By KARA MCGUIRE, Minneapolis Star Tribune
How to get out of debt
Take control of your finances.
That's my No. 1 piece of financial advice in this economy. Examine your spending. Pay down your debt, however slowly. Set realistic financial goals. Take calculated risks.
Come to think of it, I would have recommended the same in 2006 -- when some days I felt everyone but me was spending lavishly and leveraging themselves to the hilt.
Books: Wall Street study reveals shift in culture
It all started with massive downsizing at AT&T. In the mid-1990s, Karen Ho was studying anthropology as a graduate student at Princeton, searching for the focus of her dissertation. Ho, now an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, remembers thinking that 40,000 workers losing their jobs was horrible news.
Redefining the word 'thrift' over the years
After Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush suggested that it was a citizen's patriotic duty to shop as if the nation's economy depended on it. But he wasn't the first to promote this idea.

