My homegirl put me on to this list of top cities for young professionals, and I had to wonder who they asked. An accompanying story explained that cities with higher percentages of productive young adults tend to have faster-growing economies than ones that don’t. That makes perfect sense, since young people start more companies than older folks and among this generation and tend to spend more, too (we’re just buying first houses, cars, having first kids, and all that pumps money into a city).

I can’t help but think, though, that they’d have a different top five (Raleigh, Austin, D.C., Vegas and Phoenix made the list here) if one of the criteria had been where do young black adults want to live. Austin may be attracting young people overall, but I know a sister in her early 30s who just ran kicking and screaming out of there because of its lack of diversity. Sista couldn’t buy a decent date, and trust me, fellas, she’s hot.

I like Vegas to gamble, but I’m not about to move out to the desert. There’s no way Atlanta and Chicago don’t join D.C. on the list of top cities for young professionals among most of my friends. And that’s more significant than just one clique’s collective opinion, given research that shows that young adults of this generation tend to choose where they want to live first, and then look for a job, as opposed to vice-versa. Cities that don’t rank high on young people’s list can bet they’ll be in for economic trouble in the coming 20 years.

So what’s your to five? Where do you want to live now, and where would you want to “settle down”

Do you think you’ll work for same company your entire career? I know I won’t.

Our generation mostly views jobs as means to a greater end that usually includes branching out on our own. Among my friends, who all have well-paying jobs, one would rather be in politics, another has a cookbook, screenplays and a restaurant up her sleeve and  another just took a new job two months ago and is already yearning for something new, though she’s not sure what that is yet. I talked to someone else this morning who quit a gig working for a major sports franchise on faith and has since started her own PR firm working with pro athletes as clients.

People leaving their jobs to be entrepreneurs is nothing new in America, but that accelerates when the economy goes south and people are worried about their jobs. So what’s your plan b? What do you really  want to do and what’s your plan to get there?

This is my gratuitous post-for-people-who-like-to-read-about-money-and-relationships for the week. Yesterday, a friend (who I actually dated briefly) gave me the idea by calling me out on the expensive date she never got:  Her: you should do one about cost of dating my friend i was staying with talked about thatand how costly it must be in high cost of living cities

me: hayle yeah!

i mean

you can’t really have a decent date that costs less than $100

unless you’re going to $2 movies

  Her: i see i never got the decent date

In all fairness, she liked going to $2 movies at the theater near her crib, which charged that much for adults on Tuesday nights. Sad thing is they just shut that place down.

Still, the conversation did get me thinking: where DO you have to live to have the proverbial “cheap date”? I did some scientific research (meaning I Googled  “cost of dating”), and found this index on the MSN dating site. It confirmed what I already knew: you damn near have to save up for a date if you live in a big city. Take somebody out six times, in New York, for example, and your wallet’s almost $1,200 lighter. Chicago? -$736. Even in the still-recovering Big Easy, a half-dozen dates will set you back more than $600.

Of course there are variables, not the least of which is what kind of date you choose to go on and if you like the person enough to go out again. Six $2 movies won’t kill anybody, for example. And there are options like staying home, downloading a movie and cooking dinner.

So this question’s for all my social butterfly readers: with the cost of everything going up, how are you keeping your dating and mating life active on a budget?

I must be one of the last people on earth who still physically balances an actual checkbook. Even though there’s electronic banking that’s supposed to give you real-time updates on the money you spend, to me there’s something about writing down every purchase you make, ATM withdrawal you take and subtracting it from your balance that makes you more disciplined in tracking your spending. Not only that, but I don’t trust a bank’s math. They love to slip in fees here and there, and somehow, there’s always a transaction or two that conveniently takes a little longer than extra to clear. Writing it down right then and there makes it harder to get anywhere near overdrafting.

But sometimes you forget and you’re not gonna whip out the checkbook at the cash register at Macy’s. So I think I might try this web site called Mint.com that the Associated Press’ Jessica Mintz wrote about over the weekend. Basically you give Mint.com your bank info and it tracks where you spend and withdraw your money just like if you balanced your own checkbook. It’ll also categorize your purchases for you, which would help you figure out if you’re spending too much on eating out or clothes or video games.

But there is a big privacy question. I wanna know what precautions Mint takes to make sure that my bank information is safe from identity-jackers. And since they’re tracking my spending, are they selling that info to companies so they can harass me, or worse, handing it to some Patriot Act-happy federal agent?

I may give Mint a try to see if I like it, but I’m skeptical. I’d be happy to hear about any creative ways you’ve found to track your own spending and the balances in your bank accounts (without posting any personal info., please).

First it was people choosing between paying their credit card bills and their mortgages. Now, this CNNMoney.com story says, credit cards are the only way some people are paying any bills and to make it worse, they don’t even have the cash to make the minimum monthly payments on their cards.

Talk about a slippery slope.

I have to say I’m fortunate enough that I never have to use my one credit card for anything, and I’m on the way to paying off the balance I’m carrying on that. My rule has been to stay disciplined: if I can’t afford it in cash, I simply don’t need it. But again, that just means that I’m fortunate enough to be gainfully employed at a time when many are losing their jobs and as the cost of EVERYTHING, it seems, is going up.

I don’t know what I’d do if the only way I had to make ends meet was whipping out the plastic. Unless you’ve got a card with no limit — in which case you’re likely rich, in which case it doesn’t matter — you’re eventually going to max it out. And what do you do then?  I do have a form of disability insurance that would cover the full amount of my salary should I be unable to work, but that only lasts so long, and of course, not everyone can afford an extra bill every month to carry it.

