LilSugar

National Train Day: Whistle Down the Tracks

babysugar — Thu, 08 May 2008 07:00:41 PDT

If your lil one is obsessed with trains as mine is, make sure you have plans to celebrate the first annual National Train Day this Saturday.

The event, celebrates the 139th anniversary of the day the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railways were joined to create the first transcontinental railroad.

To make the anniversary, and inaugurate a new celebration, Amtrak is hosting events at its four largest stations, Washington, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Each location will have different activities for guests, including live musical performances, train simulators, exhibits, VIP appearances and trip giveaways. The Today show’s Al Roker is serving as the event’s national spokesperson and will be at Washington, DC’s Union Station to kick off the festivities.

If you aren’t lucky enough to be located in one of the event cities, Amtrak has provided a number of ideas to help you create your own celebration - to learn about them,

read more. But, don't let geography hold you back from festivities. Why not create your own chuga chuga choo choo party for your child and a few of his closest friends. Amtrak has a number of suggested train-theme activities for your party, our favorites include:

Train model building contests
Coloring contests – you can find printable train images here
Train-themed cake or cookie decorating contests – why not provide them with train shaped cakes they can decorate on their own
Train song karaoke – there are a number of train songs you could use, such as Dan Zane’s "Catch That Train," Laurie Berkner’s “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” Gladys Night and the Pips’ “Midnight Train to Georgia,” and the O’Jays’ “Love Train”

More activities, and downloadable images of the National Train Day logo in poster and sticker formats can be found on the Host Your Own Event page of the site. So get your engines turning and start planning!

14 Geeky Languages to Learn With Your Love

Kelly Schwarze — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:15:00 PST

Love may be a universal language, but we're not sure that phrase includes the sci-fi alien races and fantastical creatures that rule the far depths of the galaxy, who express love in words beyond our human comprehension. When you're thinking of a unique way to woo your valentine this year, plan a tutorial to learn together one of these 14 geeky languages. While several of these Trekkie, Tolkien, or computer gaming-inspired languages have enough depth to warrant a university level class, many are not fully realized, so have fun discovering select words and phrases to bring to future geeky date outings.

Wookie - Made up of three dialects, the main Wookie language is Shyriiwook. As you'd expect it consists of lots of barks and grunts, but don't you dare say that to Chewbacca. The Star Wars Christmas Special has detailed examples of this mystifying tongue.
Klingon - The language of Klingons, the sometimes ally of the Federation, is arguably the best known of the imagined star languages. Described by its Hollywood creators as gutteral in tone, dedicated Trekkies maintain the Klingon Language Institue, preserving the galaxy's "fastest growing language."
Vulcan - Known as the language of Spock, one version of Vulcan looks like musical notes. Much of the language is available online today as Gene Roddenberry was insistent when making Star Trek: The Motion Picture that the Vulcans receive their own linguistic treatment.
Romulan - As biological cousins of the Vulcans, the Romulan language is difficult to differentiate from Vulcan to the untrained ear. The Central Institute of the Romulan Language ensures you get the right training to one day know the difference.
Cardassian - Residents of the Alpha Quadrant, Cardassians are a fearsome foe of the Federation. Little is known of their language, maybe because of its rectangular-shaped letters and script.
Andorian - The blue-skinned moon species from Andora appeared throughout the Star Trek series and would of course show up in the directory of a PADD.
Elvish - With a background in linguistics study from Oxford, Tolkien did not take the creation of the Lord of the Rings languages lightly. Based on Welsh and English, you can study Liv Tyler's Arwen in the film trilogy for pronunciation and read the many online Elvish resources, including an English to Elvish dictionary.
Dwarvish - Also called Khuzdul, Tolkien is said to have drawn inspiration for the secret language of the Dwarves from Hebrew, reflecting many of the same sounds and structure. As many Lord of the Rings languages, it's been almost fully realized and you can study up with the Dwarvish dictionary.

Check out even more languages to geek out over after the jump.

Uh Oh! Watch Out For These 12 IRS Audit Red Flags

Kiplinger — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:06:09 PST

We're thrilled to present this smart Kiplinger story here on Savvy!

The IRS audits only slightly more than 1% of all individual tax returns annually. The agency doesn't have enough personnel and resources to examine each and every tax return filed during a year. So the odds are pretty low that your return will be picked for review. And, of course, the only reason filers should worry about an audit is if they are fudging on their taxes.

