Suitcase of doom © by BryanAlexander

Getting to Anchorage was an episode of “Revenge of the buddy pass.” Between 11 a.m. and 10 p.m. I was bumped from every single flight. Fortunately I didn’t collect the whole set, i.e., I got a seat on the last plane of the day, at 11:45 p.m.

Fortunately that wasn’t as bad as it sounds.

Sure, I left my apartment at 8 a.m. and spent the next 11 hours trotting from gate to gate. But a couple of dozen other people – other “non-revenue passengers,” each hoping for a cheap seat – trotted along with me. It got funnier and funnier as we were bounced from flight to flight, the sort of exhausted hilarity of finals week.

I had bagels, an apple and other snacks with me, although I eventually had to spring for dinner (teriyaki chicken, rice and salad for $10). I even found an airport rarity: a refillable soft drink. Thus an excess of caffeine might have made the experience giddier than it might otherwise have been.

I was surprised the flights were so full, since tourist season doesn’t usually start until mid- to late May. One of the gate agents said it’s been that hectic for the past two weeks. Maybe they weren’t tourons, but rather optimistic folks who’d heard about Anchorage’s unemployment rate (lower than the national average).

Paying about $120 round-trip was quite the deal, given that the current price is just under $800. That said, the next time I want to travel anywhere close to tourist season I’ll just buy a regular ticket. Even though I got a fair amount of work done, and even came up with another topic for my MSN Money gig, I’d like to avoid spending so much time at the airport.

Speaking of MSN Money…

A few of my favorite topics from Frugal Cool:

Cut food bills: Become a frugalvore riffs off the “locavore” concept – except we’re talking sales, not proximity.

Become your own handyman offers some FYI on DIY.

4 ways to kill impulse buying isn’t a screed against all those other people who overdo it – I start by admitting I’d bought a daily deal that I didn’t really need.

More money from the same workday notes that getting a second job isn’t always possible, but that sometimes we can get paid for doing something we’re already doing.

More from elsewhere

Last month at Get Rich Slowly I explained “Why it’s okay to buy a Mega Millions ticket (even after you’ve done the math).” Judging from the comments, a lot of people agree – which, frankly, surprised me. I expected to be told I was paying the Stupid Tax.

Then I took a two-week hiatus from writing for GRS, in part due to extreme busyness and in part because my new contract specifies 24 columns a year vs. biweekly ones. Today, I’m back: “How to do a wallet audit,” advice on reducing the impact of street crime (or even a lost billfold).

Also on the topic of busyness: I did another short piece for the Daily Worth site. “Be ready for the worst-case scenario” asks what you’d do if the first thing the boss said to you tomorrow were, “Clean out your desk.”

Any ideas?

If not, read the above to learn how to stage your very own financial fire drill, i.e., to learn exactly how much you need to live on until times are better. Or, rather, how little you can manage on if necessary.

Late nights and ungulates

I’m delighted to have made it into two blog carnivals recently:

“Earn $37k a year by hosting travelers” made it into the Carnival of Personal Finance on the Canadian Personal Finance blog.

“The must-have kitchen appliance,” from Frugal Cool, was selected for the Festival of Frugality, hosted at Dewey’s Treehouse.

I forgot to enter any carnivals this week, being distracted by late-night bull sessions with my hostess and by my return to Alaska. It’s been chillier than usual – there are still snow piles in the yard – and as always, I’d forgotten how dry the air is. Most unsettling to a mossy Seattle gal.

On the bright side, I’ve already seen a couple of moose, only one of which was close enough to do me any actual harm, and moose always cheer me up. They’re just so improbable.

Gift © by asenat29

For six months or so I’ve been saying that I wanted to teach myself how to redesign this site. What I was really saying, of course, was “I probably never will do this, but I sure would like to.”

But then I met web goddess Casey J. Curtis at the Emerald City ComicCon. Don’t all the best stories begin with anecdotes like that?

