Where the stock market will be tomorrow, next week, or even next year is anyone's guess. And considering the enormous size of the global financial markets and all of their moving parts -- including the new ones coming out of Washington -- such prognostication is about as futile as trying to boil the ocean.

"As stock markets slid in March, Judy Brady lay awake at night thinking about her portfolio. 'My retired friends who had all CDs and gold, and they were still making money, and my investments just kept going and going,' she said. 'I thought: I can't afford to lose all this.' So the 70-year-old retiree in Schaumburg, Ill., sold most of her stocks."  -- The Wall Street Journal, May 18, 2009

I've been startled recently by news stories about the massive declines in endowments at elite universities such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Princeton. Sure, many investors lost money over the past year, but the performance at Harvard and Yale "badly trailed" the results at the average college, as The Wall Street Journalso delicately put it. I'm shocked, but not because of these endowments' lackluster performance.

You might think that prudent living is about having less and doing less, but it is actually doing more with what you have.

In uncertain and difficult times, we all look for ways to pinch pennies. Here is a list of 10 areas where you can cut costs to live within your means:

Creating a budget and rigorously implementing it is tough, but it is the best tool to regulate your finances and meet your monetary goals.