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These past few years have been miserable for money. The stock market has tumbled, unemployment has soared, the housing market has continued PRADA Handbags to crumble, and retirement savings have shriveled away. Whew! Here’s hoping the next few years will be better!

But hope can only do so much. Hope cannot bring change; action brings change.

If one of your goals is to take control of your money (instead of letting it keep control of you), this crash course in financial basics can help guide the way. Here are nine simple, but effective, actions you can take to build a better financial future.

Method #1: Track Every Penny You Spend

The authors of Your Money or Your Life admonish readers to “keep track of every cent that comes into or goes out of your life.”

This is the best way to become conscious of how money actually comes and goes in your life as opposed to how you think it comes and goes. This is the step that somehow makes the biggest impact. It doesn’t matter how you track your spending—the most important thing is to do it.

You can use a cash notebook.

You can use an online tool like Wesabe, Mint, or Quicken Online.

You can use a piece of software like Quicken or Microsoft Money.

Whichever method you choose, stick with it. Make it a habit. Don’t fudge the numbers. Record your transactions as soon as possible. Most of all, don’t judge yourself. Tracking your spending is an exercise in data collection; it’s not the appropriate time to change your habits.

Method #2: Develop a Budget

After you’ve tracked your spending for a few weeks (or months), use the data you’ve collected to develop a budget. According to The Millionaire Next Door, budgeting is one thing that sets the wealthy apart from the rest of us—55 percent of millionaires keep a budget.

Many people—myself included—fail to budget for a variety of reasons: it’s boring, we don’t think we need it, or we don’t know how. But this simple act can provide a roadmap for your money.

There are a variety of budgeting methods you can choose, from Andrew Tobias’ three-step budget to the 60 percent budget. My recent favorite (and a favorite of GRS readers) is Elizabeth Warren’s balanced money formula: 50 percent to Needs, 20 percent to Savings, and everything else to Wants. Simple but effective.

Crave more budgeting tips? Check out this article highlighting thirteen tools for building a better budget. Hate the idea of budgeting? Consider the spending plan, a budgeting method for non-budgeters.

Tip! Spend less Hermes Wallets than you earn. This is the fundamental money skill. It’s common sense, yet many people never learn to do it. Only by spending less than you earn can you hope to build wealth. This is easier to do if you track your spending and develop a budget, but those steps aren’t completely necessary. Even if you do nothing else in this list, spending less than you earn can put you ahead of your peers.

Method #3: Optimize Your Accounts

For eighteen years, I was an account holder at a large national bank. I paid an eight dollar “service charge” every month, as well as many other fees. I received terrible service and earned no interest. Over the last couple of years, I’ve finally begun to optimize my accounts. If you haven’t already done so, consider the following:

* Open an online high-yield savings account. Even in this era of low interest rates, it’s still possible to earn about 3 percent on your savings. Internet favorite ING Direct currently offers a 2.50 percent APY, and FNBO Direct offers a 2.80 percent APY. These rates are about as low as they can go, and should increase in the months and years ahead. And if you don’t need as much liquidity with your investments, consider researching CD rates which may offer a higher interest rate.

* Choose a rewards checking account. Believe it or not, it’s possible to find checking accounts that pay interest. Online checking accounts generally pay between 1 percent and 3 percent, depending on your balance. But you can usually find an even better deal through your local bank or credit union. Check out this huge list of rewards checking accounts.

* Use a rewards credit card. If you have trouble with credit, it’s best to avoid plastic altogether. If you can use credit responsibly, be sure to choose a credit card that pays you. Avoid cards that carry an annual fee. Find a rewards program that matches your lifestyle. But don’t choose a card just because it offers a signup bonus or because it gives you a discount at your favorite store. Remember: your goal is to find a useful tool. Look for a long-term relationship you can live with.

It’s important to choose accounts and systems that work for you. I signed up for a rewards checking account at a local credit union, but the nearest branch is fifteen minutes out of my way. I never use it. I had to compromise by opening on online checking account instead. I earn a lower rate, but it’s an account I’ll actually use.

Tip! When optimizing your banks and credit cards, consider using multiple accounts at each institution. For example, I have ING Direct subaccounts that allow me to target my savings. I save for vacation in one account, for a car in another, and I use a third account for emergency savings.

Method #4: Start an Emergency Fund

For years, I lived paycheck to paycheck. I spent everything I earned. This worked well until something went wrong. Suddenly I’d find myself without money to pay for a car repair, or facing an expensive doctor’s bill. I financed emergencies with credit cards. I finally paid off all of this debt at the end of 2007.

After you’ve optimized your accounts, make it a priority to save for emergencies. In The Total Money Makeover, Dave Ramsey explains why he believes an emergency fund should come before anything else:

“Since I hate debt so much, people often ask why we don’t start with the debt. I used to do that when I first started teaching and counseling, but I discovered that people would stop their whole Total Money Makeover because of an emergency—they felt guilty that they had to stop debt-reducing to survive.”

After you’ve saved $1000, then you can attack your debt. Open an online high-yield savings account and add twenty or fifty dollars to your account every time you get paid. Two years ago, I opened an account at ING Direct, where it’s simple to schedule automatic deposits.

See also: Learning to love the emergency fund.

Method #5: Get Out of debt

Are you struggling under a heavy debt load from credit cards or student loans? Make it a priority to unload some of this burden this year. At the Designer Replica Handbags end of 2007, I said goodbye to twenty years of debt—it feels fantastic to have that weight off my shoulders.

If you have the mental discipline, you’ll save money by paying down your high-interest debt first. But if you’ve tried that method before and failed, consider using a debt snowball. Pay your debts starting with the smallest balance first. Here’s how:

1. Order your debts from lowest balance to highest balance.

2. Designate a certain amount of money to pay toward debts each month.

3. Pay the minimum payment on all debts except the one with the lowest balance.

4. Throw every other penny at the debt with the lowest balance.

5. When that debt is gone, do not alter the monthly amount used to pay debts, but throw all you can at the debt with the next-lowest balance.

The debt snowball can give you awesome psychological payoffs, keeping you motivated to stay in the game. It’s not mathematically ideal, but it worked for me (and for many others). However you choose to get out of debt, stick with it. Don’t give up.

Tip! The perfect choice is the enemy of the good. When you spend so much time looking for the “best” choice that you never actually do anything, you’re sabotaging yourself. And an ideal solution that you don’t follow through with is worse than a good solution that you’ll actually use. Choose a good option and act.

Method #6: Fund Your Retirement

The current economy gives many people the jitters. But if history is any indication, now is a great time to be buying stocks for your retirement. Take advantage of any employer-matched opportunities, such as a 401(k). Also, consider starting a Roth IRA.

If you’re young, you probably don’t think you need to start a retirement account. You’re wrong. No matter how old you are, now is the time to begin saving for retirement. The extraordinary power of compound interest favors the young—and in a big way! In The Automatic Millionaire, David Bach writes:

“The single biggest investment mistake you can make [is] not using your [retirement] plan and not maxing it out.”

After reading The Automatic Millionaire a couple years ago, I opened a Roth IRA at Sharebuilder. It was easier than opening a checking account. I managed to make the maximum contribution in 2006 and 2007. In 2008, I maxed out my 401(k).

Don’t understand retirement accounts? No problem. Last year I explained what a Roth IRA is and why you should care. For more ideas, check out Wesabe’s simple investing group.

Method #7: Automate Your Finances

For the past eighteen months, I’ve been moving toward a system of paperless personal finance. Along the way, I’m learning the value of automating routine transactions. When you make things automatic, you remove the human element, making it more difficult for you to mess things up.

