While many Americans continue to struggle with the blow of the shrinking economy, Melinda from One Green Generation is taking a proactive approach by offering up some helpful money-saving tips that could help to ease financial headaches.  This is what she has to say:

First, take a look at your bills from last month. What were your highest monthly costs? Was it electricity? Water? Cable? Whatever it was, you should work on that first. Then, here are some things to think about:

1. Cut the Cable Television

Whoa, you say. But don’t stop reading. You can do it. I haven’t had cable television in six years. And I’ll let you in on a little secret: I work in the film and television industry! How do I keep up with what’s going on? Well, the internet helps a lot. I also check out movies at the library (you can reserve them online and wait until you receive an email that they’re ready for you), rent dvds at the local video store (it’s so great to watch a television series all the way through without commercials!), when there’s something we really want to watch we just get together at a friend’s house, but mostly we read and we talk instead.

Don’t worry about your kids making the transition - they’ll handle it. The library is full of good books, and you can even read a book out loud together as a family. Our family used to take turns each reading a chapter of the book - a great bonding experience. You can also play good old fashioned board games, which can be loads of fun - pick up a few at a local thrift store or garage sale (or your parents’ basement).

2. Reduce Your Electric Usage

As you cut your cable, you can turn off our television: the biggest energy guzzler in the house. As your incandescent bulbs wear out, replace them with CFLs - they are more expensive up front, but they will last many months longer and will save you a lot of money in electricity. Turn off lights unless you are in the room. Minimize your A/C or heater usage as much as you can - turn the A/C up a few degrees, turn the heater down a few degrees. Use a laptop rather than a desktop computer, if you can. Plus turn off the computer when you’re not using it. Turn down your hot water heater to 120F. And spend less time in the shower, which uses a lot of electricity (or gas) to heat the water.

3. Reduce trips in the car

Now is a good time to finally learn that public transportation system, or really carpool with your coworker who lives nearby. You don’t need to keep your kids from after-school activities, just arrange with other parents to carpool. Or even arrange an after-school bus - check into it with your school and find out who to call. Consolidate your errands for the week to one or two days when you’re already going out. And if you live within a mile or two, think about walking or biking instead.

4. Replace Junk Food With Good Food

For some reason, when we have to cut costs often the first thing we do is stop buying good food. Does that make sense, when this is the stuff that nurtures our bodies and helps our children grow up strong and healthy? Cut out the soda and alcoholic beverages and drink water instead, but don’t stop buying fresh fruit and vegetables as these are important.

Forgo eating out for a simple, home cooked meal instead. Bring your lunch to work and school rather than eating out. Rather than buying granola bars and other processed foods, make them from scratch - you might find it’s a lot easier than you think. Plus it’s a great after-school project for the kids to help make. And by all means, grow a fall and winter garden, or help a friend grow theirs in exchange for some of the goods.

If you’re really hurting economically and just can’t afford fresh fruit and vegetables, don’t be afraid to visit the local food bank. That’s what it’s there for.

5. Hang in there and reach out to others

In many other parts of the world, it is normal and customary to help one another when times are tougher. If you are lucky to be doing well, invite some friends over for dinner, or do something else to help (gently and respectfully, of course, as it is tough to ask for and accept help). If you’re not doing so well, don’t be shy about accepting a kind hand. Barter! My juicy backyard plums for your 6x hand-me-downs, for example. Now is the best time to start building your community by just living and being local, through and through. Together we are stronger.

For those of us that are dating after divorce, getting ‘back in the saddle’ again seems scary at best, and mortifying at most. When slinking home after a disasterous date, it’s difficult to imagine dishing it all to your very closest friend.  So what kind of emotional resolve (or temporary insanity) would it take for a singleton to blog about it on the Internet, for all (and that last date) to read?

Meet Sara Susanna Katz, a midwestern writer and author of “Wife Living Dangerously.” Katz bears it all on the MSN .com section devoted to single life and dating.  In regular blogging posts, she talks about finding both men and frogs online, swooning and being swooned, and living the large life back in the dating world.

For Episodes 1-64, click here!

For Episode 65 of Single in the Suburbs, click here

Episode 66 of Single in the Suburbs can be found here

Single in the Suburbs Installment 67 has now been released!

Latest news!  Installment 68 has now been released!

Wow! The latest installments of Single in the Suburbs can be found here!

by Kara Lyons

Many take to journaling as a way to walk themselves through emotional hardship. By writing down thoughts and experiences, a journal can allow for individuals to analyze and express their feelings. But journaling can have a downside.

In recent years, cases involving the presence of online journals, dubbed “blogs,” related to divorce proceedings have sprouted across the nation.

People use the blogs to vent, publishing their content for all to see. In doing so, some blogs have brought about a battle between First Amendment rights and harassment as it relates to a divorce.

One Vermont man was ordered by a court last month to remove his blog postings relating to his wife and their crumbled marriage.

