my next xwes is donna rosato. donna, good to have you on the program. >> great to be here. sdhoo this is a subject certainly near and dear to my heart because i'm a big saver. $500 a month seems like a lot to cia, though. some people are saying i'm living paycheck to paycheck. how the heck am i going to cia $500 a month? >> everybody wants to save more, but we came up with more than 10ways that you could save money. really trim the fat from your budget without really feeling a lot of pain. there are a lot of things you can do. >> how do you identify those cost cutting strategies that will actually add up? give me the strategies. >> well, think about all the costs -- the biggest costs in your life. tackle those things. a lot of people use credit cards. credit cards are very costly. rates are going up. fees are going up. one of the things you want to think about is there a way i can negotiate a lower rate on my credit card, and a lot of people can. >> what do you do? st call the credit card company and say i want a lower rate? >> you can do that, but you'll have more leverage

i have donna rosato to ask a question. >> so you hold on to the stocks for life.t have some rules for when you do sell. i wonder if there are any stocks that aappreciate yat thawed decided to sell vein a particular rule that you use to determine when you're ready to sell? >> for example, maybe stock took off and we got a couple right now in that situation. probably next month we'll probably shave off a little bit. probably 30 years ago a broker i knew, he was my broker, he said sometimes it's good to take half off the table, let the rest ride. now do we do that? all the time? no. sometimes you have to take all off the table. and go a different direction. >> ray bahr, it's good to have rules about when you sell stocks. thanks for sharing your experience and advice with our viewers and some of us i think learned something from this as well. let me show you information that fidelity gave us about 401(k)'s and americans and how they changed their investment habits over the last year because of this recession. i want to start with this pile of money. that's what there