I always knew credit card companies were sneaky, but now the airlines seem to be copying their “best” practices. This is my conclusion after a weird encounter with Continental today.  I use a Continental mileage-reward credit card because I fly out a Newark, a hub for the airline. In the mail today I received two gift certificates for $20 off a flight in the U.S. that said “Here is your free gift. Thanks for using your credit/debit card.” Very handy, as I was just booking a flight to Chicago for August.

Now I had priced this trip a week ago, and it came up at $178 round-trip, but I didn’t book it because my plans weren’t confirmed. When I logged into Continental. com, and submitted my gift certificate promo code, it priced at $258. So I logged out and did a quick check on continental.com again, without using the promotion certificate. Price? $198.

So as you make your summer travel plans, beware of credit cards and airlines bearing gifts. This one was apparently a $60 Trojan Horse fare hike — or make that $40, as I would have “saved” $20 by using the gift certificate. It’s kind of like a corporate membership program I had with a rental car company years ago. You would price the deal, and then price it again with your membership number — and it always came out to a higher rate.

Have you run into sneaky practices by the airlines that empty your wallet? Comment here or email me at laura at laurarowley.com.

Americans carry about $850 billion in credit card debt, which represents an average debt of over $17,000 for the roughly 50 million households that don’t pay their credit card balances in full every month, according to the Consumer Federation of America.

My Yahoo!Finance column this week looks at the continuing abusive practices by credit card companies, who will finally have their worst practices reined in by a law that takes effect next February. Here are the highlights, from Consumer Fed, of the Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights Act (H.R. 627), signed by President Obama last month. The new law prohibits:

-Unjustified and retroactive interest charges. Card companies cannot hike interest rates retroactively on balances accrued before a rate increase takes effect (with minor exceptions) unless the cardholder is more than 60 days late in paying a bill. If such interest rate increases occur, card issuers must lower the rate after six months of on-time payments following the increase. Card companies would not be able to raise interest rates in the first year after a card account is opened.

-Universal default on existing balances. Credit card issuers cannot increase a cardholder’s interest rate on existing balances based on adverse information not related to card behavior.

-Excessive and growing penalty fees. Penalty fees would have to be reasonable and proportional to the late or over-limit violation. Card issuers could not charge over-limit fees unless the cardholder has affirmatively agreed to allow over-limit transactions.

-Deceptive and costly payment application methods. Card companies would have to apply payments in excess of the minimum amount to the credit card balance with the highest rate of interest.

-Unfair billing practices. Card companies could not use “double-cycle” billing or impose interest charges on any portion of a balance that is paid by the due date.

-Pay-to-Pay. Card companies could not charge a fee for any payment method that is allowed, except for expedited service provided by a service representative.

-Irresponsible lending and aggressive marketing to young consumers who do not have the ability to repay debt. Credit card issuers could not extend credit to consumers under the age of 21 unless the person has an independent means to repay the loan, or there is a cosigner who has such ability. Consumers under the age of 21 could choose whether to receive credit card solicitations.

If your credit card company changes the terms of your contract, think twice before you reject them. If you opt out, your account may be frozen while you pay off your balance under the old terms. And closing the account, especially if you have a long history with it, could negatively impact your credit score.

I had this concern when I wanted to close a Mastercard I’ve had for more than a decade. The card gave me American Airlines miles, but I had moved to New Jersey and Newark Airport is not a hub for American. In addition, the card charged an annual fee. When I called to close the account, the company offered to transfer me to a different card with no annual fee, which racks up miles on any airline with no blackout dates, and would retain the credit history of the old card. I took them up on it.

Are you still experiencing unfair practices from your credit card issuer? Comment here or email me at laura at laurarowley.com.

By Alix, the M&H eco-czar

I used to think my house was only clean if I used products that required a “well-ventilated room.” Cleaning green meant using Mr. Clean’s toxic shade of greenish-yellow (even in my most environmentally apathetic moments I did find the shade disturbingly similar to antifreeze). Even motherhood and the potential danger of one of my baby boys finding, then chug-a-lugging some of these cleansers, didn’t persuade me to pursue alternatives.

So devoted was I to my chemical romance with bathroom cleaners, this was one of the last aspects of my life I tried to green. I hadn’t even realized this stuff was toxic; I naively believed there was a secret valve down in the pipes where damaging chemicals were flushed away. But when those scrubbing bubbles go down the drain, they pollute the same water that eventually flows where fish swim. The phosphates in cleansers can incite algae to flourish, suffocating our waterways. The surfactants can poison aquatic life, and—as noted—the little landlubbers who live in my house. The financial cost of these cleansers is no good for my wallet either.