However, the chances of being audited or otherwise hearing from the IRS increase depending upon various factors, including your income level, whether you omitted income, the types of deductions or losses you claimed, the business in which you're engaged and whether you own foreign assets. Math errors may draw IRS inquiry, but they'll rarely lead to a full-blown exam. Although there's no sure way to avoid an IRS audit, you should be aware of red flags that could increase your chances of drawing unwanted attention from the IRS.

1. Making too much money

Although the overall individual audit rate is about 1.11%, the odds increase dramatically for higher-income filers. IRS statistics show that people with incomes of $200,000 or higher had an audit rate of 3.93%, or one out of slightly more than every 25 returns. Report $1 million or more of income? There's a one-in-eight chance your return will be audited. The audit rate drops significantly for filers making less than $200,000: Only 1.02% of such returns were audited during 2011, and the vast majority of these exams were conducted by mail. We're not saying you should try to make less money - everyone wants to be a millionaire. Just understand that the more income shown on your return, the more likely it is that you'll be hearing from the IRS.

Read on for more red flags.

Have Fun and Do Good With Alternative Takes on Classic Halloween Activities

LilSugar — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 08:31:55 PDT

Having fun and doing good aren't mutually exclusive, and this Halloween is a great time to put that theory into practice. There's still time to participate in the following programs, which help parents, kids, and communities make Halloween about more than just a sugar explosion.

Don't have a Halloween costume yet? Not to fear. National Costume Swap Day is this Saturday, Oct. 8. Everyone wins: kids get a good-as-new costume and parents save money. It's recycling at its finest! Swaps are taking place all over the country; find one near you.
This Halloween, thousands of children will be reverse trick-or-treating. Instead of receiving candy at each house they visit, activists in training will give out fair-trade chocolate attached to an informational card to raise awareness of the child labor, forced labor, trafficking, poverty, and environmental degradation that is widespread on cocoa farms.
Trick-or-Treat For UNICEF has been going strong since 1950, raising money for kids in need all over the world.
Halloween Candy Buy Back is a triple-pronged improvement on the typical Halloween candy binge (also known as the dentist's worst nightmare). Participating dentists buy kids' Halloween candy - with cash, toothbrushes, coupons - and then send the sugar-laden confections to Operation Gratitude or other military support groups who get the candy to US troops.

Photo courtesy of National Costume Swap Day

Glee-ful Highlights From Episode "Funeral"

Shannon Vestal — Wed, 18 May 2011 09:14:28 PDT

There's just one more week before Glee's season finale and their trip to NYC for Nationals, and things get more dramatic than anyone expected. There's a death that shakes up everyone and changes one character to the core, and the gang busily plans a funeral service despite the prep they still need to do before the big event.

Still, the show must go on, and Jesse St. James is there to pull everyone's thoughts away from funeral arrangements and back into cutthroat competition. His funny lines break up the otherwise somber episode, which I'm ready to discuss, spoilers and all, when you

10 Jobs That Didn’t Exist 10 Years Ago

Kiplinger — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 10:30:29 PDT

We're thrilled to present this smart Kiplinger story here on Savvy!

Thinking about a career change? For the best odds of snagging and hanging onto a job for the long haul, you'll want to avoid professions on the decline in today’s economy (think bookbinders, textile workers and machine-tool operators) and focus on professions whose outlook is rosier (such as health care, financial analysis or social work).

Technology, cultural shifts and changing demographics combine to create new career fields all the time. Here are ten of our favorite new roles for 2011 and beyond, ones that didn't even exist ten years ago:

Social Media/Online-Community Manager

Social media or online-community management is a field made possible and necessary by the gargantuan rise in social networking activity. Sites like Facebook serve 500 million (yep, that's half a billion) users, who share personal and public messages, photos, videos, games and other experiences at a dizzying pace.

Social media strategists focus on building their employers' or clients' brands through the use of social media sites and tools, whereas online-community managers specialize in fostering user discussion and evangelism for the marketers they support. There is overlap between the two fields; one can manage social media tools without dabbling in online community, and vice versa, or the two functions can be combined in one group or person. What does a social media or online-community manager need to succeed? Essentials include great written communication skills, a sense of humor, empathy, a marketing background and lots of experience with social media tools (Facebook, Twitter and Youtube among them).

For more jobs that didn't exist 10 years ago, read on.

How to Cash in on Spring Cleaning

Kiplinger — Mon, 09 May 2011 10:10:28 PDT

We're thrilled to present this smart Kiplinger story here on Savvy!