The classic example is overdraft protection. By tying your checking account to your savings account, you have a safety net if you bounce a check. But there are other ways this can work for you. For example, I’ve set up automatic payments with the gas company, the cable company, and my auto insurance company. I also make automatic deposits to my online savings account.

One terrific advantage to automation: when you pay your bills and do your saving and investing automatically, it’s easy to tell how much you have left over to spend at the end of each month!

Tip! Do what works for you. There are few hard-and-fast rules in the world of personal finance. I can suggest methods that have worked for me (and for others), but only you can determine if these methods are appropriate for your own circumstances.

Method #8: Earn Extra Money

You can meet a lot of your financial goals by reducing your spending and using the right tools. But nothing supercharges your progress like a boost in income. How Gucci bags can you earn extra money?

* Ask for a raise. Several readers have written to tell me how they’ve given themselves a raise through ambition and ingenuity. Here’s one example.

* Switch employers. Not every employer is able or willing to offer raises, even when they’re merited. If you’re in a position where a raise isn’t possible, consider finding a new employer.

* Take a second job. Many people find that the best way to get out of a financial hole is to temporarily take a second job. Nobody wants to work more than forty hours per week, but sometimes that’s what’s needed to get out of debt or to save for a house. Just remind yourself that you’re doing this for a short time.

* Use your hobbies. Yes, it’s possible to have moneymaking hobbies. You’re not going to get rich playing World of Warcraft, but many people use productive hobbies to earn a little extra income.

* Volunteer for medical research. Last summer, I earned $120 for a couple of hours spent participating in medical research. My colleague Donna Freedman has earned extra cash by giving blood and watching porn (though not at the same time).

* Sell things. When I decided to get out of debt, one of my first steps was to sell a bunch of the stuff I’d bought with that $35,000. I used eBay, Craigslist, garage sales, and the Amazon Marketplace to sell the things I no longer needed or wanted. The money I earned jump-started my debt reduction.

Another effective way to increase your income is to pursue entrepreneurship. While working to defeat my debt, I started a small computer-consulting business. It didn’t generate a lot of income, but it did provide $2,000 a year that I wouldn’t have had otherwise!

Method #9: Educate Yourself

Knowledge is power. Personal finance doesn’t have to be a mystery. Subscribe to this site. Read other personal finance blogs. I recommend:

* The Simple Dollar

* I Will Teach You to Be Rich

* The members of the Money Scribes network

* The members of the LifeRemix network

Visit your public library. Borrow money books and self-development manuals. Here are four of my favorites:

* If you’re in debt and can’t seem to find a way out: How to Get Out of Debt and Live Prosperously

* If you’d like to know more about investing: The Random Walk Guide to Investing

* If things are tight and you need to find creative ways to make ends meet: The Complete Tightwad Gazette

* If you want a motivational manual to prompt you to pursue your goals: The Magic of Thinking Big

You don’t have to agree with everything in a book to get something out of it. I read a lot of personal finance books—some are good, but many are not. Even the worst books usually have one or two things I can pull from them. Learn how to read a personal finance book so that you can pick and choose those pieces appropriate for your life.

Final Thoughts

Taking control of your finances can be intimidating—there’s so much to do—but it doesn’t have to be that way. One effective solution is to take a vacation day from work: designate one specific date as your personal Money Day. Use this day to finally set up Quicken on your computer, to open a retirement account, and to call around for a better deal on your insurance.

The good news is Prada Scarf that you can get out of debt. You can save for retirement. If I can do it, so can you. Best wishes for a prosperous new year!

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People are always talking about the “epidemic” of poor nutrition among today’s youth and America’s obesity “problem.” It’s almost like they think PRADA Handbags being a big, fat person is somehow less than totally awesome. Well, I’m a fat guy, and I’m here to tell you, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.

In case you’re still not convinced, just a few of the amazing perks of carrying the effects of a decade of late-night burritos and Pop-Tart ice cream sandwiches around your midsection.

1. Goodbye, Stain Explanations!

No more lengthy and embarrassing explanations on where the stain on your shirt came from. Everybody knows and understands that it’s mustard … from your sandwich … that you ate between lunch and second after-lunch snack.

2. Year-Round Shorts

Like a majestic walrus, chubby guys pack their own insulation. This means that your body is equipped to handle the chilliest of rib-offs wearing nothing but a hoodie and your double XL gym shorts. Be forewarned, though — this heating effect can also result in socially unacceptable perspiration.

3. Intimidation

Prime time for muggin’ is at night,and you can’t tell whether your potential victim 20 yards up the street is fat or built like a radioactive steroid freak. Be aware, though, that if running comes into play, a larger circumference of the human body can prove counterproductive in terms of speed, agility and stamina.

4. Teddy Bear Appeal

This is an aspect of being a chubby guy that can go either way. The right kind of girl will bust out the old “You’re like a big fluffy teddy bear!” line, and in that case you have a good chance of sealing the deal. However, sometimes when this phrase shoots forth from some cherry-red lips … you just landed yourself in the friend zone. Be cautious with your Teddy Bear appeal.

Keep reading to find out the top 5 wonders an XXXL lifestyle can bring you.

5. Honorary Boobs

The fascination with the Hermes Wallets female breast has been ingrained into the male psyche from the time of ancient man. As your girth begins to display it’s bulbous fruits, you might notice that smack dab in the middle of your chest are large jiggly planet-like growths. Don’t be frightened. Yes, they are hairy … but they are your very own boobs! AWESOME!!

6. Automatic Dibs

The cold stare shot across the table between kin vying for the same slice of pecan pie can lead to an unpleasant atmosphere. Not when there’s a chubby guy around! It’s universally understood that we’re gonna get that piece of pie.

7. Replacement of Furniture

As your belly begins to grow, you will no longer need certain items of furniture. Coffee tables and end tables all become obsolete. When reclined, simply place any item you need directly on your gut. Your lighter, the remote control, even a bowl of cereal will fit comfortably alongside one another, safely atop your man-shelf.

8. Airplane Rights Revolution

It’s not very often that you get your very own revolution to participate in! The spherical and squishy genius Kevin Smith was thrown off an airplane for being gravitationally inclined. This event was chub society’s “shot heard round the world.” The overweight aren’t gonna take this lying down … they’ll probably attempt to un-recline. Fly high, fat bird! Fly high.

9. Advanced Understanding of Pop Culture

Being of the large persuasion will automatically start killing your attachment to physical movement. A pleasant side effect of this lack of interest in being mobile is your absorption of all the goings-on in the world via the TV and the Internet. Absolutely no moving is required! Plus, you’ll be able to dominate trivia games with friends and family … as long as they come to you.

10. Inherent Understanding of Fine Dining

When traveling and Designer Replica Handbags searching for acceptable eateries, no one will point you in the right direction quicker than a fat dude. Wanna find the best wings? The most delicious sushi? A local chunkster will know them all. Once inaugurated into chubby-guy society, the Ancient Wisdom of the Ages opens your third eye and pours local cuisine knowledge into your head with a gravy boat.

Beck Attacks President’s Daughter

UPDATE: Glenn Beck has issued a statement, addressing the matter described below:

In discussing how President Obama uses children to shield himself from criticism, I broke my own rule about leaving kids out of political debates. The children of public figures should be left on the sidelines. It was a stupid mistake and I apologize–and as a dad I should have known better.

I think that was the right thing to do under the circumstances.

So, call me crazy, but I’m beginning to think that Fox News infotainer Glenn Beck’s principles lack some internal moral consistency.