Phosphates can promote algae growth.

Turns out, super cheap alternatives can get your house just as clean, and are safer for your family and the environment. A few inexpensive basics available at any supermarket will get you started: white vinegar, lemons, baking soda, borax, liquid castile soap or vegetable-based liquid soaps, and washing soda. Borax and washing soda are usually in the same aisle as the laundry detergents, where you can also buy baking soda in big boxes.

I mix mostly baking soda with a little borax and washing soda to replace scouring powders. Vinegar diluted with water does all my shower doors, windows, mirrors and floors. Complete recipes abound on the Web, at sites such as TheGreenGuide.com.

I still use store-bought dishwasher and laundry detergents, but I now make sure to buy environmentally sound cleansers. And I choose powder—no unnecessary water wasted to turn them into liquids. (If you want to make your own laundry detergent, this site provides the recipes, which work for standard and HE laundry machines.) Of course, you can buy green cleansers in most supermarkets now—you won’t save much money, though. I like Method brand and the parsley scented all-purpose spray from Earth Friendly Products.

Now my household cleansers are so non-toxic I can put my children to work scrubbing tubs and mopping floors. This is the way to do motherhood.

Here are a few of my favorite home cleaning recipes from Clean & Green by Annie Berthold-Bond:

Tub Scrub
C. Baking Soda
1/3 C. Borax
1 tsp. vegetable based liquid soap, such as Dr. Bronner’s
Enough water to make a paste (I keep it in a Tupperware container.)

Floor Cleaners
1 C. vinegar in a pail of water
(I add lemon juice or lemon oil for fragrance. You can also cut the vinegar with some vegetable-based soap like Dr. Bronner’s.)

All Purpose Cleanser
1 tsp. Borax
½ tsp. washing soda
2 Tblsp. vinegar or lemon juice
¼ or ½ tsp vegetable-oil based liquid soap
2 C. very hot water
Mix it all and keep it in a spray bottle

To avoid the small upfront investment in some spray bottles, just re-use the spray pump from your old cleanser when it’s empty.

Do you have ideas to go clean and green and save money? Comment here or email us at laura at laurarowley.com.

My daughter Anne has been asking me for a fish, which I told her she had to purchase out of her allowance (hey, I paid for the dog — which we adopted from another family who couldn’t take care of her, not a puppy mill). Anne had about $6 left in her piggy bank and needed $10.

We talked about her alternatives — waiting two weeks for her July allowance, or figuring out how to earn extra cash. She decided she liked the extra cash idea, so we brainstormed entrepreneurial possibilities. She just turned 12 and enjoys little kids, and there are dozens of them within a two-block radius, so babysitting looked like a slam dunk.

This in turn led to a discussion about the training one needs to be a successful babysitter/entrepreneur, so we signed her up for the Red Cross Babysitter’s Training course. Since I am always happy to pay for educational stuff, I wrote the tuition check for the all-day course. Bottom line: Instead of giving her $4 to pay for the fish, I spent $65. But as they say, give a kid $4 and they’ll get a fish today, teach a kid to babysit and they can buy fish forever. Or something like that.

Anyway, while she was in the pet store picking out Thursday — the name of her new fish — I was making a deposit at Wachovia. The teller asked if I wanted to sign up for the bank’s new program, Way2Save and receive guaranteed 5% interest on the account’s balance at the end of the first year. Since my online savings account has dropped to a paltry 1.5% I took the bait.

Thursday, the Betta fish

Alas, the fine print reveals that Way2Save is not smooth sailing to the riches of Atlantis, but may be helpful, especially for people who occasionally overdraw their checking accounts. And it might be a nice way to build up a mini emergency fund, or save for an annual vacation, especially if you’re one of those spontaneous types who books a cruise at the last minute and charges the excursion to a credit card.

Here’s how it works: You link the Way2Save account to your checking, and are allowed to make an automatic transfer of $100 a month. Then, for every purchase you make with your check card and every bill you pay online, the bank will transfer $1 from your checking to savings. (Wachovia aggregates the payment at the end of the day, and if it overdraws your account, the transaction does not go through.) There’s no minimum balance, and no initial deposit required.

