Not spending money is harder than it sounds.

American consumers are increasingly cutting back during these tough economic times, which is a bummer since Sonic banana splits are only 99 cents.

But the reasoning makes sense. Keep as much money as you can until the stock market and the banks and the scores of other financial institutions settle down and experts can make heads or tails of where the economy is headed. Cut back on expenses, hold off on investments, and maybe even consider stuffing paychecks underneath mattresses for the time being.

The advice is good. The strategy is sound. The only problem is spending money hasn't ever been a weak suit of an American consumer. There are decades of evidence and thousands of Wal-Marts to support that claim. We have a hard time standing pat with our money. Some people like spending it; others like investing it. But no one likes to just stand there, hold it in their hands, and wait.

Fortunately, there are 4 ways to make the waiting period a little easier.

1. Budget for your future.

If you're being honest with yourself, budgeting is probably something that you should have done a long time ago. Well now, with your money not going anywhere for awhile, you have the perfect opportunity to plan out your spending future.

Start by setting aside a percentage every month to put into savings or investments. Then sit down and figure out all of the expenses that you plan to incur every month. Put everything from mortgage payment, utilities, and cell phone bills to groceries, entertainment, and Netflix on the list. When you're done with that, use the leftover income that remains (note: hopefully leftover income does remain) to plan vacations or big purchases or even donations.

Budgeting would be a good task during the hands-off money times because you will still get the chance to talk about your money and interact with your money and look forward to the time when you get to spend your money again. Yes, consumers can be that desperate.

2. Learn more about finance.

Now, don't take this bit of advice to mean academia and poring over books in a stuffy, university library. Although if that is the way you learn, then more power to you. What this advice is really about is simply researching and understanding financial terms and ideas you have always wanted to know more about. For me, it's the value of checking account interest.

While you can't spend or invest your money during this time, there are no rules against looking into different opportunities. Since you'll be sitting on your hands, you might as well take the time to learn more about money topics you have always been interested in but never had the chance to research.

For example, if real estate investment has always piqued your interest, the bumbling economy has provided an ample study hall for you to find out more. During the downturn, you can look into the specifics of real estate, discover how lucrative the opportunity would be, and prepare yourself to get in the game once the economy shroud is lifted.

If you use your time wisely while you're sitting around, you will have the advantage when everyone stands up again. Don't let the comfy recliner of cautiousness make you indifferent.

3. Make new friends.

The economy is not only tough on you. It is tough on everybody. And if misery does indeed love company, then finding fellow money martyrs shouldn't be that hard.

Even better, getting together with those who are struggling with similar issues can actually help you out in the long run. If you are a compulsive shoe shopper on a short leash and you meet a similarly compulsive shoe shopper on a similarly short leash, you will at least have someone to commiserate with.

Another great part to finding new friends during the downturn is that you can come up with some cheap ways to entertain yourselves. Rather than spending money on vacations or dinners or weekend getaways, spend the time at a neighbor's house or split the bill for a barbecue. There is strength in numbers, and there is also dispersal. A $100 children's bounce house is much more manageable when the 10 couples in your neighborhood chip in.

4. Distract yourself.

The best solution for not spending money might be to stop thinking about it altogether. Naturally, this is easier said than done, but if you're serious about keeping your money where it belongs, the extra effort is worth it.

• Spend time with family. Hopefully you are already doing this, but if not, the frugal days we live in should make family time even more appealing. Play a board game together (Monopoly might fix your investing jones), cook a meal together, or head out to the park for some good, cheap fun.
• Watch football. Really, sports of any kind will do the trick. Football season is in full swing, and there are games on virtually every night of the week. Following your favorite team or getting into a conference showdown can make all your money troubles disappear. Note: watching football and spending time with family may or may not be complementary.
• Volunteer. Not everything is about you. Give back to your community in other ways than just your wallet by volunteering with a local charity or non-profit group. The time spent helping others will be rewarding and affirming, and you'll hardly even remember that you haven't bought a video game for a month and a half.
• Spring cleaning: Get a head start on it. Box up your summer clothes and break out the fall attire. Get rid of toys and trinkets that have been sitting around forever and were never used. Spring cleaning doesn't have to happen only in the spring, and if we're honest with ourselves, it rarely happens then anyway.