It begs the question: what would you do if you had no job and all your money ran out? How would you meet the bills and buy groceries?

I just finished my Mother’s Day “shopping” (and by shopping, I mean I went online, found what I wanted, called the store and am picking it up after work). Holidays are always tough times of year for many people trying to manage their money because it’s easy to be torn between doing something nice for or traveling to see loved ones and holding onto some money to save. And the advertising guilting you into parting ways with your money is everywhere: if you don’t buy a diamond in February, you don’t love her; if there’s not a living-room full of stuff under a tree in late December, you’re a HORRIBLE parent.

I haven’t got it figured all out either; I try to get my sons whatever they want for Christmas and if I’m dating someone, I’ll spend a lil bit on Valentine’s Day (though the way marketers pimp you that time of year really, really bothers me.) For Mother’s Day, though, I figured out an approach that you might be able to apply to gifts you have to buy for other holidays. I came up with a list of three choices, and ranked them from most expensive to least, then made my choice based on how much I had to spend and what my aunts told me my mother would like best:

Choice 1: Director’s Circle seats to the Color Purple. It’s playing in Pittsburgh, where my mother lives, next month. This would be the most expensive; the seats are only $80 apiece but I have to drive there to go with her, and gas is high.

Choice 2: A new laptop. She needs one badly, but this is a little bit of a selfish gift since she refuses to get high-speed Internet until she gets a new laptop, and I always need to be online when I go there. This could work out to be more expensive for me in the long-run, given I’d already agreed to sponsoring the high-speed, too, but Best Buy has a decent lappie on sale for about $450 this week.

Choice 3: My aunts’ universal favorite: A bracelet personalized with my mother’s name, my name, and her grandsons’. $70.

I ended up with choice three, on my aunts’ recommendation, though honestly, moms is probably going to end up with all three things before this year’s out.

For all you fellow Mother’s Day (and Christmas and Valentine’s Day) last-minute shoppers, how do you manage to take care of your people while not going broke?

People are apparently really excited about getting those $300 or $600 checks from the government (not realizing, apparently, that they’re just giving you back money you’d already given them in most cases). I’ve gotten at least three instant messages this week about what friends of mine plan to do with their money. Seems like most people plan to spend it: one of my boys has his eyes set on a Playstation 3; someone else is going to use the money to help pay for a new flat panel. One person took the same position I would, if I were getting a check: “Prolly just gonna pay off a bill.”

Boring, but smart.

How about you? When that mythical, magical money from Uncle Sam arrives, what are your plans for it?

I had something else planned for today, but an e question I got from a reader was touching enough that I wanted to address it here:

“I’m a single mom of one child and I’m a student I normally go to school fulltime and work fulltime, but I was laid off of my job in January due to my school schedule, and was put in a big bind. I’m one credit away of finishing up my AA’s at a community college and I plan to transfer to a local University in my city Jacksonville, Fl. I’m also currently facing eviction  and this is something I’ve never been through before, but this semester is ending and I’m desperately trying to find a job I do have faith something will come through, however I’ve had an idea in my heart for the longest and want to act on it as soon as I’m out this mess. I want to start a non-profit organization geared specifically for single parents, (moms and dads) that have a potential to finish but have to drop out due to not having enough funding or even qualifying for funding to pay rent, etc; and stay in school. I”m seeking advice from you on how to get this started I’m very strong wheeled and have no supportive family around me to make this project easy, so I’m totally on my own; yet surviving. If there is any advice you can help me with on starting this organization I’ll greatly appreciate it.” Read more »

Well, not quite but I’m sure that got your attention. I spent some personal time over by the stove this weekend, but I was playing more a G. Garvin role than R. Kelly. See, a few weeks ago I got into it with my mother about how much I ate out instead of cooking. I told her that with my busy schedule I rarely have time to cook; she retorted, “Well, then you need to get a wife.”

I came around to seeing things mom’s way (about the cooking, not the wife). I do have time to hit the market on weekends so I started shopping and preparing meals in advance — seasoning then refrigerating or freezing the food so I can pop it in the oven when I come home from work.

The most important thing is the money I’m saving. In the two weeks since I had that talk with my mother, I spent $188.33 on food at the grocery store. That covers breakfast (when I eat it), lunch (when I don’t have a meeting with anyone, I bring it to work now) and dinner. In the two weeks before that, I spent about $100 on lunch alone, not counting stopping for McDonald’s or Chinese or whatever for dinner, which is what made moms get at me in the first place.

Besides that, I’m nice with mine in the kitchen. That pic at the top of the post: last night’s dinner, kid. Salmon. Risotto. Steamed asparagus. Notice the two plates instead of one…I mean, when a brother can burn, why eat alone?

Do your friends know how much you make? If you’re in your 20s, they probably do, according to this story in the New York Times that I read over the weekend. Young professionals, it says, don’t think it’s taboo to tell their friends what they bring home, and in some cases comparing salaries with your friends can help you figure out if you’re being underpaid. I can understand that: I’d love to know if the person sitting next to me made, say, $30 grand more for doing the same job, but that might not necessarily account for factors like the higher-earning person being more experienced.

I get the point, but I’m not sure I’m ready to tell everybody I know what I make. A few of my closest friends do know what I’m bringing in, which I know means other people know, too, since black folks run their mouths.

Do you tell your friends what you make? Do they know how much you make? Why or why not?