Great Money Helper

The Consumer's Almanac has a great money site. Here, you can input personal information and obtain your net worth, as well as get help planning for vacations, retirement, and the kids' college. Not the only site you'll need, but a good place to start.

Setting financial goals isn't the most fun thing to do, but you know you need to do it, and afterwards, to check yourself against them on a regular basis to insure you're on track.

This site helps.

Test Yourself - The Mortality Test

There's a new test for seniors. It's designed to help you determine how much living you have left. According to its developer, the quiz's purpose is "to try to help doctors and families get a firmer sense for what the future may hold," says developer Dr. Sei Lee, a geriatrics researcher at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center. They claim that the test is approximately 81% accurate. We'll see.

Janet Luhrs - Simplicity Trailblazer

Janet Luhrs wrote The Simple Living Guide in 1997 and it continues to be a great source of information and inspiration on living simply. It's weighty and costs around $25.00 new at my local Barnes & Noble, but alibris.com has used copies for around $9.00 and new copies for around $14.00. Visit a copy at the library, see if you don't think it's worth having as reference on your shelf.

Her website is pretty, and provides various aspects of her longstanding, famous Simple Living newsletter as well as the offer of free tips into your inbox, daily. The newsletter is not free, it costs $3.00/month; however, it has quite a large following and is well-known for its quality of content. You have the option of subscribing to online or print editions.

Who is Janet Luhrs? Random House describes her:

"Janet Luhrs gave up a law career to practice voluntary simplicity, and she is now a journalist and the editor and publisher of Simple Living: The Journal of Voluntary Simplicity. Her quarterly newsletter, which has been called "the nation's premier newsletter on voluntary simplicity" (Boston Globe), as well as her own personal simplifying journey have been featured in U.S. News & World Report, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and on Donahue. A regular guest on NPR, she lives with her two children in Seattle, Washington."