You can opt to use Way2Save as overdraft protection, and Wachovia will waive its usual overdraft transfer fee when funds are swept from the savings to the checking account to prevent a bounced check. A convenient backup plan, as we all make mistakes. I also like that the Way2Save program encourages the use of online bill pay, because that’s a great way to get in the habit of paying bills on time (avoiding pesky late fees), and it saves you money on stamps.

In the fine print, however, you’ll find that the maximum Way2Save “bonus” is $300 — which means you don’t get anything if you put more than $500 a month, or $6,000 a year into the savings account (5% of $6,000 = $300.) That number would be hard to reach anyway, because you’d need 400 transactions on top of the $100 you’re allowed to transfer in directly. So, for instance, let’s say I transfer $100 a month, pay 10 bills a month online, and swipe my debit card five times a month. That equals a monthly Way2Save deposit of perhaps $115, or $1380 a year. Interest earned: $69, for a total of $1,449. (As I said, a nice little cushion for overdrafts, emergencies or vacations.)

It’s worthwhile to shop around for these savings programs. Bank of America offers one called Keep the Change, in which it rounds up the purchases you make with its check card to the nearest dollar, transfers that amount from checking to savings and matches the funds up to $250 a year. Imagine you buy a bagel and coffee for $1.40; the bank rounds it up to $2, transfers 60 cents to savings and then matches it with 60 cents. (Note: It matches 100% in the first three months and 5% in the next nine months. So that 60 cents round-up would only garner a match of 3 cents in the fourth month and beyond.)

Presumably you might reach $250 over the course of a year if you had enough transactions on your check card — but this also requires using your debit card like crazy. (Even the example on B of A’s website presumes you’re swiping that sucker 40 times in a month.) That may make it difficult to stay on top of your account balance — I’m one of those old fashioned people who writes down everything in my check register — and overdraft fees are at record highs. If you’re trying to control your spending, it’s better to use cash. One study found that people overspend by a two-to-one margin when they have the opportunity to use plastic versus the green stuff in their wallets.

Gotta a good tip for earning more interest on your savings? Comment here or email me at laura at laurarowley.com.

…to borrow a line from “All Star” by Smashmouth. It seems appropo given the magnitude of change the economy is demanding of people. Just this morning I did an interview on the Today Show about the growth of stay-at-home dads, and how couples can cope with the transition from a financial perspective.

One of the dads in the story talked about the loss of identity, which is a huge part of change (happened to me when I was laid off with 500 other people at my job back in 2001). There’s this weird black void you step into when you leave the old thing but don’t know what’s next.

My advice for these dads? Embrace the void, take time to hang with your kids, wallow in the mess, the frenzy, the tedium, the delight. You will look back on that downtime with a pleasure that most dads don’t get the opportunity to experience. At least that’s what my husband says, who stayed home for a bit with the kids while I worked full-time.

And though it sounds like a cliche, getting laid off really was the best thing that ever happened to my career.  Here’s the Today Show clip.

Editor’s Note: Please welcome Alix, a writer and married mom of three kids (ages 6, 4 and six weeks!) who will be guest-posting for the blog on a regular basis. I met Alix when she moved to New Jersey from Washington D.C. She’s a sharp, thoughtful freelance writer who’s spend the last 15 years covering health care, the arts, education and the environment. When she moved to Jersey she decided to clean up her act, environmentally speaking, and spent the last year figuring out how to reduce, reuse, recycle — and save money. She’ll show you how going green can be easy and cheap – and she’ll chronicle her eco-exploits – and other adventures in saving money — here.

When it comes to your groceries, it’s easy to excuse yourself from “going green” by saying it’s too expensive. Just look at the price of organic food. Still, there are good reasons to go for it and you can start by “cross-shopping” — the way you might buy a dress at Target and splurge on the accessories at a department store. In other words, you do not need to buy organic everything. I sure don’t. Certain produce, milk, chicken and meat always get the bump up to organic. A few tips:

-Organic milk always costs more, but shop around—Target offers a good price, I‘ve noticed, and the Whole Foods 365 brand is not certified organic but the milk has no antibiotics.

-The criteria to earn a “Certified USDA Organic” label can exclude produce that is grown without chemicals or pesticides. Find a farmers’ market near you to buy local, and ask the sellers how the food was grown. Produce that has a thick peel — bananas, citrus fruits and avocados — offers some natural protection against pesticides.

We love farmers markets!