While walking through Target one fine September day, I came across aisles upon aisles of Halloween costumes and decorations. There were pumpkin baskets and paper spiders and witches and skeletons and bats. The walls were stuffed with candy, so much so that my fillings hurt just looking at it. I was overwhelmed by the overwhelming amount of Halloween décor. And I was confused because, as far as I could remember, it was still September and Halloween was a good seven weeks away.

My how time flies, or at least how bigbox retail stores make it seem that way. Target is far from the only one pushing holidays on consumers one after the other. Once we dispense with one holiday, the next is up on shelves beckoning us to get festive or get out. 4th of July party poppers in May? Easter bunnies in February? Arbor Day saplings in August? There seems to be no stopping the over-commercialization and constant bombardment of early holiday jitters.

Well, there is almost no stopping.

The pressure of the holidays is a stress upon all of us, whether we choose to admit it or not. Some have a hard time handling the family and friends, and others struggle with the financial commitment of decorations, travel, presents, and more. My solution: celebrate a holiday after it has passed.

Christmas on the 28th, New Year's on the 2nd, and Halloween well into November. It's the way to do it, especially if you want to save a little hassle and save a lot of money. With the rest of the country so obsessed with going, going, going, you should consider stopping, watching the hustle and bustle parade in front of you, and taking the time to wait and enjoy yourself rather than stress out.

There are several benefits to a belated holiday schedule, and all of them seem to revolve around saving money and saving stress.

For many, the money issue might be the biggest one around the holidays, which is why celebrating the Christmases and Thanksgivings after the fact is a great solution. First off, you can get a great deal on decorations. The day after a holiday ends, stores and shops are going to slash their prices on seasonal merchandise because all that overhead is practically useless to them anymore. Have you ever noticed how the price of a Christmas tree keeps falling and falling the closer it gets to Christmas? It is simply a matter of the sellers getting more and more desperate.

The same economic phenomenon will take place in stores like Target and Walmart, too. Once the holiday has passed, these stores need to make room for the next big date on the calendar. Often times, you can find deals for as much as 75 percent off, simply because you waited patiently for the deal to come.

In addition to great deals with decorations, there are also certain holidays when patience can make gift buying much easier and less expensive. Christmas especially is a great time to wait it out. There are so many great deals on the days after Christmas since so many people are out returning presents and gifts. Stores are anxious to turn returned items into new purchases, so they consistently offer deals that can’t be beat. Those celebrating the holidays late will benefit. Rather than fight the high prices before the holidays, if you wait until after they are over, you can find much better deals on all the items on your wish list.

Saving money is great, but earning money might be even better. The whole world doesn't shut down around the holidays. There are still plenty of places that need workers and staff to work on everyone else's days off. If you celebrate a holiday a day or two later, you would have no problem working on a traditional off-day. And even better, you would earn time-and-a-half. You can't beat that.

The stress you save would be big, too. When you hit the mall or visit a restaurant around a holiday, the place is always packed with people taking advantage of their time off and their time together. Not so with a belated celebration. You and yours will most likely be the only ones still enjoying the festivities, so you will have much less congestion to worry about.

Even the roads would be less busy. Instead of fighting Labor Day traffic, you can enjoy the open road to yourself if you choose to celebrate the weekend after instead.

Understandably, this idea is pretty radical.

Observing holidays when they are not meant to be observed goes against everything that culture and society says. You would be the only ones sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner on a Monday, and you’d have a hard time sharing the holidays with friends or family who don’t abide by the same belated rules as you do.

Plus, some jobs just aren’t flexible enough to support an alternative holiday lifestyle. Most companies give employees days off that are recognized across the country. It is highly unlikely that you could find the same benevolence if you request extra days a week or two later.

This new way of looking at holiday celebrations is obviously not for everyone, but for those concerned with money or stress or time management around Christmas, New Year’s, and the other hairy holidays, celebrating a day or two later might be a tempting option. There is lots of money to save by taking advantage of sales and discounts. There is lots of money to earn by working the days that no one else is willing to work. And there is lots of time, energy, and happiness to spare by taking yourself out of the rat race and doing the holidays on your time and your schedule.

At the very least, it will at least make seeing Halloween decorations in September a little less frustrating.

Do I really need two sets of AM/FM walkie-talkies?

I was approached by this conundrum out of the blue one afternoon, and neither I nor my monthly entertainment stipend was prepared to broach the subject. Unfortunately, the subject needed to be broached.