See, a couple of days ago, Beck interviewed sometime-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, and he took what appeared to be a principled stand on the matter of how people should treat the families of public figures. Speaking with Palin, Beck decried the tactic: “Leave my family, leave people’s families alone…When it was Bill Clinton, you don’t go after Chelsea Clinton. You don’t talk about the Bush kids. Now, the minute they get into politics, that’s a different story. You leave the families alone.”

Now, Beck’s stand here was rooted in the belief that Sarah Palin’s new neighbor, journalist Joe McGinnis, moved in next door to her with the intention of being a danger to Palin’s children. That is, as they say, some horsedung. Nevertheless, I can definitely get on board with the whole “leave the families alone” idea. Glenn Beck has had a long time to reflect upon that time he mocked a woman’s miscarriage because her husband committed the terrible crime of being the host of a rival morning show in the same market as Beck. Maybe he felt bad about that! But whatever the reason, decrying the practice of criticizing the families of public figures is, at the root, very laudable.

Here’s the thing, though: Beck was only able to abide by those principles for a few hours. On this morning’s broadcast of his radio show, he chucked all of that out the window and went on an extended jag of mocking Malia Obama, who had the temerity to get herself caught Gucci bags up in the news cycle:Gah, here is some of the transcript of this thing:

BECK: (imitating Malia) Daddy? Daddy? Daddy, did you plug the hole yet? Daddy?

PAT GRAY (co-host): (imitating Obama) No I didn’t, honey.

BECK: (imitating Malia) Daddy, I know you’re better than [unintelligible]

GRAY: (imitating Obama) Mm-hmm, big country.

BECK: (imitating Malia) And I was wondering if you’ve plugged that hole yet.

GRAY: (imitating Obama) Honey, not yet.

BECK: (imitating Malia) Why not, daddy? But daddy–

GRAY: (imitating Obama) Not time yet, honey. Hasn’t done enough damage.

BECK: (imitating Malia) Daddy?

GRAY: (imitating Obama) Not enough damage yet, honey.

BECK: (imitating Malia) Daddy?

GRAY: (imitating Obama) Yeah?

BECK: (imitating Malia) Why do you hate black people so much?

GRAY: (imitating Obama) I’m part white, honey.

BECK: (imitating Malia) What?

GRAY: (imitating Obama) What?

BECK: (imitating Malia) What’d you say?

GRAY: (imitating Obama) Excuse me?

BECK: (laughing) This is such a ridiculous — this is such a ridiculous thing that his daughter– (imitating Malia) Daddy?

GRAY: It’s so stupid.

BECK: How old is his daughter? Like, thirteen?

GRAY: Well, one of them’s, I think, thirteen, one’s eleven, or something.

BECK: “Did you plug the hole yet, daddy?” Is that’s their — that’s the level of their education, that they’re coming to — they’re coming to daddy and saying ‘Daddy, did you plug the hole yet?’ ” Plug the hole!

GRAY: (imitating Obama) Yes, I was doing some deep-sea diving yesterday, and–

BECK: (imitating Malia) Daddy?

GRAY: (imitating Obama) Yeah, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, I was doing–

BECK: (imitating Malia) Why

GRAY: (imitating Obama) Yeah, honey, I’m BECK (imitating Malia) Why, why, why, why, do you still let the polar bears die? Daddy, why do you still let Sarah Palin destroy the environment? Why are — Daddy, why don’t you just put her in some sort of a camp?

And on and on it goes like that.

So, to revise the Prada Scarf central tenets of Beck’s “leave the families alone” credo, people should only criticize the children of public figures of people whom Glenn Beck doesn’t like, including the ones who are stillborn.

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When I was a little child, my grandpa always sat next to me and told some stories about the legendary of Hakka. I was very interested Designer Replica Handbags in these kinds of stories and learned a lot from that. Until then, I started to know I’m a Hakka and also felt proud to be a Hakka.

Hakka, we call it “KeJia” in Chinese, which means “guest family”. When I first heard this word, I felt very confused why we are called guests, are we guests coming from other place? I finally got the answer from my grandpa. He told me sincerely and earnestly that, we, Hakka are the people who emigrated from the north of China in Jin Dynasty. The flooding, grasshopper plaques, droughts, famines and war drove our ancestors move to the south in China. Throughout the whole period, they suffered a lot and finally settled here.

According to this, I felt Hakka is really a great ethnic group. But for their perseverance, hard-working, how could they still exist in the most adverse environment. It is so surprising!

As I gradually grew up, my admiration to this culture increased, my understanding of Hakka was not merely from the little words of my grandpa, but from what I have heard and what I have seen.

When referring to the culture of Hakka, the first thing you will think about is their dialect. Because our ancestor came from different places in the north of China, moreover, when they settled here, their dialects more or less mixed with the dialects of native people, they created so many dialects. I felt intensely about this point. When I was in my middle class, all my classmates are Hakka, who were just from different villages and towns, but the dialects of them were different from each other. Now, you can imagine what a showplace of dialects it was!

Then I want to tell you another treasury of the culture. Let’s begin it with a true story. It sounds interesting. In the sixties of last century, when a foreign reconnaissance satellites flew throw the Fujian province, it took a Gucci bags picture of a building of cylindraceous structure which was once mistaken by a launching base for rockets. Until an old couple walked into it, the riddle was finally undone①. That was the round building of Hakka. From then on, Hakka people can show their own culture to the world. It is Hakka’s time!

The round building is usually 3 to 4 stories tall with a large inner open space (single ring) or double rings. Why is it so big—that’s another cultural reflection . Because of the historic reason, Hakka people don’t want to be apart any more. They always live in big family, and usually with several generations. As for this point, I feel more deeply, especially, when it comes to the end of a year, the Spring Festival. Because at that time, I will go home and enjoy new year with all my relatives. To show my respect and love, I must call them (it’s also a tradition), that’s so hard for me, “Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt, Uncle…” This often lasts for more than 5 minutes. But, on the other hand, I really admire the warm and fragrance feeling with all my relatives!

Above are the cultures that I have heard and seen, it’s only a corner of a whole thing. But just from that I can feel the deep and proud of our culture!

Now, from the mere surprise and then the admiration, I started to be proud to be a Hakka and feel delighted here to introduce our culture to you. The holding of the “World Hakka Fair” in Ganzhou, Jiangxi Prada Scarf province, the construction of the “Hakka Town” in Ganxian, all the Hakka people are making an effort to spread the culture. I should also do something. Because, for us, it is Hakka’s moment!

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Give anything 20 years and it’ll PRADA Handbags start to look like the makings of a joke. And so — welcome back to the ’80s, or, as LCD Soundsystem’s “Losing My Edge” put it, “borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered ’80s.” You don’t even need to have had first-hand experience with the decade to make fun of it.

Today’s opening of “MacGruber” — which Karina Longworth’s review clusters alongside “Hot Tub Time Machine” and “Cop Out” as movies whose primary subject is a decade’s worth of pop culture rather than actual people — confirms what we already knew: VH1′s “I Love The 80s” was far, far more insidious than we figured.

Compare and contrast — the trailers for “MacGruber” and “Hot Tub Time Machine” are below:

The ’70s didn’t suddenly see a big spate of films mocking the ’50s, nor the ’80s the ’60s and so forth. There is a joke in “Dazed and Confused” — the only one that really guns for the low-hanging fruit — where a character speculates on the rule of how every other decade is awesome, and figures out since the ’70s suck, maybe the ’80s will be totally awesome. But that’s about it.

