Financial Planning

Patricia Kimball takes the measure of her life once a month when issues of Parenting and AARP magazines drop simultaneously through the front-door mail slot of her North Hills home. "I never thought I'd end up with four small kids at this age," said the 65-year-old special education teacher and mother of three adult sons.

Natalie Hickey left her small hometown in Ohio six years ago and aimed her beat-up Dodge Intrepid for the West Coast. Four years later, she realized a long-held dream and graduated with a bachelor's degree in photography from Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara. She also picked up $140,000 in student debt, some of it at interest rates as high as 18%. Her monthly payments are roughly $1,700, more than her rent and car payment combined.

Small businesses trying to plan their finances for 2009 are finding the process complicated not only by the recession but by the uncertainty about what governments at all levels will be doing to stimulate the economy or make up for lost tax revenue. Business owners are waiting to see how they might benefit under the stimulus plan that Barack Obama's administration is expected to present soon after he takes office. Small businesses also face unknowns from their state and local governments.

Amber Eyerly, 32, says she's never been much good at saving money. But with only minimal raises, at best, expected for 2009 at the Los Angeles public relations firm where she works, Eyerly carefully studied her health insurance benefits package this year to see where she could trim costs. She made one cut for 2009 by signing up for a medical flexible spending account, which takes money, pre-tax, from each paycheck to spend on healthcare costs and reduces her taxable income.

In retrospect, Jack and Grace Harkness know that they should never have purchased a time share in Myrtle Beach. They'd never been to South Carolina. They hadn't planned to go there. Their vacations generally involved visiting relatives or heading to exotic locations such as China and Panama. But the salesman told them that they could use the time-share interest to swap for vacations around the world. And that seemed like a good idea.

MAYBE it was that ski trip in the local mountains last year. Pristine powder in the morning, blissful skiing all day, followed by fireside chats in the evening. Or maybe you re-read Thoreau and decided it was time to live in the woods for a while. Whatever form your call of the wild takes, anyone shopping for a winter getaway should be aware of the hassle factors and practical considerations of buying, owning and renting out their refuge, say real estate experts and longtime owners.

Americans typically spend $800 on gifts during the holidays, according to Credit Plus Inc., a national credit-reporting agency. And most of that spending is frequently of the buy-now, pay-later variety. As consumers chip away at credit card bills, those who are planning a home purchase need to consider the effect such debt has on their credit ratings. Pay those bills off, if possible, experts advise. Reducing a balance to zero can improve a credit score.

YOU have to pay the mortgage, taxes and car payments, and that can leave little for a grand tour of Europe or a fancy cruise. But with discipline and diligence, families can save for that trip of their dreams. Financial advisors say it takes a plan, and the sooner you get started, the sooner you will be on that trip. Here are 10 tips to help make the dream a reality. 1.

Rob Roberson says he learned a painful lesson about stock market swings in 2000 and 2001, when share prices were plummeting amid the dot-com crash. He pared back his bet on stocks then and has kept it pared back. The 60-year-old Minneapolis salesman has more than half his assets in conservative investments such as bonds and money market accounts, and only about 45% in stocks, he says.

Ron Lapinskas would like to offer a few words of caution for people who invest in certificates of deposit: Don't let those CDs automatically roll over, he said. If you do, it could cost you. A retired salesman in Parrish, Fla., Lapinskas started investing in CDs more than a decade ago when he began to manage his ill father's portfolio. Unsophisticated about such investments, he allowed the bank to automatically roll maturing CDs into similar new CDs.