buyers find the home of their dreams. While the Pinterest boards of a first-time homebuyer might be filled with a lot more fantasy than realism, agents can use a buyer’s pins to help them find shades of what they love in a future home. It’s all about tastes and preferences. Homeowner Abbott, who used Pinterest as a means of conveying ideas to her architect, points out just how portable and convenient the site is. She can show ideas to her husband, her friends, or her contractor much more easily than with a binder of torn magazine pictures or by driving around and looking at houses that they like, she says. It’s a way to share a lot of information with one simple link.

Nor are realtors the only people involved in real estate who see value in Pinterest. Builders, too, stand to benefit from the site, says Kristin Tavcar-France, marketing coordinator for homebuilder Taylor Morrison Austin. Tavcar-France was quoted on Bankrate.com as calling Pinterest a “terrific branding opportunity” for builders. “We’re always looking for new ways to reach our homebuyers,” she says. “Pinterest is the perfect platform; it allows us the ability to capture an audience’s imagination through the imagery of our homes.” Additionally, Pinterest serves as market research, since the company can see what sorts of things Pinterest users are pinning. This is what Tavcar-France calls “helpful data,” since it allows builders to figure out what people really love and are interested in adding to their homes.

There’s just one fly in the ointment of Pinterest, and that is the growing dispute over copyright that has sprung up after some users took a closer look at the site’s terms and conditions of use. Pinterest etiquette as spelled out on the site demand that users credit the original source for pinned images whenever possible. But there have been complaints from content creators who worry their images will be distributed without credit or permission, and from pinners who weren’t sure what content they were permitted to post.

Regardless of these concerns, it is likely that Pinterest will continue to flourish. Its use for those either involved in the real estate industry or looking to buy or sell is undeniable.

Remodeling’s editorial director, Sal Alfano, generalizes that, for the most part, upkeep is more popular than upgrades nowadays. Although prices and returns vary by region, the majority of upgrade projects tend not to pay off. The very worst returns tend to come from high-dollar, high-end and highly personalized add-ons intended to “wow.” Sure, prospective buyers might be impressed by your state-of-the-art garage/workshop, which you built from the ground up… but they are unlikely to be willing to pay top dollar for it. Nor will they shell out the full cost that you paid for your luxe home office. As per the Remodeling report, the following are the six home improvements that ranked lowest on the list of projects and money that is earned back at time of sale.

Home offices are the very worst investments of your money when it comes to home equity, says Alfano. Nowadays, the out-of-office workspace for most people is a corner table at Starbucks, not a lavish home tech lounge. Thanks to today’s technology, a busy worker is able to bring their tablet, laptop, PDA, and/or smartphone just about anywhere and have all the productivity of the office with them, whether it’s on a park bench or sitting at the kitchen table. Regardless, some homeowners are stubbornly clinging to the concept of a home office, usually converted out of an existing bedroom and tricked out with lots of wiring and built-in storage. They will lose big on these investments when they go to say, Alfano discloses – the national average for home office remodels is almost twenty-nine thousand dollars. Homeowners can expect to recoup less than forty-six percent of that cost at the time of sale. Alfano advises that would-be builders of home offices carefully consider their plans, so that the office can be easily converted back into an extra bedroom at the time of sale. When you do list the house, be sure to call that space a study, den, or hobby room… names that invoke multipurpose space, which is popular nowadays. If you use the word “office,” he warns, you will potentially “lock yourself into that one use” and turn off would-be buyers who maybe have no need for hat kind of space.

It might seem like a backup generator is a no-brainer when it comes to making a home improvement investment. After all, it’s pretty cool to be able to have all the comforts of home, no matter what the weather… right? If you live in a stormy location, you will surely get your money back. Or so you think. In reality, many buyers – especially those who are not native to your location – might not understand the appeal of a behemoth generator in the backyard. And even those who do are unlikely to pay as much as you did to have it installed. The Remodeling report showed that the average homeowner pays over fourteen thousand seven hundred dollars to purchase a heavy-duty backup generator, although Alfano admits that there are less expensive models and less-complicated installation choices that can cut costs by a good amount. Homeowners will recover only a paltry forty-eight and a half percent of their investment at sale time.