That an entire decade’s worth of pop culture is, in and of itself, a punchline, is new and unnerving. It’s different from the numerous films taking old TV franchises as a starting point for a movie. The idea isn’t playing with an established brand and resurrecting familiar images; it’s toying with passed-down imagery as a joke whose currency is already established.

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The idea that changes in fashion (accessories, clothing, music, so on) automatically constitute hilarity, then, is a special rule we’ve come up with for the ’80s. Familiarity breeds contemptuous affection for a decade that’s just stupid, which was VH1′s whole premise — mention just a title or name, then laugh away. What’s unclear is whether thirtysomethings now getting to make their own movies will be able to sell that to kids too young to directly remember the ’80s, those for whom the below montage conjures no nostalgia.

What really gives me pause is wondering whether this is a one-off or a harbinger of something more sinister. 20 years hence, will we be deluged with movies portraying the aughts as a time of toxic smart-phone abuse, American Apparel and people writing their Hermes Wallets own Wikipedia entries? It’s easy to reduce a decade to its pop-culture sound-bites and trend topics when you have no memory of being complicit with them. Sneering is easy, compassion is hard.

Marriage gets better when kids leave the nest

Study of women finds an empty nest has its benefits

Marriages get better after the children grow up and move out, according to a UC Berkeley study that analyzed the marital satisfaction of more than 100 women over 18 years.

The study by three professors from UC Berkeley’s department of psychology and Institute of Personality & Social Research questioned the women at the average ages of 43 in 1981, 52 in 1989 and 61 in 1998 and found that marriages grew increasingly better after the kids packed up and left.

“We found that marital satisfaction increased as the women transitioned to an empty nest,” said Sara Gorchoff, one of the authors of the study and a doctoral candidate in the psychology department. “It was not that they spent more time with their partners but that they were better enjoying the time they spent with their partners.”

Though the women in the study were not named, several other Bay Area mothers shared similar views.

Terry Toczynski, a 55-year-old mother of three, said she noticed an improvement in her marriage when her three children went off to school. They were gone for about a year before one of them temporarily moved back recently.

“In the time they weren’t there, we didn’t have to focus 100 percent on raising children, and it was definitely better for us,” the Berkeley woman said. “We were a couple again, two individuals who chose to live together and be with each other. Got good at conversations

“At first, it is very quiet, but there is a lot of good in the lack of noise. We got good at having conversations. Our time is about us.”

The 123 women in the study were born between 1937 and 1939 and were first questioned for a study on creativity while they were seniors at Mills College in Oakland. Since then, they have participated in numerous studies, including one on the effect of the women’s movement.

“We realized what an opportunity we had to study these women over the years,” said Gorchoff, who conducted the study with psychology Professors Oliver John and Ravenna Helson.

Though all the women Designer Replica Handbags attended college, they chose different career paths and had varying income levels and numbers of children. Their martial status varied as well.

Some changed partners, some didn’t. Whatever the case, the study showed that they all reported becoming more satisfied when their children moved away from home.

“The increase was not at all dependent on whether they remarried,” Gorchoff said. “And the women did not report that the general global satisfaction with their lives got better, just their marriages. They were enjoying the time with their partners more.”

Shahla Piff, 59, of San Bruno said she initially felt like her purpose in life was gone when her two sons moved out about six years ago but soon realized her marriage was growing stronger.

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“We had time to pay attention to each other,” said Piff, whose sons are 26 and 28. “The boys were taking a lot of our attention and energy. When they left, we could behave like adults. We could do fun stuff, like travel and go to art shows. “It gives us more time to focus on each other and our interests.”

Marriages improved with age overall, according to the study, but women who experienced the transition to an empty nest were happier with their mates than women with children in the home and women whose children had been gone for a while.

The first survey was done when most of the women still had children at home, the second when some of them still had kids at home, and the third when most kids were gone. All were in middle age during the first survey. Some got married, some raised kids, some were divorced, some remarried and some were in domestic partnerships.

The women rated how satisfied they were in their relationships using a five-point scale.

“The transition to an empty nest may be associated with an increase in the quantity of time and energy invested in one’s marriage, an increase in the quality of time spent with one’s partner and with perceptions of one’s child’s success,” the study said.

Not everyone agrees. Barbara Lockwood, a 58-year-old Brookdale (Santa Cruz County) woman whose sons left home in 1998, said her marriage has remained pretty much the same.

Empty Nest Travel Club

Lockwood started the Empty Nest Travel Club for parents whose kids had moved out, because her husband doesn’t like to travel and she wanted to see the world.

“The kids leaving was a Gucci bags big adjustment and part of the reason I want to travel more, but I wouldn’t say my marriage got more satisfying,” Lockwood said. “We are now focused on ourselves and our discussions are about health problems, not the kids.”

The study, titled “Contextualizing Change in Marital Satisfaction During Middle Age,” was published in the November issue of the journal Psychological Science.

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Google is done playing catch-up. Today they’re setting the agenda: With Android Froyo, Google TV, mobile ads and streaming media, Google isn’t just PRADA Handbags matching Apple—they’re taking the lead.

The Google I/O conference has been dizzyingly dense, with announcements from nearly every corner of Google’s ever-expanding apparatus. The meatiest news comes direct from Google’s most intense battlefronts: Android Froyo (version 2.2); a bevy of clever new cloud services; and a mobile ad platform paired with Google TV marching into battle with competing products from Microsoft, and much more pointedly, Apple.

Google’s last 18 months have been a period of frantic catchup, in which we saw Android reach feature parity with iPhone OS, the Android Market explode, and Google’s confidence slowly build. Apple had been setting the terms of the battle, baiting Google into action. The competition was fierce, but the fight was on Apple’s terms.

Google’s tired of that. In the space of two days, they’ve leapfrogged Apple spectacularly: They’ve matched Apple’s mobile OS in predictable ways, and embarrassed it in others (Flash on mobiles may not be as horrific as Apple has implied); they’ve invaded the living room with a dedication and vigor that makes Apple TV look like a jokey experiment; they’ve steamrolled the mobile ad market with as solid a platform as Apple’s and, more importantly, hundreds of thousands of advertisers; they’ve taken massive steps into the cloud, and into streaming—the kind of stuff nerds talk about, but didn’t expect to see so soon.

“We discovered something cool: It’s called the internet.”

We’ve spilled a lot of ink over Android’s lack of media syncing, and what seemed like an half-assed online sync system. The pieces just didn’t add Hermes Wallets up to a whole. There was no need to sync to a desktop for most of your data, but there was no easy, slick way to transfer media. Apps were handled exclusively on the phones’ App Market apps, which was a pain. The experience was broken, so people complained. Why couldn’t we just have an iTunes-style app, at least?

Well, now we know. With Android Froyo, apps are synced wirelessly between your desktop web browser and your phone, music is streamed from your home PC to your handset over 3G, and instructions—map directions, search terms, web pages and potential all kinds of other stuff—can be zapped to your handset from a desktop browser. Sync as Apple defines it suddenly looks tired and clumsy. The new sync is instant, it’s less redundant, it makes sense. And the new sync belongs to Google.

It’s the Ads, Stupid

Aside from the requisite technical hiccups, Google’s presentation today was surprisingly assured. And never was it more assured than during the AdSense mobile presentation. Here we saw Google reveal something a lot like what Jobs showed with iAds, right down to the “users don’t like to leave their apps” mantra.

But Apple’s presentation was about a new ad platform, which let’s be frank: Ugh. You’ve got a pretty framework for ads, Apple? Users don’t care because, well, we hate ads. Devs weren’t too excited, because Apple’s system was new, unproven and, well, not terribly interesting.

