Sunday May 11th is Mother's Day. Did you know that more phone calls are made on this day than any other day of the year? Planning to call your mom this Sunday? Read on for some other ways to make your mother feel special this year.

Expensive flowers and gifts are always nice, but not if you're on a tight budget. Here are ways to pamper your mom without breaking the bank.

• Dinner out - If Mom usually does all the cooking, give her a break by taking her out for dinner. It doesn't have to be expensive; Mom will enjoy time out with the family.
• Handwritten keepsakes - Why not write a poem, letter, or handmade card telling her how much you love her? These are often treasures Mom will appreciate for years to come.
• IOU vouchers for Mom - these coupons can be once-a-month gifts for things like washing her car, cleaning out the garage, or doing something else that you know she doesn't like to do.
• Make a Cooking Calendar - When she's wondering what to cook for dinner, she can check the calendar; once a week tacos, or Wednesday pizza, or Friday night salad bars. If you're really organized, you can even prepare a shopping list for the calendar so that the chore is easy for her to do.

But remember that the best gift of all is to say "I love you." You can’t wrap it up, but she’ll remember that you said it. And it’s a gift you can give her every day.

Now that we're ready for spring, it's time to start doing things outside again. Exercising as a family, whether you have toddlers, teens, ‘tweens, or all of the above, doesn't have to be a boring chore. Use your brain along with your muscles to try some new activities that will get everyone in shape while spending quality family together.

Walking is good exercise for everyone in the family; if you have a dog, take Rover for a walk every evening after dinner. If you don't have a dog, take the family on an evening walk to look for dogs; young kids will love going on a safe family safari to search for the neighborhood pets.

Don’t let rain ruin your exercise routine.

You can exercise indoors by turning the living room into a disco. Move the furniture in the family room to the side, so that there’s plenty of room. The kids can take turns being in charge of the do-it-yourself strobe light (give them a flashlight) while everyone else dances and sings to disco classics. It's energetic, it's fun, and everyone has a good time being silly.

Use the TV!

Another way to be active as a family is to turn your TV watching into an exercise plan. No more couch potatoes! You know how everyone heads out to the fridge for snacks when the commercials are on? You can use those minutes to stay in shape. There's time for a round of push-ups, sit-ups, marching, and follow the leader before the show comes back on the screen.

Growing your vegetables.

Spring is also gardening and yard work time; each child can choose a favorite vegetable to plant, water, weed, and take care of through the growing season. If they don't have a favorite vegetable, this might be a way for kids to see vegetables as fun food. Instead of being a family of couch potatoes, you can be the family that grows potatoes! If you don’t have a yard or it’s too shady, try container gardening - most vegetables grow well in containers.

Whether you and your family are indoors or outdoors, there are lots of ways to be active and have family fun.

The next time you're on an airplane, listen carefully when the flight attendant presents the safety instructions. What does she say to do if you need to use the oxygen? She tells you to put your oxygen mask on before you put the mask on your child. Why? Because you can only take care of your child if you've already addressed your most immediate needs.

Put yourself first.

That same advice applies when juggling retirement and college savings. Financial experts agree, even though college costs are soaring, most retirees will depend primarily on savings to fund their retirement years.

Once your child graduates, his or her earning potential gets underway in earnest, but after you retire, you’re living off your pension, social security, and savings. Thanks to improved standards of living, medical advances, and technology, retirement years can last for several decades. You want those years to be financially secure.

You know that you’re likely to spend more years as a retiree than your child will spend as a college student. That’s why financial advisors recommend that, unless your retirement depends on your children taking care of you during your golden years, you need to start saving now.

Start thinking college when baby is born.

Thinking only of yourself is not the answer either. Once you've accepted the need to plan for retirement first, your next focus is college for your kids. The earlier you start the college funds, the easier it will be. Parents who manage to save $300 a month from their child’s birth will have approximately $120,000 by the time their child is ready for college.

Funding your child’s college education can come from a variety of sources too. Be sure to check out your state's 529 plan or U.S. Treasury bonds. Check out this Wall Street Journal article for more information.

With today’s careful planning, tomorrow can be financially secure for you and your family.

Spring is here and that means Easter baskets filled with good things to eat. Did you know that Easter is called a movable feast? And no, it's not because you need a basket to carry all the candy and treats that show up on Easter morning.