The next-worse bang for your buck comes in the form of a sunroom added to your home. Sure, most buyers like natural light, roomy square footage, and pristine upkeep. Therefore, a brand-new addition that increases your living area and is called a “sunroom” should be a great investment, yes? Not so much, as it turns out. Alfano says that the problem with building a sunroom – or any room – onto your home is that additions are extremely expensive. Expanding the footprint of your home is one of the priciest home upgrades you can endeavor, and although a sunroom seems like a fairly simple add-on, the national price tag for such a project is over seventy-five thousand dollars. Homeowners can expect to get back just forty-eight point six percent when they sell their home. Katie Severance, co-author of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Selling Your Home,” concedes that a sunroom need not always be a losing proposition, if your home lacks living space. If you already have plenty of common-use area, however, a sunroom will look out of place.

It might seem like a deluxe retreat of a master suite is the ultimate real estate slam dunk. Who, after all, doesn’t thrill to the idea of a five-star-hotel-quality suite with an attached spa bathroom and a kitchenette that affords you coffee and pastries before facing the world? Well, those who have to pay for it, for one. For a top-of-the-line master bedroom addition, which features roomy square roommate and only the finest materials, you are looking at shelling out two hundred thirty two thousand dollars on average. As Bankrate.com put it, that’s enough dinero to afford four hundred sixty nights at a fancy resort, “with enough left over to raid the minibar.” These ultra-opulent bedrooms started as a trend in vacation homes, and worked their way over to primary dwellings, says Alfano. On one hand, buyers will in fact be impressed by a massive master suite, and might just use it as the decision that tips them into your favor towards choosing a home. On the other hand, they will not shell out as much as you did – sellers can only expect to recover fifty-three percent of their expenditure at the point of resale. Why so low? Well, as Loren Keim, author of “How to Sell Your Home in Any Market” points out, for the money that you are probably trying to charge (to recoup the costs of the bedroom addition), a buyer can probably find a newer home that integrates similar features and identical spaciousness as part of the original floorplan, and probably is laid out better. That’s why you won’t get the full price back for your bedroom remodel, no matter how much of a show-stopper it might be.

Next on the list of home remodels that won’t get you your money back is a bathroom addition. On one hand, people like having extra bathrooms, especially if they entertain frequently or have a few children. On the other, adding extra room to your house is always an expensive proposition, and putting in a new bathroom is no exception. For even a moderately outfitted addition with synthetic stone or plastic laminate surfaces, Remodeling estimates that you will probably shell out almost twenty-two thousand dollars. Add premium touches like marble tile or a fancy shower unit, and you could be spending over forty thousand dollars. No matter what you end up shelling out, you can expect to regain no more than fifty-three cents on the dollar. Keim points out that a buyer is unlikely to pay twenty to forty thousand dollars for one extra bathroom, no matter how spiffy. Alfano recommends that, instead of building out to gain a new bathroom, consider looking at how to reconfigure your existing space to incorporate an additional bathroom for less. That way, you aren’t burdened with an expensive addition that is sure to be a money-loser.

Garages are a big deal to some folks, especially those that have a beloved car or who work with tools and have incorporated a workshop into that space. Building a new, standalone garage from scratch costs a LOT of money. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a space featuring all the organizational built-ins, natural light, and a durable, easy-to-clean floor to ensure it would never be messy again, on top of room for a few cars? Undoubtedly – but are you willing to shell out over ninety grand for the privilege? Probably not, especially when you consider that you are unlikely to get more than fifty-four percent of what you spent back. The problem is, says Alfano, not that many people can appreciate the appeal of an upscale garage. Even those that can are unlikely to shell out what you paid.

