There are bound to be a large number of store liquidation sales this year, but you'd be smart to skip them. Circuit City recently announced it had hired liquidators to sell off its inventory. While you might think this is a great time to find deals, the truth is that liquidation sales offer few bargains. Keep these facts in mind before spending your hard-earned money.

Remember when the tightfistedness of relatives raised during the Depression was amusing? Our grandparents' certificates of deposit and plastic couch protectors seemed downright quaint when our own home-equity and retirement portfolios were ballooning. Suddenly, though, the pot-roast-and-potatoes ethic doesn't seem quite so kooky. We'd even say it's worthy of a salute.

Who says there’s no such thing as free money? Those who have mastered the art of coupon shopping know there is. To them, that little scrap of paper that says “.75¢ off” is a real opportunity for big savings; they see dollar signs, not added hassle to their shopping routine. Therein lays the rub: The provisos that accompany coupons -- or the effort involved in using them -- often give them a stigma, which leaves people with a why-bother mentality.

I’m a huge fan on online banking. In fact, we opened our first online savings account with ING Direct over five years ago, and we haven’t looked back since. Sure, we still have a local brick and mortar bank for convenience, but we keep the vast majority of our savings online. Why? Because online banks offer significantly higher interest rates than do their local competitors.

Food prices are climbing, and some might be looking to fast foods and packaged foods for their cheap bites. But low cost doesn’t have to mean low quality. In fact, some of the most inexpensive things you can buy are the best things for you. At the grocery store, getting the most nutrition for the least amount of money means hanging out on the peripheries—near the fruits and veggies, the meat and dairy, and the bulk grains—while avoiding the expensive packaged interior. By doing so, not only will your kitchen be stocked with excellent foods, your wallet won’t be empty.

The recent economic recession has a lot of people worried, about their jobs, their businesses, their homes and their bills. When your income is dropping or in jeopardy and you still have a mountain of bills to pay, things can get pretty scary. However, tough economic times do not have to be a time of struggles! If you look for the opportunity in the middle of difficulty, as Mr. Einstein suggested, then tough economic times become an opportunity to transform your life.

Like some of my fellow Yahoo! Finance columnists, I'm often asked if it makes more sense to prepay a mortgage or invest the money in stocks and bonds. Rather than ponder which asset will get you a higher return, I think the better question is which investment decision will free you financially and allow you to retire earlier.

Times are tough, money's tight, and nobody should be spending more than they need. If you think you've exhausted all avenues for saving a buck, check out our ten suggestions for saving money in a recession.

In this economy, everyone’s looking for ways to cut down, and small businesses are no exception. One of the best ways to save money in business is to examine your annual expenses and consider how you can decrease those costs. Thankfully, there are some pretty amazing resources to help you figure out new ways to do just that. Check out what we consider to be the top 100 blogs for resources and inspiration to cutting your small business costs in 2009:

Times like these call for creativity in your business. We asked a panel of prominent business people, authors and business bloggers a simple question to gather ideas for how to be creative in your business. The question we asked? This: “What is the most outrageously creative thing you’ve done to save money or take your business to the next level?”