The holiday takes place on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, which is the date in March when spring begins (either March 20 or 21). Go ahead, you can figure it out by marking the days on your calendar. Equinox means 'equal night' because when the sun is over the equator, as it is for the spring equinox, that day and night are more or less equal in length of time, all over the world.

But back to the candy.

Easter is second only to Halloween as the most important holiday for candy. On Halloween, you have to go out and get the candy, but on Easter, it comes to you. Did you know that 90 million chocolate Easter bunnies are made for Easter? And that most of us--76%--eat the ears first?

Over 16 billion jelly beans are eaten at Easter time. If you had that many jelly beans, you could wrap them around them planet three times. Just imagine the Earth with rings like the planet Saturn, made out of jelly beans!

Peeps or eggs, what's your favorite?

The 1800s must have been a century when people started thinking seriously about candy because that's also when chocolate eggs became an Easter tradition. The most popular Easter candies after chocolate are the Marshmallow Peeps. Americans buy 700 million Peeps each year! The favorite color is yellow, but marshmallow Peeps are available in many other colors as well.

Happy Easter, enjoy your treats. And remember . . . it’s nice to share!

When Tax Day rolls around each April, we often find ourselves holding a fat refund check, or we’re gritting our teeth writing out a check to Uncle Sam. In most cases, your big refund or your big bill resulted from the amount of taxes withheld from your paycheck.

Did you know that you can adjust the amount of withholding on your paycheck at any time using the W-4 form? Most people fill out a W-4 when they start a new job, and never give it a second thought. You can get a W-4 from your employer, or print a copy off from IRS.gov. Here’s how to get the right amount withheld for you.

What is "just right?"

Goldilocks would know the right way to withhold taxes. Not too much. Not too little. Just right.

Believe it or not, the government actually has a way to help you get it “just right.”You can go to the IRS website, and use their withholding calculator.The calculator considers different sources of taxable income as well as credits and deductions that apply in your situation. At the end, you get a recommendation for how many allowances to claim.

How low can you go?

Don’t drop your withholding too low. While extra big paychecks might feel good now, the extra big tax bill plus penalties and interest will hurt next Tax Day. In contrast, withholding too much will get you that giant refund, but all the while the government is using your money with 0% interest.

Want that big refund for a large purchase?

Instead, discipline yourself to put money away each payday. Open a savings account funded by direct deposit from your paycheck. Refuse an ATM card, and do not link the savings account to your checking account. The money is still out of reach, but now you can earn a small return on your cash.

By withholding the right amount, you get to use your money right away instead of waiting for Uncle Sam to pay it back. Get a little extra flexibility in your finances by reducing the tax withheld from your paycheck. Just don’t get carried away, or Uncle Sam will be coming around to get what’s his. 

Did you know that the word gullible isn’t in the dictionary? Really? Hey, wait…We’ve all fallen prey to a practical joke or prank in our lives.

On April 1^st, jokes and pranks rule for April Fool’s Day. It’s been that way for a long time. Canterbury Tales, published in 1392, first linked the first of April with mischievous behavior.

In recent years, major companies and public organizations have gotten in on the fun.

• Back in 1957, the BBC staged a still famous prank through their Panorama program. A film showed spaghetti “farmers”in Switzerland harvesting their crops. Viewers contacted the BBC hoping to score their own spaghetti tree. The BBC really used their noodle to get one pasta the public that year!
• Naming rights are a big business, so many people believed Taco Bell’s full-page advertisement in the New York Times that ran on April 1, 1996. Taco Bell announced the purchase and subsequent renaming of the Liberty Bell to the Taco Liberty Bell. After stirring up a lot of attention, and a little controversy, Taco Bell admitted to the prank and pledged $50,000 to the upkeep of the Liberty Bell (no naming rights included.)
• Search engine Google first got into the foolish spirit in the year 2000. They introduced a new concept, the MentalPlex, where one could search the internet by the power of their brain. Google provided humorous responses to users as reasons why the technology was not functioning. For example, some searchers were told “Weak or no signal detected. Upgrade transmitter and retry.”Yikes!

Don’t miss the fun this year. You don’t need a big budget, just some creativity to dupe some April fools around you. Be prepared though, someone may try to spring an April Fool’s Day joke on you.