Talking with her got me off my dime, finally, about the redesign. The timing was perfect: Today is the second anniversary of Surviving and Thriving. To thank you all for sticking with me, I’ve planned an anniversary-sized giveaway.

This time around, as with the first, the big-ticket item is a $100 Amazon gift card, courtesy of the Mr. Rebates cash-back site. (If you’re not yet a member, I hope you’ll consider joining through that link, or through the widget on my site.)

But wait! There’s more!

Also up for grabs in the anniversary giveaway are:

A $50 e-gift certificate to Charlotte Russe.

A $25 Amazon gift card, thanks to Karen Hoxmeier of My Bargain Buddy.

A $25 CVS gift card.

Two books contributed by Liz Weston of MSN Money: “The 10 Commandments of Money: Survive and Thrive in the New Economy” and the recently updated “Your Credit Score: How to Improve the 3-Digit Number That Shapes Your Financial Future” (personalized to you or to the spendthrift of your choosing).

MP Dunleavey of the Daily Worth site is pitching in a latte-sized DW logo cup; I’m adding a $10 Starbucks e-gift card.

The Wise Bread team has donated three copies of “10,001 Ways to Live Large on a Small Budget,” a frugalist’s bible.

“The Ultimate Cheapskate’s Road Map to True Riches” by Jeff Yeager.

J. Money from Budgets Are Sexy is providing one of his “I’m Bringing Budgets Back” T-shirts (follow that link and tell me those ain’t sexy).

Stephanie Nelson of CouponMom.com will personalize a copy of her best-selling book, “The Coupon Mom’s Guide to Cutting Your Grocery Bills in Half.”

Also from Stephanie Nelson are two “Coupon Mom Organizing Binder” sets: Each has a three-ring binder with 30 six-pocket pages for coupons, 15 index page dividers, “price book” pages, a copy of “The CouponMom’s Strategic Shopping Strategies” booklet, pockets to hold store reward cards, and a bag for other items you might need — pens, calculator, Valium (just kidding about that last).

Dr. Dean Burke is prescribing his book, “The Millionaire Nurse,” which is not for nurses only – the book’s subtitle is “A proven financial first-aid kit for building wealth and freedom.

A pair of Brad’s Deals T-shirts and a Retail Me Not T-shirt (can you tell I’ve been to conferences in the past year?).

“Earn What You’re Really Worth,” by Brian Tracy.

That’s a whole lotta prizes

Usually the giveaways are weekly, but sometimes I’ll make an exception. This is one of those times. You’ve got two weeks to enter, up to five different ways:

• Leave a comment below
• Subscribe via e-mail or RSS
• Sign up to follow Surviving and Thriving on Twitter or Facebook

If you do any (or all!) of these things, please leave separate, additional comments to get credit for each entry.

The deadline is 9 p.m. PDT Tuesday, May 15. If I don’t hear back from the winners by Thursday morning, May 17, I’ll have the random number generator choose other names.

High School Prom © by Randy Kashka

Would you spend 6% (or more) of your gross annual income to send your teen to the prom? A survey by Visa Inc. indicated that families earning less than $20,000 per year planned to shell out $1,200 for the annual school dance.

I don’t know what’s scarier: The fact that parents are willing to do this or the fact that kids think it’s necessary.

Obviously prom costs vary depending on where you live. Here’s how the survey broke it down

• Northeastern families, $1,944
• Southern families, $1,047
• Western families, $744
• Midwestern families, $696

While parties in New York City or Miami probably skew the numbers – there’s simply more to do in those places than there is in, say, Fairton, New Jersey — access to cable and Internet have made proms an industry.

Kids who live way out in East Nowhere can now buy drop-dead-sexy gowns online. They know that the cool kids book hotel suites for after-parties. They want spray-on tans, mani-pedis, new shoes and jewelry, professional makeup, dramatic hairstyles. Dinner out beforehand is an absolute must, although you think they’d worry about getting food on those rented tuxes.