Google’s presentation was more Designer Replica Handbags shrewd: They didn’t have to linger on the mechanism of the ads, because for Google, AdSense mobile is just a bridge for their hundreds of thousands of preexisting advertisers, to every phone the company touches. When focusing on these gadget and product side of things, it’s easy to forget that Google is foremost an advertising company. Apple can present pretty ad platforms all they want, but Google has a proven record of selling.

Apple TV, Blindsided

Apple TV withered not for lack of potential, but for lack of ambition. It’s as if Apple decided to invade our living rooms, built the box they need to do it, then gave up when it wasn’t a wild, immediate success. In doing so, they squandered a multi-year head start. Google TV is a markedly different product than Apple TV—more like TiVo’s latest box than Apple’s crippled Mac Mini—but that’s only because Google is taking a much more aggressive tack. Instead of a single box to supplement your TV, Google wants to take it over. They want to combine Gucci bags TV and the internet in a real way, not with token widgets or content stores. They want app devs, hardware partners, content partners and search traffic, which for us, translates to apps, tons of hardware choices, a multitude of viewing options and a real window to the internet. Where Apple TV had iTunes, Google TV will have Amazon, Netflix, YouTube and Hulu. Where Apple TV had a walled-off repository of downloaded, paid content, Google will have a massive selection of content, free and paid, complementing your regular TV channels, not stubbornly isolated from them.

In the past, Google has always been late to the party—and they rarely outpaced Apple. The iPhone set the tone and terms for the mobile wars, with iTunes and the App Store looming large over every newcomer, including Android. Apple TV came out in 2007. The iPad is the standard to which every new tablet will be measured. Through their successes, Apple has defined a vision: It’s a company that loves control, that changed the meaning and importance of “apps,” and which sees itself dominating nearly every aspect of its users’ technological lives. It’s a vision that ignores the cloud, except when it can’t. And it’s a vision that has an expiration date.

Google, too, has a hunger for domination, but they’ve finally got vision of their own to accompany it: A vision of cellphones and desktops connected seamlessly—revolutionarily, magically—over the internet; a vision of media that streams when you need it, and disappears when you don’t; a vision that sees TV as an extension of the internet, not simply a dumb screen.

Google’s got a ton of work to do. Android is fragmented, and huge share of the handsets people own today will never take advantage of Froyo’s new features. Any new TV product takes years to filter into the average living room. Media streaming is an inevitability, but the Prada Scarf infrastructure isn’t there to fully realize it, and what Google showed off today doesn’t address everything. (The is no video component to their new Simplify Media-based music streaming software, for now.) But listening to Google’s newly emboldened Vic Gundotra after a particularly uninspired series of Jobsnotes, peering into each company’s future, I see Google stepping out ahead—and with one impressive lead.

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Stieg Larsson is one of the hottest writers around right now. In 2008, various book-trade magazines, such as Publisher’s Weekly and the Bookseller, declared him Designer Replica Handbags the second-most-popular bookseller globally. His most recent work, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, became the best-selling book of 2010 (to date) in the United States just a couple of weeks after its release. Unfortunately, Larsson never had the chance to enjoy his success; he died in 2004, shortly before any of his completed manuscripts were published.

What to do with an author’s unfinished work after death is a controversial and messy issue within the literary world. Larsson’s case was a rarity: his manuscripts were finished and he wanted to share them. Many famous writers’ last words have been published posthumously, whether that was their desire or not. The outcome can be positive, but in other instances, some things are better left unfinished.

1. The Love of the Last Tycoon: A Western, F. Scott Fitzgerald

A few months before his death at age forty-four, Fitzgerald started a novel about a movie producer trying to survive in Hollywood. Edmund Wilson, a literary critic and friend of the writer, put together his unfinished work and published it in 1941. Fitzgerald’s previous book, Tender Is the Night, was a disappointing follow-up to the classic The Great Gatsby, so it seems like even more of a shame that he was never able to properly introduce this novel to the world. The New York Times’s J. Donald Adams wrote in 1941 that it “would have been Fitzgerald’s best novel and a very fine one.”

2. Sleeping Murder, Agatha Christie

After writing the final installment of her Miss Marple detective series, Christie put it in a bank vault for thirty years. When her health deteriorated in the early 1970s, she gave her publishers permission to release it in 1976; she died in January of that year. Fans got to find out what happened to Miss Marple, and the book itself received decent reviews. Even after her death, only Shakespeare and the Bible outsell her impressive collection of published works.

3. The Trial, Franz Kafka

Before the end of his battle with tuberculosis in 1924, Kafka told his literary executor, Max Brod, to burn everything he’d ever written. Thank goodness Brod ignored his wishes, because though Kafka was largely unsuccessful in his time, he became one of the most famous and Gucci bags influential authors in all the literary world after his death. The Trial, a story about a man’s fight against the bureaucracy of law, is one of his most well-known works. Orson Welles developed it into a movie in 1963.

4. True at First Light, Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway’s memoirs describe a trip to East Africa in the 1950s. Patrick, his son, released it in 1999 after editing it down from two hundred thousand words to one hundred thousand. Not surprisingly, critics felt the story lacked many elements, particularly Hemingway’s magic with words. He abandoned it because he had trouble remembering the actual events, so Patrick added fictional details to fill in the blanks—a highly controversial move. Far more successful was A Moveable Feast, released a few years after Hemingway’s 1961 death; his chronicles of his life as a struggling writer in Paris are heartfelt and inspiring.

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5. A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole

Publishers rejected this novel when Toole shopped it around. It wasn’t until eleven years after his death that the book became the hallmark of Southern literature, winning the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1981. (His mom, Thelma, and fellow writer Walker Percy worked to get it published.) Now the famous story of Ignatius J. Reilly and his misadventures in New Orleans is printed in eighteen languages all over the world.

6. Pirate Latitudes, Michael Crichton

The story goes that Crichton’s assistant stumbled upon two manuscripts, one finished and the other partially finished, on Crichton’s computer after his 2008 death. Pirate Latitudes (the finished one), a fictional novel about piracy in seventeenth-century Jamaica, was released in 2009; Steven Spielberg has already agreed to produce a movie version, according to the Washington Post.

7. The Original of Laura, Vladmir Nabokov

Nabokov’s physical and mental health deteriorated a great deal near the end of his life. Displeased with his incomplete novel, he insisted that his wife, Vera, and son, Dmitri, get rid of its evidence once he passed. But neither of them could bear to destroy the famous writer’s last words, so they placed all 138 index cards (Nabokov often used such cards in his writing) in a Swiss bank vault. In 2009, Dmitri published the notes and called it “a novel in fragments.” The main character, Philip, is Prada Scarf obsessed with death and what follows afterward. Critics maligned Dmitri’s decision, saying Nabakov was clearly too ill to write as brilliantly as he once had.

8. The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank

Anne Frank’s diary, an account of her time spent hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam, is one of the most famous posthumously published books in the world. It relays everything that happened to her during those two years, from the cramped conditions of the attic to the confusion and throes of adolescence. After she died at a concentration camp in 1945, the diary was found and given to the only surviving member of the Frank family, Anne’s father. He published it in 1947, to immediate popularity and praise.

It’s rare that a writer’s work is finished upon his or her death; more often, there are incomplete manuscripts and dilemmas about what to do with them. People presume to know authors’ intentions—or ignore them altogether—and manipulate their last words. Whether those practices are morally right will always be a point of contention. But literature would surely be remiss without some of these last novels. Even the more cringe-worthy ones serve a greater purpose: they remind us just how extraordinary these writers were in their time. As for the ones who achieved notoriety after their time, well, that’s even more extraordinary.