-Use coupons. Mambosprouts.com focuses specifically on healthy, natural and organic coupons — just click and print. Organic producers including Stonyfield Farm, Annie’s Homegrown and Earthbound Farms offer coupons on their own websites. You can find some of these brands, and other organics, in bulk at Costco.

-Spend more on organics by spending less on those individual snack-sized portions. According to research from the University of Florida, packaging makes up one-third of all waste generated. Per-ounce, single-servings can be 50 percent more expensive, and generate twice the waste as products packaged in bulk. You can save more than $50 a year by avoiding single-serving food items, the study found.  Buy reusable containers and then purchase cheaply in bulk.

-Eat less meat. This is good for your body and good for the planet. Even Paul McCartney is advocating No Meat Mondays. A huge source of global warming is all the cows in our country, and waste runoff from the giant chicken farms near the Chesapeake Bay is poisoning the water. Alternative proteins are not only better for you and the planet, they are cheaper! Grains like quinoa, spelt, faro; any sort of bean; nuts, eggs—all of these are excellent sources of protein and much less expensive than meat. For recipes, check out the blog of Amanda Louden, a holistic nutrition educator in California and mom of two, who posts her recipes online at www.mydailydiner.com.

-Grow a garden! The cleanest tomatoes will always be the ones you grow in your backyard. Sites such as www.backyardgardener.com show you how to grow your own produce.

Finally, walk into the store with your canvas reusable bags in hand, ready to drop in your cart for checkout. I’m not going to try to sell you on the $0.10 per bag savings some stores offer. This is purely an altruistic move on your part. I will say that canvas or reusable bags are sturdier than paper or plastic so you will grow to prefer them. It’s a tough habit to start, however. So many times I was at the checkout with a cart full of groceries when I realized all my reusable bags were still in the kitchen. So I put the bags in my car. The frustration and aggravation at the checkout is considerably heightened when the bags are in the parking lot of the supermarket. Eventually I got into the swing of it, and now it’s a habit.

If you have ideas to save green while you shop green, comment here or send them to laura at laurarowley.com.

Today’s Yahoo!Finance column looks at the financial challenges that face prospective parents. I interviewed a couple from Seattle, Patrick and Suzy, who are doing all the right things with their money but still feel overwhelmed by the financial issues related to having a child.

One of the biggest challenges is that they bought a home near a city they love, but one that’s thousands of miles from their famillies. Because of the expense, they both have to work full time, and yet they lack the support network extended family can provide when the kids come along.

Their story resonated with me, because I faced similar questions about compromise when we started our family. Like them, I am originally from the Midwest and fell in love with the vitality and creativity of the best city in the world (New York). It presented wonderful career and cultural opportunities and still does. We are an hour from the mountains and an hour from the ocean, 35 minutes from Broadway shows and the best museums in the world.

But back when I started having kids, I thought seriously about moving to Chicago, even asked my boss about a possible transfer. Our cost of living is significantly higher here than in the Midwest, which requires us to work harder to afford those museums and Broadway shows (and property taxes) — which ultimately gives us less time with our kids. (Although I work mainly from a home office, which helps.) I would love my girls to have the same relationship with my mother that their cousins in Chicago do, but that’s impossible when you only see each other a few times a year. They do, thankfully, have my husband’s family nearby.

But that’s life — it demands compromises. Would Patrick and Suzy be happier if they moved back to the Midwest, where they could afford a better lifestyle and be close to family when they have their kids — and give up the city and friends that make them happy? Should someone make career satisfaction a higher priority — even if it means moving far away from extended family? Or should you settle for a less satisfying career to sustain closer family ties? I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences. You can comment here or email me at laura at laurarowley.com.

Here’s a cool idea: A happiness coach on your cell phone, one that reminds you to practice the strategies that researchers have found to improve well-being, such as expressing gratitude to someone or nurturing relationships.

That’s just what Sonja Lyubomirsky, psychologist and author of The How of Happiness, has done. Working with the software firm Signal Patterns, she created an iPhone app called “Live Happy” based on her research.

The app prompts and encourages users to engage in several happiness-increasing strategies using their iPhone. Lyubomirsky says it will prompt you to measure your happiness on a regular basis, help you identify which strategies are right for you, and then actually lead you through them.  