The moral of the story here is that you should always think before you start upgrading your home, especially if your plans involve shelling out a lot of money on home additions. You might find that you can never hope to recover what you spent, and that’s a sobering reality for many homeowners trying to gain equity in a lackluster market.

I don’t know how many takers will hop on the zombie insurance bandwagon, but it’s a fact that the demand for niche hedge products is growing. We live in risk-adverse times, after all. Parents are sending their kids to play on the jungle gym with helmets and pads on. We have metal detectors in art museums. In America, we like to feel as if we are doing our best to stave off failure and loss, probably because we have, as a society, experienced so much of it in recent years. If some careful planning will protect us in the event of disaster, you can bet that we will be jumping on that opportunity. That’s why, despite continued poor consumer spending, we are willing to break out our wallets for exotic insurance policies. The Life Insurance Marketing and Research Association says spending on long-term-care and disability policies grew more than a third in 2011, proof that we very much consider insurance to be a good buy.

Although novelty insurance products might only be just now starting to get popular attention, they are by no means something entirely new. A.W.G. Dewar has provided tuition insurance since 1930. Aon Affinity’s WedSafe wedding policies have been available for more than a decade, insuring folks against wedding-day hurricanes, blackouts and – horror of horrors, as any bride could tell you – no-show photographers. Nowadays, there are wedding cancellation policies to safeguard you from being ditched at the altar by the love of your life, which will cover financial losses like unrecoverable deposits, as well as pay for trauma counseling. You can expect to shell out a couple hundred dollars for such a policy, but that’s barely a drop in the bucket for some people I know who are planning weddings more like three-ring circuses! For those who make it through the wedding unscathed, there is always SafeGuard Guaranty Corp.’s WedLock Divorce Insurance, which will cost you sixteen dollars a month in exchange for coverage of twelve hundred fifty dollars in expenses. In my day, the wedding vows were considered ample insurance against divorce… but hey! That was five whole years ago. Practically a lifetime!

Insurance types that are definitely also products of the twenty-first century include Argo Insurance Group’s blogger liability coverage and Best Buy’s gadget Buy Back Program. The latter policy will protect you against obsolescence in your gadget, making sure that you always have the latest and greatest. And then there are policies that speak to distinct latter-day concerns, such as IncomeAssure, launched by Assura Group this past summer, which provides supplemental unemployment insurance in the event of a layoff. Like so many insurance policies, however, IncomeAssure gives only partial protection from catastrophe. If you are, in fact, laid off, IncomeAssure will only cover half of your previous salary, and only for twenty-four weeks. According to a spokesperson, IncomeAssure is meant to primarily supplement state unemployment benefits, and not to provide a complete replacement income. Steve Dasseos, founder of TripInsuranceStore.com, says most travel-insurance policies refund just a portion of your deposits. Similarly, while it may cover legal bills and the cost of creating a second household, divorce insurance won’t mend a broken heart. There is only so much that a hedge product can do, after all.

Still, neither the harsh realities of life nor the remoteness of the threat have yet diminished the demand for exotic insurance plans. Case study number one: the two hundred and sixty-three pet-care contracts that retired New Hampshire retail exec Bart Centre has sold under Eternal Earth-Bound Pets, his insurance company aimed at Christians worried about the care and feeding of their furbabies after the rapture. Centre has generously enlisted the services of forty-six atheists, guaranteed to be left behind in the event of the Second Coming. For one hundred and thirty-five dollars, Centre can ensure that one of these heathens will take care of your pup or puss after you have departed for the great beyond. Centre does admit that he has lost some sales due to the fact that many religious folk believe that the rapture will be almost immediately followed by Armageddon. After all, he points out, why worry about who will walk Spots the Labrador “when the world’s going to end 20 minutes later?” (Such a good point.)

