With six months of earning, saving, and spending under your belt, you've got plenty of data to project how 2012 is going to play out. So let's lift the hood on your finances and give everything a good once over.

Financial frenzies come in many flavors, most triggered by big life changes, fraught with emotion and unfamiliar challenges. But if you let those events lead you to make spur-of-the-moment money decisions, you'll often face even bigger problems down the road.

Occasionally, I play a grim game I call "Grab and Run" -- a mental exercise in which I plan which items I would take with me were I to flee an impending disaster. If a fire, flood, killer bee swarm or alien invasion happened right now, how prepared would you be?

Bogus burglaries, fake funerals, self-inflicted air rifle assaults -- people go to great lengths to convince insurers to cut a check to cover their personal and financial losses. But the financial gain from phony pain and suffering is often short-lived.

As the season of giving brushes elbows with the cabal of commercialism, we're presented with an ideal "teachable moment." Here are seven ways to show material boys and girls that saving -- and giving -- can be just as rewarding as getting.

Preparation is the best defense against the demons of disaster. If a fire, flood, hurricane, or earthquake happened right now -- and this week's two out of three ain't bad -- how prepared would you be to deal with the aftermath?

Ten investors survey the rubble from this week's shakeup and see opportunities everywhere. It's time to quiet those nerves and deploy your dollars to take advantage of fire-sale prices. Here's a rundown of investment ideas -- stocks, mutual funds, ETFs, and otherwise.

Money is fraught with emotional baggage. However, all of the external influences that affect our fiscal decisions -- how mom and dad managed family money, the daily headlines warning of pending doom -- are nothing compared to the naturally occurring power struggle taking place in our brains.