The last hurrah

Why are parents willing to pay for this? Some may go along because they want their kids to have what they presume the other kids have.

Others, remembering their own proms, may believe that this is some kind of pinnacle and they want it to be memorable. Of course, they probably also believe that high school constitutes the best years of your life.

Some parents are unable to deny their kids. They gave in on the expensive Christmas toys and the big-ass birthday parties and they’ll give in on the $600 prom dress, too.

I also expect there are parents living vicaiously through their children: Their sons or daughters are the vessels into which they’ve poured all their hopes, and everything must be absolutely perfect.

The prom is part dress-up and part last hurrah. It’s a bunch of kids putting on their parents’ clothes and being shocked at the effect. Look at us! We’re beautiful! They’re close enough to what they see as freedom to be intoxicated by the idea, and young enough to think that everything they want is easily attainable.

Some teens, of course, are already disillusioned. They know that this is the pinnacle. Life after senior year may mean college or trade school, but it’s just as likely to mean living at home while looking for a job, or working and taking care of/paying support for the babies born while they were still in high school.

So you better believe you want to make a grand entrance, and to cut a dashing figure on the dance floor. Those memories and photos are your last chance to shine, your last shot at the carefree life. Even if you plan to spend the next four years in college, those years will have a price tag.

Holding the line

I think there’s a middle ground that some parents are afraid to inhabit. That would mean getting real both with our kids and ourselves. It sounds something like this:

Prom is coming up in a couple of months. I know you’re very excited. Here is what I can afford to contribute. We need to come up with ways to make those dollars work really hard.

While working on a piece about prom for MSN Money, I heard from people who got creative about the party. One young woman bought a bridesmaid’s gown for a dollar at a yard sale, then cut and hemmed it to tea length and embellished it with tulle. Total cost: About $15.

Another young woman had her pick of 10 dresses previously worn by her cousins. She chose a floor-length, strapless, periwinkle-blue sequined gown and wore it quite happily, rather than throw a hissy fit about wanting her own dress. She also carried a sequined bag that her mom found at a thrift store.

Other suggested ways to save: Calling a car service instead of a limo (or, I don’t know, borrowing your dad’s car); hitting a beauty school instead of a swanky salon (or doing it yourself); making your own corsage; borrowing jewelry from a relative; taking photos at home; having dinner at home before the party.

It’s up to us, the adults, to keep things real. Even if your kid is 18, he or she is still likely to be tempted by bright shiny objects. This is one night of their lives. Help them keep that in perspective.

Earth - Illustration © by DonkeyHotey

An easy way to reduce your carbon footprint is to bring your own shopping bags. Let me make it easier still.

Here’s what the winner will receive:

Cold-food bag. This quilted bag is lined with what I think is Mylar and has a zippered top. Put the frozen veggies or ice cream in there and drive home as fast as legally permitted. It has a Dove logo — the ice cream, not the toiletries.

Oversize vinyl bag. Its logo reads “Carry home the better eggs” and has a picture of a couple of cackleberries. This Eggland’s Best bag is apparently made from 100% recycled materials — appropriate for the day.

Pew Charitable Trust bag. This bag promotes SaveAntibiotics.org, an organization looking to phase out the overuse of drugs in animal husbandry. Use it to carry home your meats.

Redplum.com bag. This one is shaped more like a small beach tote. I could see this as a gym bag.

Two foldable bags. One is about the size of a wallet and the other about the size of a playing card. Keep one (or both) in your purse, backpack or briefcase so you never have to realize, “D’oh! I forgot the bags again!” at the checkout counter.

Best-case scenario: Your store gives a 5-cent rebate every time you bring your own bag. I suggest you put those nickels in a jar. After six months, count them and congratulate yourself on being frugal. Or spend the accumulated cash on some ice cream to put in the Dove bag.