After about a year and a half of marriage, my husband and I have finally unpacked the boxes of his stuff and our wedding gifts that had piled up in every corner of our apartment. In doing so, we organized the whole place - finding a home within our home for all our "new" things while purging the old.

Through the whole process, we've unearthed a veritable trove of potential income sources littering our former wasteland. If you invest some time in spring cleaning, be sure to take stock of these six possible treasures disguised as trash:

1) Receipts

My level-one hoarding issues have finally paid off… big time. (Kiplinger’s does not encourage or condone hoarding in any way.) Shuffled amid our apartment’s piles and piles of papers, we located receipts we were able to use for Flexible Spending Account claims amounting to nearly $2,000.

You just missed most employers’ March 15 deadline by which you needed to spend 2010 FSA funds. But you may still have time to file your claims: My company, for example, gives participating employees until June 15, as long as the receipts show services were rendered or purchases were made before March 15. If you don’t drain the account in time, you’ll have to kiss that cash goodbye. (See ASK KIM: Make the Most of the New Flex-Account Rules for more about how FSAs work.)

Also keep an eye out for receipts you can use to claim tax deductions, such as for charitable donations or job-hunting expenses, if you itemize. For more write-offs you may have forgotten, check out our slide show: The Most-Overlooked Tax Deductions.

2) Gift Cards

Be sure to sift through your clutter for unused gift cards. Even if you don’t care to use them yourself, you can still gain value from them before they expire. Exchange sites such as Gift Card Granny or Plastic Jungle will buy gift cards for a portion of their value (see KIP TIP: Get Cash Fast for more information).

Read on to find out how to deal with your electronics.

One Fit Job: Personal Trainer

Susi May — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 00:14:26 PDT

During hard economic times, desk-bound fitness fanatics often start considering career switches to more active professions, like becoming a personal trainer. The job is considerably more vigorous than sitting in front of a computer day in and day out. To get the skinny on the daily dos of working as a trainer, I spoke with Equinox personal trainer Lauren Fairbanks, 26. She loves her job, colorful sneakers, and simple snacks.

FitSugar: So how long have you been working as a personal trainer?
Lauren Fairbanks: A little over three years, and it took me about nine months to ramp up my business enough to support myself financially.

FS: What form of training does this job require?
LF: Becoming a personal trainer usually requires getting certified by passing an exam created by a nationally recognized organization such as: National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA), National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM), American Council of Exercise (ACE), among others. I chose to go to a school for personal training called the American Academy of Personal Training (AAPT) in NYC, because I wanted to get the classroom education as well as the hands-on practical experience (rather than just test prep) - so this was a great choice for me. I am certified through AAPT, as well as Equinox's in-house Equinox Fitness Training Institute (EFTI), and carry a bachelor's in Science with a major in Dietetics from Central Michigan University. I also have a certification in TRX, kettlebells, ViPr, and pre/postnatal fitness.

FS: Does your college degree help you now?
LF: Yes, this major absolutely helps me, as nutritional guidance is a huge part of physical fitness.

FS: Were you sporty in college?:
LF: Yes, I ran division I track and cross country all four years of college. I was a middle-distance runner (half mile and mile). I also love playing volleyball and basketball.

Lauren has more to say about her career, so keep on reading.

Get Your Tax Day 2011 Freebies!

Kiplinger — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 12:53:26 PDT

We're thrilled to present this smart Kiplinger story here on Savvy!

Tax day probably isn't on the top of anyone's list of favorite days. But here's a reason you can actually look forward to April 18 (the deadline for filing your tax return this year): FREEBIES.

Several companies will be offering relief to taxpayers in the form of free treats, food, workouts and massages, and drink and dining specials. Here's a rundown of who is offering what:

Bally Total Fitness is letting anyone work out for free April 18. Members can sign up from April 15 through April 21 for a free 30-minute personal training session. And during that same period, non-members can take advantage of a tax day membership special with a two-year Premier National Access membership for $418, a savings of $61 from the standard price.
California Tortilla is giving customers free chips and cheese (queso) with a purchase on April 18 because "you have to pay the big cheese."
Cinnabon will offer two free Classic Cinnabon Bites on April 18 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. as part of its Tax Day Bites promotion.
HydroMassage locations nationwide will provide free massages between April 14 and April 18 to help eliminate the stress of tax filing. Get a coupon for a free message at www.hydromassage.com/taxday.htm and call ahead to schedule a session.

To see if Starbucks is offering tax freebies, read on.