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When I was young, I went looking for gold in California. I never found enough to make me rich. But I did discover a beautiful part PRADA Handbags of the country. It was called “the Stanislau.” The Stanislau was like Heaven on Earth. It had bright green hills and deep forests where soft winds touched the trees. Other men, also looking for gold, had reached the Stanislau hills of California many years before I did. They had built a town in the valley with sidewalks and stores, banks and schools. They had also built pretty little houses for their families.　

At first, they found a lot of gold in the Stanislau hills. But their good luck did not last. After a few years, the gold disappeared. By the time I reached the Stanislau, all the people were gone, too. Grass now grew in the streets. And the little houses were covered by wild rose bushes. Only the sound of insects filled the air as I walked through the empty town that summer day so long ago. Then, I realized I was not alone after all.　

A man was smiling at me as he stood in front of one of the little houses. This house was not covered by wild rose bushes. A nice little garden in front of the house was full of blue and yellow flowers. White curtains hung from the windows and floated in the soft summer wind.

Still smiling, the man opened the door of his house and motioned to me. I went inside and could not believe my eyes.I had Hermes Wallets been living for weeks in rough mining camps with other gold miners. We slept on the hard ground, ate canned beans from cold metal plates and spent our days in the difficult search for gold. Here in this little house, my spirit seemed to come to life again.

I saw a bright rug on the shining wooden floor. Pictures hung all around the room. And on little tables there were seashells, books and china vases full of flowers. A woman had made this house into a home. The pleasure I felt in my heart must have shown on my face. The man read my thoughts. “Yes,” he smiled, “it is all her work. Everything in this room has felt the touch of her hand.”　

　 One of the pictures on the wall was not hanging straight. He noticed it and went to fix it. He stepped back several times to make sure the picture was really straight. Then he gave it a gentle touch with his hand. “She always does that,” he explained to me. “It is like the finishing pat a mother gives her child’s hair after she has brushed it. I have seen her fix all these things so often that I can do it just the way she does. I don’t know why I do it. I just do it.”　

As he talked, I realized there was something in this room that he wanted me to discover. I looked around. When my eyes reached a corner of the room near the fireplace, he broke into a happy laugh and rubbed his hands together. “That’s it!” he cried out. “You have found it! I knew you would. It is her picture. I went to a little black shelf Designer Replica Handbags that held a small picture of the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. There was a sweetness and softness in the woman’s expression that I had never seen before.

The man took the picture from my hands and stared at it. “She was nineteen on her last birthday. That was the day we were married. When you see her…oh, just wait until you meet her!”　

“Where is she now?” I asked.　

“Oh, she is away,” the man sighed, putting the picture back on the little black shelf. “She went to visit her parents. They live forty or fifty miles from here. She has been gone two weeks today.”

“When will she be back?” I asked. “Well, this is Wednesday,” he said slowly. “She will be back on Saturday, in the evening.”　

I felt a sharp sense of regret. “I am sorry, because I will be gone by then,” I said. 　

“Gone? No! Why should you go? Don’t go. She will be so sorry. You see, she likes to have people come and stay with us.”

“No, I really must leave,” I said firmly.　

He picked up her picture and held it before my eyes. “Here,” he said. “Now you tell her to her face that you could have stayed to meet her and you would not.”　

Something made me change my mind as I looked at the picture for a second time. I decided to stay. 　The man told me his name was Henry. That night, Henry and I talked about many different things, but mainly about her. The next day passed quietly. 　

Thursday evening we had a visitor. He was a big, grey-haired miner named Tom. “I just came for a few minutes to ask when she is coming home,” he explained. “Is there any news?”　“Oh yes,” the man replied. “I got a letter. Would you like to hear it? He took a yellowed letter out of his shirt pocket and read it to us. It was full Gucci bags of loving messages to him and to other people – their close friends and neighbors. When the man finished reading it, he looked at his friend. “Oh no, you are doing it again, Tom! You always cry when I read a letter from her. I’m going to tell her this time!”　

“No, you must not do that, Henry,” the grey-haired miner said. “I am getting old. And any little sorrow makes me cry. I really was hoping she would be here tonight.”　

The next day, Friday, another old miner came to visit. He asked to hear the letter. The message in it made him cry,too. “We all miss her so much,” he said. Saturday finally came. I found I was looking at my watch very often.Henry noticed this. “You don’t think something has happened to her, do you?” he asked me. I smiled and said that I was sure she was just fine. But he did not seem satisfied.I was glad to see his two friends, Tom and Joe, coming down the road as the sun began to set. The old miners werecarrying guitars. They also brought flowers and a bottle of whiskey. They put the flowers in vases and began to playsome fast and lively songs on their guitars.　

Henry’s friends kept giving him glasses of whiskey, which they made him drink. When I reached for one of the twoglasses left on the table, Tom stopped my arm. “Drop that glass and take the other one!” he whispered. He gave theremaining glass of whiskey to Henry just as the clock began to strike midnight.Henry emptied the glass. His face grew whiter and whiter. “Boys,” he said, “I am feeling sick. I want to lie down.”　

Henry was asleep almost before the words were out of his mouth. In a moment, his two friends had picked him up and carried him into the bedroom. They closed the door and came back.They seemed to be getting ready to leave. So I said, “Please don’t go gentlemen. She will not know me. I am a stranger to her.”

　　 They looked at each other. “His wife has been dead for nineteen years,” Tom said.　 “Dead?” I whispered.　

“Dead or worse,” he said.　

“She went to see her parents about six months after she got married. On her way back, on a Saturday evening in June, when she was almost here, the Indians captured her. No one ever saw her again. Henry lost his mind. He thinks she Prada Scarf is still alive. When June comes, he thinks she has gone on her trip to see her parents. Then he begins to wait for her to come back. He gets out that old letter. And we come around to visit so he can read it to us. 　

“On the Saturday night she is supposed to come home, we come here to be with him. We put a sleeping drug in his drink so he will sleep through the night. Then he is all right for another year.”　Joe picked up his hat and his guitar. “We have done this every June for nineteen years,” he said. “The first year there were twenty-seven of us. Now just the two of us are left.” He opened the door of the pretty little house. And the two old men disappeared into the darkness of the Stanislau.

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Most people are aware that outdoor air pollution can damage their health, but many do not know that indoor air pollution can also have Designer Replica Handbags significant health effects. Environmental Protection Agency studies indicate that indoor levels of pollutants may be 2～5 times, and occasionally more than 100 times, higher than outdoor levels. These levels of indoor air pollutants may be of particular concern because most people spend about 90％ of their time indoors.

There are many sources of indoor air pollution in any home. These include combustion sources such as oil, gas, coal, wood, and tobacco products; building materials and furnishings as diverse as deteriorated asbestos-containing insulation, wet or damp carpet, and cabinetry or furniture made of certain pressed wood products; products for household cleaning and maintenance, personal care, or hobbies; central heating and cooling systems and humidification devices; and outdoor sources such as radon, pesticides, and outdoor air pollution.

Immediate effects may show up after a single exposure or repeated exposures. These include irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat, headaches, dizziness, and fatigue. Such immediate effects are usually short-term and treatable. Sometimes the treatment is simply eliminating the person’s exposure to the source of the pollution, if it can be identified. Symptoms of some diseases, including asthma, hypersensitivity, pneumonitis, and fever, may also show up soon after exposure to some indoor air pollutants.