To enter:

• Leave a comment below
• Subscribe via e-mail or RSS
• Sign up to follow Surviving and Thriving on Twitter or Facebook

If you do any (or all!) of these things, please leave separate, additional comments to get credit for each entry.

The deadline is 9 p.m. PST Tuesday, April 24. If I don’t hear back from the winner by Thursday morning, April 26, then I’ll have the random number generator pull another name.

Oddest, and usually the most apt. When my defenses are down, the truth sneaks up.

I’d been talking with the massage therapist about the events of the past few months. Chief among them was my sense of shame over being so damned tired. I felt that I should be completely over the gall-bladder surgery by now.

Sure, I pushed it too hard the first week or so. Yes, I was already carrying a cumulative load of fatigue and trying to meet too many deadlines. Somehow it came across as some private perversity that made me refuse to heal. Or maybe I was just a big whiner.

The massage therapist said pretty much what the Group Health doctor and nurse had said: You had surgery. Your body underwent the loss of an organ and has been busy ever since healing the incisions and the internal trauma, and adjusting to life without a gall bladder. For extra credit, she explained the immune system and the stresses that healing creates.

“You’re not a wimp,” she concluded.

Then why did I feel like one? Because I’m at war with my body.

I ask more of it each year although it has less and less to give. I refuse to slow down. I hesitate to say “no” to any opportunity to write, to be interviewed, to contribute to a project. In short, I don’t believe in health if it interrupts my plans.

A too-crowded life

It may sound like I’m quarreling with blessings: Pity me, for way too many good things are happening in my life. I understand that many people would love to have this so-called problem.

But I’ve been on a dead run for years. I started out tired and the more things I take on, the more tired I become. Too often I meet deadlines at the expense of a personal life. Too often, writing is my life.

The punch line? All those opportunities are sending lots more readers to this site – right when I’m too drained to produce stuff worth reading. Consistently, anyway. Of my last 14 posts, three were roundups of work I’d done elsewhere and seven were weekly giveaway announcements. Not good.

Surviving and Thriving has always been a hybrid, but I like keeping personal finance in the forefront. Trouble is, I now have to come up with five ideas per week for my new main job — the Frugal Cool blog at MSN Money — and one mega-topic every other week for Get Rich Slowly.

What’s left, idea-wise, for my own site? And if I do come up with a fresh(ish) topic, will I be too fried to write it?

Painted into a corner

I don’t want Surviving and Thriving to become too introspective. My navel isn’t that interesting. No one’s is. And I definitely don’t want it to be only about the Zany Things that happen to me. Yes, I’ve had some peculiar experiences at the Talkeetna Bachelors Auction and Wilderness Woman Competition or during a frugal trip to the U.K. These make for fun reads. (I hope.)

But it’s pretty tough to sustain a day-in-the-life blog because some days will likely be Not Particularly Zany. Besides, I like sharing money tips.

I’ve got to dance with them what brung me, so I can’t let my work for MSN Money and Get Rich Slowly slip even a little bit. Yet I don’t want to let days and days go by without putting up something new and useful here.

When other authors go a couple of weeks between posts, I stop reading them. Thus I’m acutely aware of what prolonged radio silence can do to one’s readership.

Decisions must be made, though, because I’m past the point where sleep rests me.

Stoics R us?

Logic would dictate that I give up at least one major commitment. Logic would further dictate that Surviving and Thriving be the commitment that goes bye-bye, since it’s bringing in only a small fraction of my total income.

But I don’t want to stop writing my site. Here I can do whatever I want. Show me another employer who would let me put up posts like “Who would Jesus strafe?” or “Walking around in your underpants: Sometimes it’s good to be single.”

Another coping mechanism would be to stop traveling so much. Yet it’s hard to decline the opportunities that come my way, especially when they are business expenses (three conferences in one year!) or house-sitting jobs.

For example, I’ll be spending almost two weeks in New York City this summer thanks to an apartment-sitting gig. Since New Jersey is right next door, I’ll tack on a visit to my dad, my brother and my Aunt Dot.

