Business - Motley Fool

It may not be Labor Day yet, but many people are thinking about the coming winter. With projections for a potentially colder-than-normal season and sky-high fuel costs, now's a good time to think about winterizing your home. Preparing your home for winter can save you up to 50% off of your heating bill, in addition to keeping you and your family toasty warm on cold winter nights.

Until recently, it has been somewhat easy for young people to put off investing. For example:

Imagine we're producing a new reality show called A Day in the Life of You. How much of your time would be devoted to money matters? For most of us, it's not enough.

We all buy stuff on impulse occasionally. We go into the store for milk, bread, and 2-for-1 extra cheese pizza, and we come out with a windshield defogging cloth ($3.99), a package of four brown magic markers that "instantly hide scuffs on your precious wood furniture" ($5.29), and the latest Oprah magazine. (Oh, all right, and People, too.).

"I blame my mother." "Everybody else is doing it." "The little voice in my head told me so."

When it comes to finances, most people pore over the quantifiable aspects of money -- the actual dollars and cents; the balances in our checking accounts, the gains in our portfolios. After all, is not the definition of financial success having money in the bank to live decently today and enough of it squirreled away for the future?

Last year, investing guru Ken Fisher wrote that while a little debt may be good for us, a lot more of it can be great. According to the basic tenets of his book The Only Three Questions That Count, he thinks we should forget about our lack of savings discipline so that we can mortgage ourselves a lot more than we do.

How much do you need to save for retirement? That's an easy question to ask, but it's very difficult to answer. The answer involves all kinds of calculations and assumptions, including your desired income, how long you'll live, the viability of Social Security, projected inflation, and the future returns of investments.

Mistakes, snafus, grievous errors -- we've all made them. But Mom's advice to "say sorry" only helps so much when you're talking about costly mistakes that may harm your credit. And with financial institutions on life support, you can't expect much leniency.

With the real estate market in the doldrums and prices falling, many homeowners want to put a lid on their property tax assessments. Yet struggling local governments aren't in any hurry to mark down assessed values, especially in an area hit hard by the downturn. If you're in sticker shock over your recent assessment, here's a quick lesson on what to do about it.

The debate over U.S. health-care reform rages on. But why wait for someone else to dictate your future? You have many options -- if you're willing to take a vacation. If recovering from a medical procedure while lying on a palm-swept beach, relaxing by the hotel pool, or shopping for terrific bargains sounds good, then medical vacations may be exactly the right solution for you.

If you're not moved much by the effort-to-payoff ratio of comparison shopping and coupon clipping (guilty!), this article is for you. Put down your scissors and recycle those Sunday circulars. Don't even bother fiddling with the calculator on your cell phone while you're navigating the supermarket aisles. That's right, with minimal-to-no pre-shopping preparation even sloths like me can save money on groceries.

Lending money to a friend or relative? Many folks will tell you, "Don't do it." Or at least never lend more money than you can risk losing. Unless you clearly define the terms of your loan at the outset, you may just as well have called it a gift and called it a day.

How do you choose a "good" password? When it comes to cyber-crooks, "good " is anything a ne'er-do-well couldn't easily guess just by, for example, combining your children's names or knowing your birthday.

For a myriad of gift-giving occasions -- weddings, graduations, births, "29 again" birthdays -- a check is always appreciated. But if you want your money to have a lasting impact, there are a whole host of options you may not have considered. Here are a few ideas for presents that will continue to reward their recipients long into the future.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the average family shells out $1,500 annually for utilities. Air conditioning can account for as much as 70% of summer energy costs. To put this in everyday context, let's hear from Mr. Electricity: He says that running central A/C for 12 hours a day for three weeks uses more energy than leaving the refrigerator door open 24 hours a day for an entire year. (I'm not willing to sacrifice my Fudgesicle stash to fact-check that theory.)

Togetherness has its perks in the financial world -- price breaks on insurance premiums, saving money by splitting bills, instant justification for buying the family sized bag of Doritos, etc.