The likelihood of immediate reactions to indoor air pollutants depends on several factors. Age and pre existing medical conditions are two important influences. In other cases, whether a person reacts to a pollutant depends on individual sensitivity, which varies tremendously from person to person. Some people can become sensitized to biological pollutants after repeated exposures, and it appears that some people can become sensitized to chemical pollutants as well.

Certain immediate effects are similar to those from colds or other viral diseases, so it is often difficult to determine if the symptoms are a result of exposure to indoor air pollution. For this reason, it is important to pay attention to the time and place the symptoms occur. If the symptoms fade or go away when a person is away from the home and return when the person returns, an effort should be made to identify indoor air sources that may be possible causes. Some effects may be made worse by an inadequate supply of outdoor air or from the heating, cooling, or humidity conditions prevalent in the home.

Other health effects may show up either years after exposure has occurred or only after long or repeated periods of exposure. These effects, which include some respiratory diseases, heart disease, and cancer, can be severely debilitating or fatal. It is prudent to try to improve the indoor air quality in your home even if symptoms are not noticeable.

While pollutants commonly found in indoor air are responsible for many harmful effects, there is considerable uncertainty about what concentrations or periods of exposure are necessary to produce specific health problems. People also react very differently to Gucci bags exposure to indoor air pollutants. Therefore, further research is needed to better understand the effects of indoor air pollution and to find efficient ways to protect our health.

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Trapped in the rubble for one Designer Replica Handbags month after Haiti’s massive earthquake, Evans Monsignac thought he was dead. Here the man thought to be the longest-ever earthquake survivor talks exclusively to Jacqui Goddard.

For the last 10 weeks, Evans Monsignac has struggled to understand how and why he is still alive. So remarkable is his survival, that at times it has been easier for him to think that he must in fact be dead.

Severely malnourished, dehydrated, deeply traumatised and with festering wounds, the frail slum-dweller’s survival was hailed a miracle when he emerged after an extraordinary 27 days trapped in the ruins of Haiti’s earthquake, confounding doctors and defying medical logic. It is believed to be the longest anyone has endured such an ordeal.

Now recovering in a US hospital, he has spoken for the first time of his horrific ordeal, sharing haunting memories that until now have been locked away in his head.

“I still don’t understand how I’m here,” he admitted, his skeletal body resting limply in an intensive care bed at Tampa General Hospital, Florida. “I was resigned to death. But PRADA Handbags God gave me life. The fact that I’m alive today isn’t because of me, it’s because of the grace of God. It’s a miracle, I can’t explain it.”

Mr Monsignac, 27, a father of two, was the last person found alive under the debris after an earthquake levelled Port-au-Prince on Jan 12. His relatives say simply that someone, they do not know who, came across him while working through the rubble on Feb 8 and rushed him, delusional and rambling, to an emergency clinic.

Even his name was a mystery, variously recorded by medics as Evans Monsigrace, Evans Muncie and Evan Ocinia. A plastic hospital bracelet on his bony left wrist spells it out correctly now.

Countering speculation that he must have had access to food and clean water while trapped, he shook his head. “No,” he said emphatically, and no one else was involved in his epic struggle for survival; just himself and God. He was pinned by concrete slabs, saw nobody and heard only the screams of the dying. “I had no contact with anybody. None. Nobody bought me anything,” he insisted.

The appalling reality, he said, is that he survived by sipping sewage that oozed underneath the rubble of the marketplace where he was buried, a place where sanitation was lacking even before the earthquake.

“It was trickling past where I was lying.I felt it under my body,” he saids. He shifted his right arm weakly on the bed, turning his empty palm upwards and forming it into a scoop before raising it towards his mouth to demonstrate how he collected and drank the foul liquid.

Even before the earthquake struck, killing an estimated 230,000 people, injuring 300,000 and rendering one million homeless, life had been a struggle for Mr Monsignac, a dirt-poor market vendor who scratched a living selling rice and cooking oil.

On the day disaster struck, he had woken at 5am at his home in Portail St-Joseph – a slum where he lived with his mother Jeanne Edmond Monsignac, his wife Gerline, 20, daughter Keline and son Michael, both aged four – and caught a bus to La Saline marketplace, where he set up under an awning.

“As soon as I finished selling the last batch of rice the earthquake happened. Suddenly things were just flying all over and flattening me,” he recalls. “I said ‘Oh Lord, I’m dying.’ I tried to turn to the right, but I was pinned down by rock, I tried to turn to the left, I was pinned down with rock.”

Looking up, he saw a slab of debris thundering towards him as buildings collapsed on the market. “A piece of concrete was falling to my face but then it was like someone Hermes Wallets came and pulled it back. I don’t know if it was God, if it was a snake,” he said, referring to the Haitian voodoo snake spirits.

“This piece just stopped above me. But still I couldn’t move. I heard so many screams all over, people screaming loudly. I just lifted up my eyes and prayed because I couldn’t understand what was going on.”

The exact details of what happened over the next 27 days remain a mystery, registering as only a blur in Mr Monsignac’s traumatised mind as he drifted in and out of consciousness inside his precariously-formed tomb, losing all concept of time.

“I’m lying on my back. I was so scared because if I turn one way I will get hurt and if I turn another way I get hurt. If I move it will bring death. So I lay straight,” he told The Sunday Telegraph.

“I didn’t think of anything, just death. I could smell death from others – there were a lot of people under the rubble with me but the screaming was one day only. Then it was quiet..it was dark all the time. Every time I came out of consciousness I prayed, I prayed that God would rescue me, give me life.

“I thought I was dead. I was in shock. On the second day, maybe the third day, I realised I seemed to be alive and I saw this water. I was hungry and thirsty and I tried to drink something but it was making me sick in my belly. I would take my little finger and wet my lips and swallow it, but the sicker I got as time went on.”

He recalls nothing of his rescue, of feeling the sunlight on his face for the first time in nearly a month as he was finally discovered and taken first to a Salvation Army medical centre and then to a field hospital run by the University of Miami before being treated aboard the USS comfort hospital ship and then flown here to Tampa on February 21.

“The only thing I can remember is thinking ‘I’m free, I’m not dying,’” he said.

His lanky frame is stick thin – he weighed just 40kgs (88lbs) when he was admitted, having shed 27kgs (60lbs) during his ordeal – and his bones bulge below his papery brown skin. His right forearm bears deep red sores, and his fingernails are stained with dried blood from scratching at them.

His eyes are lifeless and he stares blankly for much of the time at a television mounted high on the wall in his room, watching the images but understanding nothing of the words.

Despite being severely dehydrated when he was found, his survival without any damage to his kidneys is considered remarkable.

“He calls himself a miracle? He’s right,” says Dr David Smith, medical director of Tampa General’s burns centre, where Mr Monsignac has undergone skin grafts on Gucci bags his wounds. He is also receiving painkillers through an intravenous line and drugs to deal with gastro-intestinal troubles including diarrhea and cramping. Remarkably for someone who endured such severe dehydration, his kidney function is normal.

“We don’t know what happened during those 27 days but his story isn’t unbelievable,” said Dr Smith.

Mr Monsignac likes chocolate milk and had just nibbled a piece of toast and a boiled egg, but has mostly been rejecting food, despite special menus rustled up by a Haitian cook in the hospital kitchens. He is still “desperately malnourished”, said his doctor, “His major problem is nutrition,” Dr Smith explained.

“If he was from the US we would put a tube down his nose to feed him, but in Haitian culture if they have a tube like that it implies that they are going to die. When he first came in, we put 12 tubes in him in eight hours and he pulled them all out, screaming from the psychological trauma.”

