This week you can download “Pick Up the Phone” by Dragonette for free from iTunes. I quite enjoy this song and I’m realizing that I have a new band to like. Yes!

But that won’t be happening yet, as I’m about to head off on a vacation to….. (drumroll)…. Hawaii! I’m very excited, as I’ve been dying to visit for a long time, and it’s finally happening.

For the next week, I won’t be posting. But I’m hoping that when I return and get settled in, I’ll feel bloggy again.

(Sorry to be one of those people who talks about how they don’t post on their blog and life is so busy, blah blah blah. My life isn’t really that busy – I’m just lazy!)

Amazon has a couple nice Sharon Jones deals:

1. Download the song “I Learned the Hard Way” for free!
2. Download the album (also called “I Learned the Hard Way”) for only $6.99.

I’ve been coveting this cardigan for a long time:

$40

and this:

$28

and this hoodie jacket:

Sigh. Must.resist.

If you are engaged or if you know someone who is (which probably all of us do), check this out. You can win a free wedding gown or 5 bridal party dresses from David’s Bridal – every month! Click here to enter the drawing.

Groom sold separately.

(Thanks, Money Saving Mom)

Photo: Creative commons – Flickr user catchesthelight

• Paying bills
• Grocery shopping, which I kind of enjoy
• Setting up my own doctor and dentist appointments
• Doing taxes (it took me hours and hours and hours the first time)
• Donating blood
• Making the decision to turn off the TV at an appropriate time and go to bed (this is a relatively new thing to me)
• Enrolling in benefits at work.

I’m not a benefits specialist, but I have worked in the area for a few years. I worked for a Long-Term Care (LTC) Insurance broker for a couple years, and I also worked in a benefits communication consulting group for a couple years. I’m no expert, but I feel fairly competent in discussing benefits on a casual level.

I’m going to skip talking about LTC insurance for the moment and instead focus on a benefit that many companies offer: a Flexible Spending Account (FSA).

If your company offers an FSA, I implore you to use it. With an FSA, you are allowed to contribute money to a personal account pre-tax (meaning the money is deducted from your pay before your total pay amount is taxed). The personal account is for paying for items and services that are health-related. I don’t want to get into a long explanation of FSAs, but if you really aren’t familiar with them, here’s a good place to start.

The reason I’m bringing this up is because of an article I found about using up what’s left of your FSA by the end of the year. One annoying part about having an FSA is that at the beginning of the calendar year, you decide how much per month you want to set aside for health-related expenses. Sometimes you may not set enough aside and you wind up paying for expenses with post-tax money, and sometimes you overestimate how much you’ll need and you wind up with money in your account at the end of the year. FSA rules do not allow you to rollover leftover money from the previous year, which means that you need to spend what’s left in your account before it goes away.

If you do need to spend FSA money, this article mentions 10 things that are considered FSA-eligible that the average person might not know. I found the article last month and I meant to post it here but didn’t. I mention the date because many FSA plans run January-December, but not all. My company’s enrollment year runs September-August, and that’s not unusual. That is my defense for posting this in January.

If you do not participate in an FSA and your company has it, please do it. You don’t have to contribute a lot. Even if you consider yourself a healthy person, you can still find things to purchase with FSA money – like eyeglasses and contacts, for example. That stuff isn’t cheap! I’ve set aside extra this year so that I can finally buy new glasses – for the first time in 7 years. I think I’m due for a new pair.

Also, for those of us who aren’t good at saving, an FSA allows you to set aside money before you even have a chance to get your grubby hands on the cash, and then it forces you to only spend that money on health-related things – instead of, say, cute shoes and cupcakes.

Being an adult isn’t always fun, but it’s the right choice.

According to the web site, WC:

World Concern has worked in Haiti since 1978 and currently provides hope to 125,000 people. Our work with the poor includes microfinance, agriculture, disaster response and small business development. World Concern’s goal is to transform the lives of those we touch and lead them on a path to self-sustainability.

Wherever you decide to give, may it touch the lives of people in need more than we will ever know.

Obviously, I now have less free time during the day to blog. I will still keep blogging, but it’s probably going to be a little slow for a while – at least during the week – until I get adjusted to this schedule. (I’m soooooooooooo not a morning person.) I really do have things I want to write about, so stay tuned.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Here’s to being more organized!

(Thanks, Lifehacker)

(Thanks, Yugo, for the tip!)

Also, about RSS feeds – up until recently I wasn’t using one. I’m kind of a visual person, and I liked being able to go to individual blogs and see the design the way the blogger meant it to look, but when you read lots of blogs, it’s time consuming to individually visit each site. So I started using Google Reader, and it’s awesome.

If you don’t use an RSS reader, you should really consider it! If you have gmail, just click on the Reader link at the top of your Gmail page, and click on the Add a Subscription button and then add cutecheapstuff.com and your other favorite blogs, and voila! You can now catch up on all the new posts all at once.

(Sorry for the tutorial if you’re already RSS savvy. Thank you for being awesome.)

For a limited time, you can download from Amazon for free “I Don’t Know What It Is” by Rufus Wainwright.

(I’ve never really gotten into Rufus. I know that he’s pretty popular, but his voice just bugs me. But I want to like him.)