The other week WalletPop had a post Want happiness? Forget money – get therapy instead in which was explained that money can’t buy happiness, unless you spend it on psychotherapy.
This was based on a study (discussed a little more completely here but not, as far as I can tell, available on the web) done by two British professors. They found that £800 worth of therapy was the happiness equivalent of a pay rise of £25,000.
Alas, this was not experimental science. As much fun as it would have been, the researchers did not choose people at random and give them piles of cash or toss them onto the couch. All they did was find that people who themselves decided to get therapy experienced the same increase in self-reported happiness as those that got a big raise.
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November brought a wealth of new frugal tips, many of them seasonally themed.
Wise Bread kicked the month off right by reminding us, as if we needed it, that
early November is the right time to buy Halloween costumes and decorations. But beware of those topical items that may not work next year, e.g. the white sequin glove coming out of a grave.
Wise Bread also shared a timeless list of 20 Money-Saving Ways to Reuse Old Pantyhose. Sure, some of them are pretty obvious, like using them to store onions and potatoes, but several are of the forehead slapping why-didn’t-I-think-of-that variety. Used nylons can be used to make homemade soap-on-a-rope, as plant ties, and even as storage for those "menacing foam packing peanuts."
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There was a piece in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend on how B class shares in load funds seem to be nearing extinction. That may sound like a classic bottom story, the disappearance of something already obscure, but it’s 
a good excuse to discuss the economics of load funds.
Open-end mutual funds basically come in two types: load and no-load. A load is a sales charge, a commission paid to the guy who sells the fund and his employer. (And no, I have no idea why it’s called that. Much gratitude to anybody with an etymology.)
There is a widespread feeling that loads are fundamentally a rip-off. Why pay a load when you can get a no-load fund for free? That’s not an entirely illogical argument, but it misses the point. The load funds are sold by financial advisors who need to be compensated for their time somehow. A particular broker may not be worth the money, but that’s an entirely different issue, not a problem with load funds in principle.
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It’s time for me to bring the series I’ve been doing on a a toy at CNNMoney to a close. Previous installments have covered housing payments, emergency funds, asset allocation, buying your employer’s stock, and life 
insurance. This final installment is on the topic of the last question in the CNNMoney "How Healthy Are Your Finances" quiz, retirement savings.
Like all the other questions, this one has you type in a number or two and gives you a red "Danger" or a blue "Congratulations" for your trouble. The question asks for monthly savings and how much you have already saved. I found that, having previously said I was a 40 year-old making $50K a year, with $10K already saved, if I put in $750 of monthly saving I get the pat on the back but at $700 I fail.
Given the number of variables, I don’t have the patience to back out what rule the toy is using to divide the ants from the grasshoppers. And it doesn’t provide that rule in the explanation of how you did, leaving a user only trial and error to find out what good is. That leaves something to be desired in the way of actionable advice.
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This was based on a study (discussed a little more completely here but not, as far as I can tell, available on the web) done by two British professors. They found that £800 worth of therapy was the happiness equivalent of a pay rise of £25,000.
PF Blogs, The Big Picture | Frank Curmudgeon | 
December 7, 2009 12:59 pm | 
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