He is also suffering from post-traumatic shock, sometimes melting down into fits of screaming. He periodically moans and turns his head on the pillow, calling to nurses for more painkillers, or drawing his blanket over his head and retreating.

Yet his current state of mind is an improvement compared to when he first arrived here, one of 62 Haitian earthquake victims treated at Tampa General. Plucked from one of the world’s poorest countries and a life of destitution, the transition to a modern, high-tech American hospital where doctors and nurses move around him in surgical masks and gowns has been overwhelming.

“The problem with these patients is they are all terrified,” sdaid Dr Smith. “They have had a horrific experience. When Evans arrived he was convinced that his mother had sold him to white slave traders and he was going to be a slave for the rest of his life. He didn’t see us as medical people trying to help him.”

Reverend Celillon Alteme, the hospital’s chaplain, is Haitian and has befriended Mr Monsignac, helping to breach the culture differences and language barrier. At times, he said, Mr Monsignac “thought the doctors and nurses were going to kill him.”

“He wanted to die. We had to talk with him gently, we assured him it was safe,” he added.

Mr Monsignac has weeks of treatment ahead of him, but fantasises about rejoining his family in Haiti and starting life afresh.

When The Sunday Telegraph found them living under tarpaulins in a ruined factory, they were overjoyed to hear the details of Mr Monsignac’s recovery. They have been in sporadic telephone contact with him and know that he is anxious to leave hospital as soon as possible. “He wants to see his family but I want him to say until he gets strong,” his mother said.

They had given up hope of his survival, and only learnt afterwards that he had been rescued in a phone call from friends. Marie Monsignac, his elder sister, said: “We were happy because we didn’t know if he had died!”

Mr Monsignac said: “I’m feeling helpless. I’m the only breadwinner in the family. My children are on the streets. They are very sad, they are hungry. If they could Prada Scarf understand I would tell them ‘Have courage. One day we will be together again.’”

If his ordeal taught him anything, it is that hope springs eternal, he says, adding: “Those who are sick should have the courage to live and pray to God, and those who are healthy need to cherish their life and to pray. Now I know that I must live life to the best I can each day.”

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Did you ever wake up in the morning and look at the loose change scattered around your Gucci bags night table and say: “Did I really spend that much last night at the club?”

If you can’t remember, then look on the bright side: You probably had a good time. And that’s fine for a night of drinking. But for your overall financial health it’s not such a good thing. Big picture: You need to get some structure in your financial life. You need to make a plan. But before you can make a plan, you need to have some goals. We’re going to recommend these five as the most important financial goals all men should make.

5 Pay off your consumer debt

Houses need to be built on firm foundations, and you can’t build a strong financial life if you’re sinking in a swamp of consumer debt. By “consumer debt” we mean any debt that is used to fund consumption (buying electronic toys) and not investment (real estate). Mainly that means credit card debt, but it can also be a car note for that ride you knew you couldn’t afford. If your financial liabilities outweigh your assets, then your goal is to get back to zero.

To get there:

-Have a realistic timetable: You’re not going to pay off $10,000 in credit card debt in two months. But you’re not going to pay it off in 100 years if you only make the minimum payment. So split the difference. Decide what the light at the end of the tunnel should be and make that your goal. Unless you’re buried under a mountain of debt, try to make it less than five years.

-Make steady progress: Sometimes people drop their diets or exercise regimes because they mess up one time. Realize that you’re going to mess up. Stuff happens. But don’t blow off your PRADA Handbags goal if you have a bad month. Stay focused on the big picture.

-Work a little harder: If you have to, get a part-time job. Work overtime if your job allows for it. It’s not fun and nobody wants to do it, but you’ll feel a lot better about yourself if you start seeing your debts go down.

4 Build an emergency fund

Nothing can send you back to square one quicker than an unforeseen incident like losing your job, getting hurt, getting in an accident, etc. If one of those things happens, and you don’t have cash in the bank in the form of an emergency fund, then you’re going to find yourself buried in debt again.

Most financial planners will tell you to have three to six months of living expenses saved. That sounds like a lot, especially if you have zero months of living expenses saved right now. But you don’t build up savings overnight. Set up a separate savings account with your bank or an online site like ING Direct that will debit a certain amount out of your checking account each month. The account should be “safe.” You’re looking for the kind of safety you get with a money market fund or an FDIC-insured account. If it pays a little interest, that’s great, but you’re not looking to get rich off this money. This is your rainy-day fund and if there’s one thing that’s certain in life besides death and taxes, it’s that rainy days come when you’re all set to play outside.

3 Amass equity in real estate

Record foreclosures over the past couple of years have made people think twice about buying a home. The fact that many people lost their shirts in real estate means that real estate is an extremely risky investment, right?

Well, it can be. It’s risky if you don’t manage it the right way. People lost money because they got in way over their heads on their initial mortgages (they bought too much house) or they saw the equity in their home as an ATM, started borrowing on it and ran up a mountain of debt that way.

So when it comes time to invest in real estate, don’t try to play “flip that house.” Real estate has always been a great long-term investment and, unlike a mutual fund, it has a practical use as well. After all, you can’t live in a mutual fund.

Make sure you go in with your eyes wide open if you do buy. There’s more to owning a home then just the mortgage. You’ll have additional insurance payments, taxes and Hermes Wallets maintenance. But if you can fit all of that in your budget and get into a home that makes sense for you today, the growth in the real estate market will pay off for you tomorrow.

2 Put 10% of your pretax income away for the long-term

People hate saving for retirement for two reasons:

1- They hate putting money into an account that they won’t get to spend for a very long time, and

2- They hate to admit that someday they will retire and have to put on white shoes and drive 10 miles below the speed limit to the early-bird special at the diner.

So don’t call it retirement. Just call it saving for the long-term. Whatever you want to call it, it’s a regular deposit you need to make in an account that will hopefully keep you from eating cat food in your golden years.

If you have a 401(k) at work and it has a match program, then you’ll want to do at least enough to get that match. Then try to increase it a little bit each year. If you don’t have a retirement plan at work, then call one of the big mutual fund companies (Vanguard, Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, etc.) and Prada Scarf ask about setting up an IRA or Roth IRA. And don’t be put off by the subpar performance of the stock market over the past 10 years. You’re not looking to speculate or make a quick buck. You’re looking to build wealth over a long period of time. A diversified portfolio of stock and bond mutual funds is still your easiest, best hope to do so

1 Insure against risk

If you can become debt-free, build up short-term and long-term savings and buy your own home, then congratulations are in order. You are better off than roughly 98% of the people in the world. Your final challenge, then, is to make sure you stay that way. So be aware of the catastrophes that can bring you down.

-If you get hurt, you can’t work. And if you can’t work you can’t earn. So if you don’t have disability insurance through your employer (short-term and long-term), look into buying some.

-If you have a wife and kids and they depend on your income and you die, they’re going to be up a creek. So make sure you have adequate life insurance.

-If you need a car to get to work and you total it, then you’re going to need another car. So make sure you have enough car insurance. (If you have a car loan, there are usually minimum amounts of car insurance that you’ll have to get. But if your car is paid for, you’ll need to Designer Replica Handbags make sure you have comprehensive coverage).

Insurance is another “not so fun” thing to spend money on. And we all love to spend money on things that are fun. That’s called financial freedom and we all want to get there. Follow these five steps, and you’ll get there.

Reaching financial freedom via financial goals means having a job; here’s our Top 10: Things Bosses Love To Hear, which should keep him happy and you employed. Also, you don’t have to look for a reason anymore, here’s our Top 10: Reasons To Go To Happy Hour.