The question was posed as a result of my visiting Woot.com, an online store that self-professes to "sell cool stuff cheap." I associate with three of those four words, so Woot has become a fairly regular visit for me while surfing the web. The site started as a sort-of employee store for an electronics distributor, but it has since ballooned into a well-known and popular niche store.

The beauty of Woot is its cheapness, and that cheapness is made possible by its low overhead. Woot only offers one product for sale each day, and they often sell out long before the midnight deadline. So if I wanted those AM/FM walkie-talkies, I needed to stop measuring a 30-foot radius from my office desk and start placing my online order.

It's too bad my money conscience kicked in.

Despite the intended simplicity of Woot.com, there is actually a whole lot of fiscal anguish that those great deals create in the minds of consumers. Products that are priced right tend to be purchased regardless of practicality or need. But at the same time, unnecessary expenses can discourage shoppers who fear buyer’s remorse despite how incredibly affordable that six-slice toaster might really be.

The Woot paradox is a microcosm of the battles that consumers wage day in and day out, and it even goes all the way back to fundamental economics. The issue of scarcity drives demand in the real world the same way it does in the virtual marketplace at Woot. A sale at the GAP forces consumers to weigh the factors of need, price, availability, and whether or not these jeans make them look fat. Similar situations play out every day at Woot's store, too (only with far fewer self-conscious weight moments).

I was at the crux of this paradigm myself, and I found my thoughts wavering between two polar opposites.

"Buy the walkie-talkies," demanded my risk-taking, live-in-the-moment side. The walkie-talkies were priced to sell...$14.95! Take that, Radio Shack! Getting walkie-talkies at that price should have been a deal that I just couldn't pass up.

Besides, if I didn't take advantage of the offer, someone else would. Great Woot deals go fast because the marketplace is full of savvy shoppers. I wanted to be a savvy shopper, too, but I couldn't help but hear a voice of reason beckoning me to resist.

"You don't need walkie-talkies," that small voice inside my head scolded. "Tell that to the intrastate convoy I'm planning, you Jiminy-Cricket wannabe," I mockingly replied. But that frugal voice was right. I didn't need walkie-talkies. I had, at one point in time, wanted them. Sadly, this was 1989, and I was seven years old and spent most of my time imagining what it might be like to live in a tree fort. Being an adult, my priorities and my backyard landscaping had changed.

So there I stood at a stalemate between deal-mongering and rational purchasing. And it got me to thinking about how other people use Woot.

Certainly, I was not the first to struggle with a purchase decision like this on the Woot website. With all the fun electronic gadgets the site hawks each day, there were no doubt millions of others who have weighed some of the same options as I was presently weighing. But how do they decide what is prudent and what is pointless? A lot of Woot shoppers must have some sort of system figured out because the website is fast becoming one of the most popular e-commerce sites on the web. Perhaps all of Woot’s customers are irresponsible impulse shoppers; I know this decision would be a lot easier if I were one, too.

The more I thought about it, though, the more the answer seemed clear: to use Woot responsibly, you have to know what you want before you log on. If only I had realized this prior to Digital CameraGate 2006.

To make Woot as financially feasible as it can be, you have to have certain products in mind, and you can’t waver from your shopping list. If Woot's prices are some of the best you can find (and they are), then buying on Woot shouldn't have to be a guilt-inducing affair... provided you are buying the right items.

For instance, if you need a vacuum cleaner and you spot an iRobot Roomba on Woot, you should have no hesitation on snatching it up. Odds are good that you will not find it for a better price anywhere else, so you should be thrilled to pick it up at Woot’s lower price. However, if you spot a super cool set of headphones and you already have three super cool sets of headphones sitting at home on a shelf collecting dust, you should probably keep right on clicking.

Woot can be a great resource for wise consumers, but it can offer a lot of temptation to those with less self-control. Having specific items in mind when scouring for deals on Woot can remove the risk associate with online shopping; this way, all you’re left with is reward.

Using my newfound reasoning, I was forced to look at AM/FM walkie-talkies in a different light. I did not need them; in fact, I was not sure of anyone over the age of 15 who would need them. So despite the great price, I let the deal slide and kept my money saved up for bigger and better things... like AM/FM walkie-talkies that can vacuum my floor.

College students are back in classes, back in the dorms, and back in arrears to Mom and Dad. Yes, all the signs point to school year being back again.