Financial experts would probably say that you need not worry about buying insurance to cover yourself against an event unless there is a meaningful risk of you actually losing money from such an event. I myself can’t see any situation under which the zombie apocalypse would fit such a description, nor am I too worried about the rapture. I’d also argue that life went on just fine before wedding OR divorce insurance, but that’s just me. You might want to live life in a bubble, but there’s just no need to purchase silly insurance in the quest to safeguard yourself from anything and everything. Accept that you cannot do so, and move on.

Profiled in the article was Alexis Campestre, who was unemployed and cash-less while trying to start a business in Los Angeles. Due to his lack of income, it became necessary for him to move in with two friends. He couldn’t swing any rent money, but agreed to cook, clean, and handle laundry in exchange for his room and board. Campestre recently landed a long-sought-for job, and plans to start contributing monetarily to the household, in lieu of his current position of indentured servitude. He wonders how to best split up the bills between himself and his friends. Annamarie Pluhar, author of “Sharing Housing: A Guidebook for Finding and Keeping Good Housemates,” says that the process of splitting the rent can be surprisingly sticky, especially if the people involved have different levels of income. After all, most people take on roommates to save money. If there is what Pluhar calls “a major imbalance in contribution to household versus personal spending,” the relationship can get rocky very fast, she warns.

There are several different strategies for splitting up rent and other household expenses, and getting everyone involved to pay their fair share. The first, of course, is the classic fifty-fifty proposition. This plan is an oldie, but still gets a lot of play due to the fact that everyone involved is contributing equally to the household. It also tends to quell any resentment between roomies, since nobody is subsidizing the living expenses of another. Ornella Grosz, another author who has written extensively about living with others, suggests divvying up the monthly bills so there’s a utility or cable bill in each person’s name, if you are otherwise splitting all expenses. Not only will this account for differing wants/needs in terms of usage and features, but living together is something like training wheels for the real world, as she points out, and “it’s a good time for college students and recent grads to build their responsibility.” This also creates a cooperative environment.

This scheme has worked out well for Amy Grizzle and her three roommates. Grizzle, who lives in Acworth, Georgia, and owns her own small business, says that she falls in the middle of the income range between the four people sharing a house, but they split everything evenly, including utilities. However, one of Grizzle’s roommates recently moved out, and Grizzle stepped up to cover the extra rent because she’s the one who collects rent checks and mails them in each month. It did make her budget a bit tighter, she admits, but it maintained peace in the house and persuaded her roommates to take control of putting an ad in the paper to find a replacement boarder. Grizzle says that, if she were again in the position of losing a roommate, she’d ask her living partners to share the cost of the empty extra bedroom.

One alternate plan for roomies with disparate incomes is to split the rent based on percentages of income, a scheme that is also fraught with as many pitfalls as advantages. In some apartments, roommates split up expenses according to a percentage of their incomes. For example, if one roommate earns one hundred grand per year and the other makes entry-level, the higher-earning roommate would pitch in more each month. But according to Grosz, splitting the rent based on income is more common with couples than with roommates. In some cases (like Campestre’s, as mentioned already), however, it is sensible to adjust financial contributions on the basis of other forms of pitching in, such as Campestre’s cooking and cleaning. Of course, it is important to go into an agreement like Campestre has with his roommates with a good conversation about expectations, so nobody ends up feeling resentful or taken advantage of. The roommates who are paying more, for instance, should lay out their expectations about how often the chore-performing roommate will provide dinner, and what sort of meals will be put forth in exchange for rent being paid. All roommates, Grosz explains, need to see value.

Other roommates manage to split expenses on the basis of more complicated variables, such as bedroom size or use of other amenities. A roommate with access to their own bathroom, a private balcony, a reserved parking spot, or a walk-in closet could, under such an agreement, expect to pay a larger percentage of the rent than the roomie who settled for the smallest bedroom. When rooms are of unequal sizes, Pluhar suggests using the rent-splitting calculator offered on the online roommates’ resource Splitwise.com to get a ballpark suggestion on what each person should pay and then adjusting based on a conversation with roommates. Hopefully there is a consensus on who wants better accommodations in exchange for paying more, so that nobody feels cheated of either space or money.