If I turn down an opportunity like that, will the chance come again? Maybe, maybe not.

A couple of situations in my personal life are also muddying the waters. I’m not quite ready to write about those, however.

When choices lead to collapse

After telling me that I wasn’t a wimp the massage therapist added, “You may be a stoic. But you don’t have to be.”

She’s right. I can choose to change. I’ve touched on this subject before, and created a plan to improve my life. It worked for a little while. But then my job at MSN Money morphed into a daily deadline and I had to have surgery. Now I’m at least as weary as I was before.

Back when I was a newspaper journalist I freelanced a lot on the side and was also responsible for all the housework, child care, cooking, shopping, home repair and snow-shoveling. Once or twice a year I would get really sick and have to spend a few days in bed. My physician noted this was a common dynamic among working mothers: Overdo and overdo until they could no longer go on; collapse; sort-of heal; start all over again. She urged me to find a saner way of living.

I didn’t. I still haven’t. The only difference, besides being divorced and no longer responsible for a child, is that I am now a contractor vs. an employee. Contractors don’t get sick days.

My exhaustion is due to choices that I’ve made, not to circumstances that fell on me like an anvil on a cartoon character. Unfortunately, those choices have left me feeling just about as flattened as Wile E. Coyote.

It’s hard for me to admit that I can no longer handle all this. My life has mostly been about fitting 28 hours’ worth of work into a 24-hour day. In midlife, I have to acknowledge that this is no longer the way I want to operate.

I’m grateful for the opportunities I’ve received. I just wish that blessings didn’t so often come in bundles. More to the point, I wish that life weren’t so often about choosing what to keep and what to set aside.

Related posts:

• The life I once led
• 2011, in one word
• Turning invisibility into stealth

Nope, not giving away a trip somewhere. I’m on vacation, and forgot to plan my giveaway.

But that works in your favor.

This week’s giveaway will be a $20 Amazon gift card because, well, it’s easy.

To enter:

• Leave a comment below
• Subscribe via e-mail or RSS
• Sign up to follow Surviving and Thriving on Twitter or Facebook

If you do any (or all!) of these things, please leave separate, additional comments to get credit for each entry.

The deadline is 9 p.m. PST Tuesday, April 17. If I don’t hear back from the winner by Thursday morning, April 19, then I’ll have the random number generator pull another name.

© by RobertBasil

Recently a friend sent an e-mail to me (and a bunch of other people) asking for prayers for a battalion of Marines that had lost nine soldiers in four days. It included this sentence: “Nothing in the media about these guys because the news does not seems to care.”

In fact, this incident was reported by a number of media outlets – when it actually happened. I wrote back to her: “All soldiers can use our prayers. However, this is an outdated post. The 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines were in Afghanistan from October 2010 until April 2011.
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/prayer/darkhorse.asp.”

She replied, in part: “I guess you’re into extreme details. … You really could have just ignored the request.”

No, I couldn’t. Here’s why.

The emotional impact

Our new national pastime of forwarding outdated “news” and urban legends contributes untold gobbets of spam to the Internet. Imagine all those glurge stories, gang-initiation hoaxes and bogus cancer updates squeezing the Interwebs’ arteries, like garden hoses stuffed with fried scrapple and funnel cakes.

What concerns me more is the emotional impact. For example, the “nothing in the media about these guys because the news does not seem to care” line is just plain wrong. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, National Public Radio, the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union all reported on this terrible situation.

Others news outlets may have, too, but those were the ones Snopes cited in its bibliography. No doubt regional newspapers and TV stations reported the deaths of the 24 – not nine – soldiers killed during that particular deployment.

Surely some recipients of the original e-mail are thinking, “Another case of the lamestream media not caring about our soldiers,” or are deeply saddened/angered that the war goes on and on, and soldiers die and die, but nobody gives a rip.