While hitting the books and meeting new friends are an enjoyable part of college life (unless the books being hit are about philosophy and the friends being made are not all that into you), slipping into debt is not. But it is popular.

College kids very rarely have a sense of financial responsibility. That’s what makes them college kids, in addition to their lack of hygiene responsibility and showing up on time responsibility. Sooner rather than later, they will fill their dorm rooms with the latest trendy toys and hit the town with their new best friends often enough to make a jetsetter blush.

But they don’t exactly have the money to pay for it all. Before they know it, they’ve outlasted mom and dad’s generosity, they’ve run themselves into credit card debt, and they’re still spending, spending, spending.

So in order to change their impractical and ill-advised ways, college kids are going to have to change their outlook on personal finance. Or, in the case of many fresh-faced coeds, they will have to create a personal finance outlook in the first place.

Here are four common college pitfalls to avoid on the road to 20-something solvency.

1. Too many credit cards

The first rule of college budgeting is that credit cards are off limits, no matter how cool the free t-shirt is. The credit card is the death knell to a coed’s chances of fiscal survival. Plastic creates problems, especially when plastic is associated with insanely high fees and interest.

Of course, some might argue that they can handle a credit card because they never spend more than they have. These students either grew up with a silver spoon in their mouths or are lying. If college kids are known for one thing, it is that they are poor. They go to class all day, work occasionally, and spend frequently. Having a credit card just exacerbates the process, and with no money to make payments, the credit card fees, interest rates, and penalties start flooding in.

That really is the catch. College students tend to get in trouble when they throw too many purchases onto a credit card because all too frequently they don’t plan on paying them off. Furniture, Xbox, and any number of other frivolous expenses that cost big bucks end up on the card, and with no way of paying for the purchases, the college student quickly ends up in debt.

Credit cards provide a very easy way out for college kids who love easy ways out. And what’s worse is that a lot of companies target college kids because they are the ones who are often most profitable. Instead of buying into the credit craze, college kids would be wise to put their purchases on their debit card, pay with cash, or keep themselves from buying altogether. They’d do well to remember not to buy anything they can’t afford.

2. Too many unnecessary purchases

College kids might reply, “What other kinds are there?” These are the kids who are probably in credit card debt.

Unnecessary purchases are rather easy when you’re in college because they come in all shapes and sizes. First off, there are dorm room purchases. Couches, rugs, pictures, TVs – these are necessities in the eyes of most college kids, but when it gets right down to it, they don’t need them. Really, if they live in a dorm or in an apartment building, then chances are good that their neighbors will have all that stuff anyway.

The freedom to buy new clothes is also a big temptation once college-aged kids leave the house and set out on their own. Combine that sense of entitlement with the new tastes and styles of dozens of new friends, and before you know it, some freshmen find themselves with an entirely new wardrobe.

College students need to keep in mind the necessary purchases, like school books and a meal plan, before they start making plans on where to put that new plasma TV. There are many more important ways to be spending money on a college campus than on bells and whistles that do nothing more than show status or entertain. To truly set a college budget straight, youngsters should make room for necessities and savings and splurge with the leftovers.

3. Going out every night

Another temptation for college kids is to constantly hit the town. They’re young, they’re freewheeling, and their Friday and Saturday nights are always free.

But those Friday and Saturday nights are also expensive. Combine the weekends with weekday trips to the restaurant or to the movies and social coeds can find themselves in money trouble fast.

Strangely enough, all the going out is fairly unnecessary. There are just as many fun events on campus, and with a cafeteria nearby, there’s no need to go out to eat every night. Rather than having a datebook filled to the brim, a money-conscious college student would know when to say “no” and would find their fun for free down the hall or in the Quad.

4. Mortgaging your future

College life is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, yet many people pay the consequences for that experience throughout their lifetime. Student loans, unwise purchases, and other issues can rear their ugly heads long after students have tossed their mortar boards into the air.

That’s why it is important to plan ahead, at least a little bit, while still in college. If a college student has an income (perhaps from a campus job or a benevolent allowance), he or she should think long and hard about putting a little of it away each month. That way, when they hit the real world, they can have a little bit of savings built up, or if an emergency comes their way, they can be prepared.

One of the great parts of being in college is the freedom and independence, but taking a little bit of responsibility when it comes to money will be a decision that college kids will be glad they learned early.