No matter what sort of split you agree to, Pluhar insists, the most important thing is that everyone involved agrees to what they are paying BEFORE they move in. In advance of signing the lease or renting a truck, be sure to sit down with your roommates and be sure that you have achieved clarity on the important questions, such as how the bills will be divided, who will pay them, and any questions or complaints that might arise. As Pluhar says, you wouldn’t take a job without discussing the benefits. Therefore, you shouldn’t move into a house or apartment without first discussing how the rent will be distributed. Changing things up after the fact can feel like a nasty bait-and-switch, she warns, so it really is best to hammer things out and carve the details in stone before anyone comes in. Make sure that things are unlikely to change, since this is a common cause of major friction between people living together.

Once the details of living together have been agreed upon, everyone involved should sign a roommate contract. In this document, be sure to put in writing the agreements on rent and utilities that you came to when discussing things verbally. Grizzle says that, when a new roommate enters the picture, she will be sure to get a roommate agreement between the four people in the house that will solidify the house rules and what happens when one person moves out. According to Pluhar, a roommate agreement should cover issues such as cleanliness and neatness, guests, kitchen use, daily routines, tasks, noise, and monthly bills – anything that could come up later and cause contention between the people sharing the space. Be sure to agree not to leave on electrical appliances when not needed and to not mess with the thermostat, since these things can drive up the bills. Discuss how community needs such as toilet paper and paper towels will be paid for, and perhaps talk about the creation of a group emergency fund. Know that this contract is not just for legal protection, but also as a means to encourage roommates to discuss expectations in advance and get everyone’s agreement.

Although the retail industry has struggled mightily during and after the Great Recession, the American dollar store is experiencing a tremendous surge in popularity. National dollar store chains are not only reporting record profits, but drawing wealthier customers than ever before, and opening new stores almost every day. If you go strictly by store count, Dollar General rules the nation with ninety-eight hundred locations. This trend is largely because of greater acceptance of dollar stores by middle-class shopping centers, which used to eschew discount stores and their ingrained association with downmarket appeal. John Tomlinson, an analyst at ITG Investment Research, says that these same hoity-toity strip malls are now actively courting dollar chains, since these stores are viewed as one of the few reliable options for filling vacant storefronts.

Interestingly enough, the secret to success at these chains is not the pricing. After all, two of the three biggest “dollar” stores – Dollar General and Family Dollar – sell three-quarters of their merchandise for over one dollar (Dollar Tree is the only true “dollar” store of the bunch, with every item in the store running for the same price). Family Dollar spokesman Josh Braverman admits that his company cannot always undercut Walmart, so it’s not as if prices are truly as good as it gets. And even at Dollar Tree, prices are not always the best – compare the per-ounce prices of Palmolive dish soap, Clorox bleach, and Duncan Hines baking mix between the dollar store’s tiny servings to those larger ones sold at your local grocery store, and the latter will win every time. Nor, Kadet points out, can dollar stores attribute all their popularity to unique items. Once upon a time, dollar stores filled their shelves with overstock items and manufacturer’s seconds, making every trip a shot at unearthing some fascinating fine. Nowadays, manufacturing titans such as Procter & Gamble make products in small sizes just for dollar-store shelves, signifying a major shift into the mainstream.