For example, you may be prompted to express gratitude by texting, calling, or emailing someone in your Contacts List. Or you can practice savoring by taking a photo of a person/thing/place you love, or by writing about a photo (e.g., recent vacation) from your Photo Album. Other strategies include setting and pursuing goals, keeping a gratitude journal, replaying happy days, savoring the moment, envisioning your best possible self (i.e., practicing optimism) and recalling acts of kindness.

Click here to download the free trial version. Lyubomirsky is not profiting from the venture but plans to use it for research in the future.

What tools or strategies do you use to boost your well-being on a daily basis? You can comment here or email me at laura at laurarowley.com.

My husband and I work for ourselves and purchase our health insurance through my business. As our premiums have soared, we have pared back coverage – no prescription coverage, no maternity, dental checkups only; higher co-pays, deductibles, and annual out-of-pocket maximums.

My renewal arrived last week. The premium was up another 20 percent year over year, and has risen 70 percent in the last six years – although we’ve never had a major claim. The monthly cost is almost equal to my mortgage payment. I’m seriously wondering if it’s worth it.

A new study sponsored by Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School and Ohio University finds medical bills are behind 60 percent of U.S. personal bankruptcies, and more than 75 percent of bankrupt families had health insurance. In a statement, Dr. David Himmelman of Harvard said: “Unless you’re Warren Buffett, your family is just one serious illness away from bankruptcy. For middle-class Americans, health insurance offers little protection.”

The share of bankruptcies attributable to medical problems rose by 50 percent from 2001 to 2007, the researchers found. Most of the medical debtors were well-educated, owned homes and had middle-class occupations.

As health care reform moves ahead in Congress, I hope our elected officials understand this: Millions of people – the lucky ones who actually have insurance – have what Harvard Law School’s Elizabeth Warren has called “faux health insurance.” That is, we may be better off spending those premium payments on a personal trainer and a nutritionist, because we may end up bankrupt anyway if we get sick. (Or instead of the trainer, put the premiums into the bank, and if you do get sick, use the money to go overseas and explore the joys of medical tourism.)

It seems obvious that you can’t just expand the current, for-profit private insurance system so everyone can purchase insurance, because the private system has gigantic holes in the safety net it purports to provide. You have to have a non-profit option where the primary mission is to provide basic, affordable health care. The Democrats propose that the government offer that alternative; the Republicans say businesses, in response, would drop their current coverage like hotcakes and tell employees to check out the government plan.

They’re right; I would like nothing better than to drop my business’s costly health insurance in favor of a cost-effective alternative — one where there is some relationship between what I pay and how well I take care of myself. At minimum the health care system should reward behavior – no smoking, good nutrition, exercising – because behavior can play a critical role in reducing the nation’s health care costs. Until reform comes, though, I’m just trying to figure out how to shift my budget to cover my higher premiums.

How has the rising cost of health care affected you? What are you doing to manage your costs? What would you like to see Congress do on health care reform? You can comment here or email me at laura at laurarowley.com.

American poet Carl Sandberg wrote, “Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.”

What are you doing with your time, with your life? What goals are you pursuing? How would you define what your work is about, and how does that relate to your most important values?

Those questions are inspired by a discussion I had with Ed Deci, psychology professor at the University of Rochester, who studies which goals lead to happiness and which lead to unhappiness. His recent research in The Journal of Research in Personality with Richard Ryan and Christopher Niemiec looks at what happens when people strive for extrinsic goals (money, fame, personal image) versus intrinsic (good relationships, health, community involvement, personal growth.) See today’s Yahoo!Finance column for the full story.

Studies have found that setting goals around amassing money and material goods can have negative implications for mental health – everything from anxiety to depression. Critics have argued that of course someone would experience anxious moments in the quest for riches, because it’s actually pretty hard to amass wealth; once people grasp the brass ring, happiness would follow. (As Oprah recently told Duke’s graduating class: “…anyone that tells you that having your own private jet isn’t great is lying to you.”)

The new study tracked graduating college seniors for two years and looked at what happened when they achieved the extrinsic goals. The impact on well-being? Zero.

The research reminds me of how hard it is to strike a balance between making money and other important goals – health, relationships, community involvement, personal growth – and how easy it is to lose track of what’s important. “It’s the relative attainment of extrinsic versus intrinsic that’s problematic,” says Deci. “The problem really comes into play when the pursuit and attainment of extrinsic ‘American Dream’ goals is out of balance with intrinsic goals.”

What are your three most important goals? You can comment here or email me at laura at laurarowley.com.