The e-mail has been circulating for more than a year. How many readers has it reached? How much has it added to our collective burden of pain, anger and mistrust?

Details do matter.

Don’t make things worse

If someone sends you an e-mail you think is worth sharing…don’t share it. Not immediately, anyway.

Take a minute to go to a site like Snopes.com or UrbanLegends.About.com to try and determine whether the item is legit or not. If you don’t trust these sites, at least follow the source materials cited. Such links will help you determine, for example, that the Great Wall of China is not the only man-made object on Earth that’s visible from the moon.

I was sorry that my response upset my friend, and I told her so. But here’s what upsets me: The daily receipt of urban legends, hateful “humor” and misleading bulletins that make the Internet not just spammier, but also a darker, sadder and angrier place. Spreading misinformation, however unintentionally, does that.

Don’t help it along. The next time you get an e-mail about Obamacare requiring that we all be implanted with microchips or the notion that 4,000 Jews stayed home from work on 9/11 – for crying out loud, take two minutes to vet it.

And if it does check out? Think twice before forwarding it anyway. It’s probably good to know about current phishing scams. (The real ones, anyway.) A whole lot of us could do without the glurge.

I didn’t get a glimpse of George Takei or Wil Wheaton, but I got an eyeful of costumed revelers: superheroes, anime characters, steampunk posers and a tall young woman in a Wonder Woman bikini who left a string of broken geek hearts in her leggy wake.

Despite the lingering recession some people are still spending on things that matter to them. My brother’s table did pretty well and I saw a lot of money changing hands when I took a walk around the convention center.

I’d decided to go out in search of free stuff, although I thought it was a silly thing to do. People come to these things to sell items, not to give them away. You’d think.

Yet I came back half an hour later with three free comic books and a couple of pins for my great-nephews. Those of you who came of age in the 1970s or 1980s will be thrilled to know that the “Swamp Thing” comic is about to be re-launched.

The set of four prints is this week’s giveaway. They’re much more vibrantly colored in real life; the reproduction here doesn’t begin to do them justice. (My brother has lots of other superheroic art for sale, both color prints and pen-and-ink drawings. He also does commissions. If you’d like to see more, click on his name, above. Or contact him at inkwell@comcast.net.)

Each measures 11 by 17 inches, and each is a good way to get excited about “The Avengers,” which stars Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Downey Jr. and Scarlett Johannson. Directed by Joss Whedon (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Firefly,” among others), it hits theaters on May 4.

And yeah, I’ll probably go see it. At that point I’ll be house-sitting up in Alaska, where my two great-nephews live. Both are superhero fans, so I’ll bring along those free comics. If there’s a long line to get in, I can introduce them to the Swamp Thing.

To enter:

• Leave a comment below
• Subscribe via e-mail or RSS
• Sign up to follow Surviving and Thriving on Twitter or Facebook

If you do any (or all!) of these things, please leave separate, additional comments to get credit for each entry.

The deadline is 9 p.m. PST Tuesday, April 10. If I don’t hear back from the winner by Thursday morning, April 12, then HULK SMASH!!! Either that, or I’ll pull another name.

By Robert Donovan

You probably didn’t, either. Although winning tickets were sold in several states, odds are they weren’t yours.

The odds really do stink, you know. That’s why some wags call the lottery “a tax on people who are bad at math.”

Going out on a fiscal limb here, but…I don’t think the lottery is so bad.

It’s not that I think the lottery is “good,” i.e., an important part of a balanced financial portfolio. I just think it’s not-so-bad in the way that potato chips are not-so-bad. An occasional handful won’t kill you. If you focus on chips to the exclusion of anything healthy, then you’ve got a problem.

Gerri Detweiler recently interviewed a bunch of PFers for an article called “Mega Millions madness: Money pros weigh in.” Mary Hunt from Debt Proof Living called the lottery “a tax on the stupid.” My MSN Money colleague Liz Weston called it “a tax on stupidity,” while acknowledging that she’d bought a ticket or two in the past.

