Are you one of those lucky ones who will get a tax rebate check? You are already being wooed by Sears and other companies, but I think the best advice came from the Wall Street Journal’s Emily Green. She says that better than paying off debts or saving for the future would be to pay off your credit card balance.

“A $600 balance on a credit card with an 18 percent interest rate costs you $108 a year!” Better still, if you can’t pay your credit cards in full by each month’s end, then force yourself to stop using them. These interest rates just keep you under for all time.

Think about saving then. This is from the Chicago Tribune’s Gail MarksJarvis: “A 23-year-old who puts $600 into a Roth IRA that earns 8 percent a year could walk out with $20,000 when he retires.”

The Bush administration wants you to plow the tax rebate right back into the economy, to buy something, to rejuvenate U.S. business. I want you to sock it where it will do you the most good.

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Riding the subway now costs Londoners $8 a trip. But, hey, I discovered last weekend that to fill the really empty tank of a Mercedes S-Class sedan, which requires high-test gasoline, costs $77.

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There’s a book coming in June titled Smart Women Don’t Retire — They Break Free. This is from The Transition Network and Gail Rentsch. The subtitle is From Working Full-Time to Living Full-Time.

This one is for boomers who continue to pioneer each stage of life and it’s being recommended by AARP, by Suzanne Braun Levine, who was the first editor of Ms. Magazine, by Dr. Eileen Hoffman, who is a specialist in women’s health, by Jeri Sedlar, author of Don’t Retire, REWIRE!

Lynn Sherr of ABC, who wrote the foreword, says: “Now that we, the groundbreakers, are at an age when we considered our mothers old but know that we are not … now that we are, or are about to be, in transit, some removed from those careers by choice and some by fiat … what exactly are we supposed to do – with our energy, our connections, our experience, our ideas? We’re scared, we’re excited, we’re eager, we’re reluctant. And most of all, we are bewildered …

“This book compiles concrete evidence that the angst of friends and colleagues is, in fact, part of a flood of concern across the nation. The good news is, we are not alone. The better news is, there are some answers here, or at least signposts that point the way to new possibilities.”

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I am told privately that the Transition Network members are big fans of the wowOwow site. So this book is right up our alley and I hope you’ll look for it. I am sorry to be so serious, talking about money which I know nothing about, today. Tomorrow I’ll go back to posting all that young and foolish stuff.


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