William Krasnansky maintains that his fictionalized accounts of his marriage posted on the blog are legal, and that the court order demanding the removal of his content amounts to prior restraint and a violation of his constitutional right to free speech.

But Krasnansky’s wife finds the postings to be harassment. His wife also deemed the postings to be inaccurate, defamatory and inappropriate.

Though Krasnansky, following the court order, has noted on his blog that the characters portrayed there are fictitious, he still used it as a means to dictate the story behind his divorce, stating in detail the history of his marriage and subsequent divorce proceedings.

One of the passages states, “I wholeheartedly and happily agreed to make such egregious sacrifices because, of course, Ms. Incompetent’s client’s happiness was of far more importance to me than any other considerations I might have then had, being, in fact, essential to my own, and I did so despite that she had chosen, for reasons of her own, to communicate her unhappiness to me by filing for divorce and not until then informing me that she had, for years, been both unsupportably unhappy in her faculty position and “dream(ing) of (attending) culinary school.”

Denver family law attorney Gina B. Weitzenkorn says of the case, “Well obviously, I know that people have a right to free speech, but it seems to me that’s a very personal family matter. I think that it is very disturbing and troublesome. Obviously we have to weigh free speech and privacy rights, but I don’t think that people’s private lives and information about another person should be free to the world. I’m not sure what they are trying to accomplish by blogging. I think it is cathartic for people to put down their concerns, but I don’t see that it has to be available to everyone in the world.”

Though Krasnansky’s war protecting his freedom of speech has yet to be settled, some family law attorneys find the idea of blogging about divorces irresponsible.

“In my opinion, that’s a very tacky and counterproductive thing that he is doing,” said Bill Hunnicutt, a Denver divorce attorney. “If I had a client come to me with the idea of blogging, I would strongly urge that client to reconsider. If the client did not take my advice, I would seriously consider and probably seek to allow the court to have me withdraw. I personally think it’s awful because it is grossly destructive to the family.”

Though Krasnansky and his wife did not have any children, other recent legal battles involving blogging include children.

A family court in Rhode Island advised one mother to remove her blog as it pertained to her two daughters involved in a divorce and custody case. The blog included photographs and medical information about the girls, along with a repeated claim that their father had been sexually abusing the girls.

Such a case brings about a broader legal battle than a typical divorce and custody case. It involves free speech and privacy issues in addition to the already draining proceedings of a divorce.

“If there are children involved, it can be extremely damaging,” Hunnicutt said. “It serves absolutely no purpose except for someone to inappropriately vent their frustration. It’s stupid. If children were involved—minor children—I strongly suspect the court would take that kind of conduct significantly into account into determining the parents’ rights and responsibilities.”

The use of blogs to vent about marital issues has also negatively affected peoples’ careers.

An assistant city attorney in Aurora lost his job a year ago after he posted comments on his blog allegations that his wife was having an affair with the city’s fire chief.

After working for Aurora for 15 years, Rob Werking was fired after he used the Internet to express himself during his divorce from his wife, Julie Werking, the legal adviser for the Aurora fire department.

Werking’s blog posted last March stated: “This space is devoted to the pain, darkness and despair I am dealing with stemming from Julie’s decision to have an affair with another married man and co-worker.”

Not only did Werking’s allegations lead to his loss of a job, his ex-wife, Julie, was reassigned from her position to a job at the city attorney’s office following the blog posting.

“It’s a matter of free speech on one hand and libel and slander on the other,” Hunnicutt said. “Divorce issues fall within the protection and analysis of our constitution. I suspect that in many states, harassment by computer or electronic harassment is some sort of criminal matter. Additionally, my understanding of the law is if that kind of conduct has an economic consequence to the marital estate, which also should be, and in my experience, would be considered by a court. Such conduct can be very destructive to the already destructive process of divorce.”

Instead of taking to the Internet to express frustration during a divorce, Hunnicutt recommends talking to a therapist.

“I understand that divorce is typically racked with anger,” Hunnicutt said. “I would suggest to that person that they find a more constructive way to deal with their anger, whether that’s help from a mental health professional or some other counselor or me.”

Weitzenkorn would also recommend a client seek counseling as an alternative to blogging.

“In a domestic situation, I think sometimes people want to be validated that they were wronged, and frankly, I would tell them to get a good therapist to work through what is concerning them,” Weitzenkorn said. “I think what we see in divorce often is that people want the rest of the world to say, ‘You’re the good person and the other one is the bad person. You were right, they were wrong. That’s not what a divorce is about.”

The increasing number of such cases and the addition of blogs to divorce proceedings could have a substantial effect on the future of divorce law.

“I can’t tell you whether it’s going to be successful litigation or not,” Weitzenkorn said. “But what we’re going to see in the future is people are going to have divorces where we have to put in separation agreements about whether people can do those kinds of things. It’s opening up a whole new area of the law. I honestly don’t know what will happen.”