Detweiler noted that PF experts “usually put lottery ticket purchases in the same category of money sins as bottled water or spending $5 for a cup of coffee that can be brewed at home for 25 cents. But whom among us has never splurged for a one-pump mocha grande latte?”

Me, for one – I don’t drink coffee. But every now and then I do get a lottery ticket.

Here’s what I don’t get: Apps. Candy bars. Lunch out three times a week. Music downloads. Cell-phone upgrades. Manicures. Online gaming community memberships. Auto detailing. Spray tanning. And so on. I bet some people spend more on a single waxing than I spend on lottery tickets all year.

Generally speaking I think bottled water is a stupidity tax on the thirsty. But that doesn’t mean I’m never out and about with no other way to get a drink. Thus buying a bottle of water now and then won’t break the bank.

Neither will buying a lottery ticket. Why is a dollar spent in this way somehow more “stupid” than the occasional mocha grande latte?

Or, for that matter, on anything non-essential? Should we take out after people who go to the movies every Saturday because movies are a stupid, escapist fantasy that do nothing toward ensuring financial security? Of course not. But that’s the kind of thing people say about lottery tickets: That they’re money spent (wasted) chasing a fantasy.

Will a dollar fund my dream?

Yes, I’ve heard about people who seriously believe that lottery = retirement planning and make no other provisions for old age. That’s a serious disconnect and a sign that whatever we’re teaching kids about money (and math) isn’t sinking in.

This also isn’t a majority attitude. It’s just that you remember these folks when you read about them.

A relative of mine gets a couple of Lotto tickets every week. She’s of the “dollar and a dream” school. I’m of the “whenever I remember it” persuasion, which means I pick up a Mega Millions and a Lotto ticket about five or six times a year.

When I lived in Anchorage, I bought a Nenana Ice Classic ticket every spring. Never came close to guessing the day the ice would go out. Even so, I enjoyed the experience. I enjoy games of chance down here in the Lower 48, too, when I actually think of playing.

If I were buying stacks of tickets every day, I’d have a problem. But I’m not. This is an indulgence. I don’t smoke, I rarely go to the movies and since January I haven’t been buying those potato chips.

I don’t really expect a dollar to fund my dreams. But I’m not going to sweat a couple of greenbacks spent on lottery tickets.

Incidentally, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with manicures or online gaming or any of the other examples above. You earned the money and you ought to be able to budget for the things you like. If you want the latest app, get it.

And if I want a Mega Millions and a Lotto, I’ll get them. Want to bet who spends less?

Chocolate © by Chocolate Reviews

My friend Linda B.’s doctor has advised her to eat an ounce of dark chocolate daily. I wish I could get a prescription like that.

Whoever wins this week’s giveaway will be a healthier person because the prize is a trio of organic, fair-trade chocolate bars made right here in Seattle.

The goodies are from Theo Chocolate, a company hat received the “Fair for Life” label by “certifying our entire supply chain from the farmers through to Theo’s business practices and factory.”

The company sources locally whenever possible (obviously, the cocoa beans comes from somewhere else) and uses green energy sources and sustainable packaging and printing techniques.

Here’s what this week’s winner will receive:

• Ultimate Dark Chocolate (85% cacao)
• Mint Dark Chocolate (70% cacao)
• Spicy Chile Dark Chocolate (70% cacao)

Each bar weighs 3 ounces. And according to the label the contents are not only “rich in cocoa polyphenols” but also “suitable for vegans.” That means they’re super-healthy, right?

For your shot at the trio of Theo:

• Leave a comment below
• Subscribe via e-mail or RSS
• Sign up to follow Surviving and Thriving on Twitter or Facebook

If you do any (or all!) of these things, please leave separate, additional comments to get credit for each entry.

The deadline is 9 p.m. PST Tuesday, April 3. If I don’t hear back from the winner by Thursday morning,  April 5, I’ll pull another name.