Many of the generic items sold at dollar stores bear unintentionally humorous knockoff labels (Chef Karlin instead of Chef Boyardee for canned spaghetti, for instance), but these brands are what Kadet calls “the product of a sophisticated merchandising strategy.” Stuart Straus, CEO of Personal Care Products, the nation’s largest purveyor of “extreme value” packaged goods, says his sourcing team travels the globe to find cheapo-depot equivalents of five dollar items that dollar stores can sell for one dollar, under his company’s Personal Care and PowerHouse banners. The latest: a feminine-hygiene spray and a WD-40 knockoff. “There are hundreds of companies like us vying to supply them,” he says of the dollar stores. These are not products designed to knock your socks off. Instead, they are meant to simply satisfy you with a good deal and an okay product. Kadet reviewed dollar store beef jerky – pretty bad; packs of throwaway razors and boxes of garbage bags (“got the job done”) and a box of chocolate mints which she shared with her coworkers, and rated as “not half bad.”

The true appeal of dollar chains, Kadet concludes, is that they stand in for the lost general store in a period of time when Americans need just that. They sell a lot of miscellaneous items, all of which can be bought within one stop. People don’t have a lot of money to waste on gas and their lives are too busy to jet all over town hitting multiple stops to pick up different items, and making one big stop to the big-box discount store at the edge of city limits (ahem, Walmart) takes too much gas and time. The average dollar store patron spends just ten minutes and ten dollars in the store. Ladies and gentleman, this is the epitome of shopping in 2012. Dollar stores say that they plan to double their store counts within coming years, signs that the dollar revolution shall continue for the foreseeable future.

Unfortunately, according to Adecco’s 2012 Graduation Survey, not all other Class of 2012 grads are in the same situation. Just over half of all college graduates this year have full-time jobs lined up, the survey tells us. Consider the fact that just as many college seniors – people whose average age is twenty-two years old – are still being at least partially supported by their parents. This means that the folks are still covering, at minimum, a portion of their child’s living expenses: cell phone/internet bills, food, and/or health insurance coverage, for example. About two percent of college grads-to-be say that their parents are still covering the entire tab for their living expenses. Interesting enough, the columnist says that she see a lot more of that latter situation in real life with her daughter’s friends.

As one might imagine, there are not many parents of grown adults who are happy to be still supporting their overgrown spawn after twenty-plus years! That’s why more and more parents are pitching in to help their kids get a job. Joining the ranks of the unemployed can involve a lot of legwork, and for the children of helicopter parents, this is something that – again – they can pawn off on Mommy and Daddy. According to Adecco, nearly a third of parents are helping their kids find work, and – astonishingly! – nearly one in ten are taking them to job interviews, hopefully not holding their hands the whole way. Three percent of recent grads admit that their parents have gone so far as to actually sit in with them during job interviews, and one percent (of whom I am ashamed) say that their parents have written thank you notes on their behalf after job interviews.

Men are far more likely to turn to their parents for help finding a job, particularly when it comes to concocting resumes or cover letters. One in ten men admit to seeking such help, compared with just one in twenty-five women. The USA Today columnist snarkily commented that these same kids are probably the ones “whose mothers and fathers “helped” them write book reports and make dioramas in grade school.”

Of course, there is also the problem with this generation not just finding jobs, but finding those that meet their exacting standards. No longer is a mere job good enough to satisfy these post-grads… no, they have criteria to satisfy! To wit, one in four recent college grads say that they would reject a job in which they were otherwise interested if they were not allowed to take personal phone calls while on the clock. Twelve percent of these entitled snots would poo-poo a position that disallowed checking in with social media like Facebook or Twitter. The very worst of the bunch, five percent (one in twenty grads, as the columnist helpfully noted), would turn down a job where they couldn’t shop online, and the same amount would say no to employment where they couldn’t check sports scores. Priorities, right? On the upside, the majority of respondents (fifty-eight percent) say that they would take a job even if they couldn’t phone a friend, update their Facebook status, hit Amazon.com, check their fantasy football stats, or play Angry Birds. What a thought – there are actually some young people out there who are willing to put in an honest day of work.

I’m several years past college, and having had my husband be laid off twice in the last three years, I can honestly say that we never worried about his ability to check Facebook when we were on the job trail. It’s hard enough to find a good position nowadays without worrying about trivial stupidity!