I’ll be on WCCO’s Good Question segment with Jason DeRusha tonight at 1o. The topic? How to prepare financially in case you’re canned. Check out his “Deblog” entry about the upcoming segment. Now that I was on the show, I forgive him for naming his blog Deblog

Dealing with a layoff also happens to be the topic of tomorrow’s Dollar Duo, and my co-host John Ewoldt will have a column on the unfortunately hot topic as well.

The bottom line message I hope everyone takes away from the stuff I’ve done on this topic is this: Have some cash at the ready.

Even if you can get nowhere near 3 to 6 months, set a goal of saving $50 a month, or having $1,000 in the bank, and you’ll be much better off if you end up paycheck-less. If you keep your job, you’re still better off with some savings.

A comment I’m sure won’t make it on the air that I made is that it’s time to get back to some of our Depression-era values of saving, conserving, and reusing. We media doom and gloomers have been focusing too much on the “Depression” and not enough on the “Great,” joked DeRusha.

Seriously though, as I argued in a recent column, it’s time to return to the values of thrift. Anyone in?

Or Facebook is so not.

Coupons.com announced its new Facebook application earlier this week which allows you to print out coupons and share them with your friends.

At first glance, the page is a bit clunky and user-unfriendly. You can only view six coupons at a time. Another one pops up after you discard others, but sometimes they’re duplicates of ones that are already showing. But I give the company kudos for introducing money-saving habits to a demographic that I’m guessing rarely considers clipping a coupon before shopping.

You can also track how much you’ve saved with your coupons, something I’ve considered tackling in 2009 to determine if clipping coupons is really worth my time. My gut definitely says yes.

My family is doing just fine financially compared to many others and I’m grateful for what we have.

But I can’t help but think lately with our rising expenses, my pay freeze and my husband’s slow-growing wages that this might be as good as it gets for us.

We’ve discussed our dreams, (moving to a different neighborhood and taking the whole family to Mexico) and our needs (a new car or two in the next few years, unless we decide to go down to one car and then we’ll need to replace a single vehicle). And if incomes or expenses don’t change, it could be tough to make it all happen.

So lately we’ve been talking about how to figure out if we’re sacrificing too much today to save 15 percent of our income for tomorrow.

Anyone else have those thoughts? If so, what did you do?

There have been plenty of columns written around the country lately about the rise in 401(k) loans and whether it makes sense to take one.

In conversations over the past couple of months with plan administrators such as Fidelity and Schwab, I’ve asked if they’re seeing an uptick. The answer was always no.

Now, Investment News has a story featuring new data from Hewitt Associates and a survey of other administrators that say loans have actually decreased a few percentage points, not increased. Although hardship withdrawals are up with the money going to help people stave off foreclosure.

The story reminded me of when I followed three families trying to get out of debt for a year. One family had a 401(k) with maybe $40,000 and a few grand in an IRA. And they did not want to touch them. They worked harder, cut expenses, hit the food shelf from time-to-time. But they did not want to tap that 401(k).

I don’t think they’re alone.  Especially in economically challenging times, people do not want to use retirement money to live today. Also, people worry in uncertain times that if they lost their job, they wouldn’t be able to pay the loan back.

How about you? Do you think it makes sense to keep money in a 401(k) even if you desperately need it today? Or do we treat 401(k)s as sacred when really paying a 10 percent penalty is a small price to pay to put food on the table?

Finally, a study that confirms why I’m not concerned about paying for college:

Daycare now costs more than tuition at a public university in 44 states, including Minnesota, according to the The National Association of Childcare Resource and Referral Agencies. Here’s a study the group conducted on the high cost of child care that pegged MN as second in the nation for least affordable child care (although if quality and cost go hand-in-hand, this is a good thing in a way).

For example, the average cost of full-time preschool care in MN is $8,832. For infants it’s $11,796. So that’s where the mortgage payment for our bigger, nicer home is going.

If you can keep your lifestyle the same as your earnings rise and your kids grow, you can save that day care money, or at least some of it, once the kid enters grade school (assuming you don’t send them to private school or pay a lot for after-care programs).

I’m hoping we can manage to save at least half of our kid’s day care tab each year to pay for a combo of college and retirement.

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