I run across dozens of great spending tips every day. But sometimes they’re relatively minor or not worth an entire blog posting. So from now on, I’ll be tweeting those tips at Twitter.com.

Follow me on Twitter at: spendingsmart

Now that Microsoft is discontinuing its MS Money personal finance software, Quicken is seizing the opportunity by offering discounts. See the Quicken blog for details. In part:

All customers, including those impacted by the discontinuation of MS Money, are eligible for the following discounts:
•   $20 off on Quicken Deluxe, now $39.99
•   $30 off on Quicken Premier, now $59.99
•   $30 off on Home & Business, now $69.99
•   $50 off on Rental Property Manager, now $99.99

But wait! Those discounts sound good, but they still don’t match the prices offered at Amazon.com. For example, Quicken Deluxe 2009 sells for just $29.99 on Amazon. Both offer free shipping. One possible upside of ordering through Quicken is it throws in some bonus software, namely Quicken Willmaker Plus 2009. It adds a second bonus software program with other versions — Educated Investor WealthBuilder or Quicken Legal Business Pro, depending on version.

Trent Hamm at The Simple Dollar, a fantastic personal finance blog, wrote a review of my new book “The 1-2-3 Money Plan: The Three Most Important Steps to Saving and Spending Smart.” I found the review fair and insightful.

Find that review here.

But don’t only read the review. Stick around on The Simple Dollar blog site and start reading. It’s a treasure trove of money wisdom. That’s why it’s among the most popular money blogs on the Internet.

If you like the blog, Hamm has his own book 365 Ways to Live Cheap: Your Everyday Guide to Saving Money as well as his free e-book, “Everything You Ever Really Needed to Know About Personal Finance On Just One Page.”

SmartMoney is on sale for $5 for a year subscription at Amazon.com.

I’m not advocating this as the only or best magazine for learning about money, but it’s a good one, and with this deal, it’s cheap. Just skip over the articles about picking individual stocks, which is a sucker’s game.

Granted, personal finance reading is part of my job, but I subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, SmartMoney, Money, Forbes, Fortune, Consumer Reports, Consumer Reports Money Advisor, BusinessWeek, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, Journal of Financial Planning, and several others. That would be overkill for most people, who could just start with SmartMoney or Money, for example.

It’s also not a bad idea to check out the business pages of your local newspaper, which are likely to contain personal finance and consumer news you can use.

If you want to hear about how to make razor blades last three times longer, along with about a billion other spending tips, listen to the AOL WalletPop podcast available here. It features yours truly talking for a half-hour straight about my best spending tips to help you save money.

For those in the Lehigh Valley, catch the radio program, “Your Financial Choices” with Laurie Siebert, tomorrow morning. I’ll be in studio with Laurie talking about my new book “The 1-2-3 Money Plan: The Three Most Important Steps to Saving and Spending Smart.”

That’s 9 a.m. Saturday on WAEB-AM 790. You can also listen online:

The problem with a lot of special deals is that you don’t know you’re entitled to them. This often happens with credit cards, which offer a variety of fringe benefits that customers rarely use. They include purchase protection, extended warranties, additional rental car insurance and a host of other goodies. AAA and AARP are two other organizations that offer members a wide variety of discounts and special offers that most people don’t take advantage of.

I got an e-mail today about one I didn’t know about. Apparently, Acura, the upscale Honda auto company, and W Hotels have an affiliation. All current Acura owners can receive 50 percent off their second night stay at any W Hotel in the United States and Canada, plus a complimentary upgrade, if possible. They’re calling it an “Advance Package.” In looking over the promotion, I didn’t immediately detect any gotchas.

Mattresses might not only be a safe place to stash your cash, they can also cost a pretty penny.

Sunday’s Spending Smart column highlighted some myths about buying a mattress, including the dubious coil-count specification.

Here’s some more info that didn’t fit in the column:

• Proprietary coils? Mattress makers often tout secret technology in their springs, or coils. Interesting factoid: Virtually all springs in innerspring mattresses — regardless of manufacturer — are made by one company, Leggett & Platt based in Carthage, Mo. However, the company sells many different types of springs, a spokeswoman said.
• Warehouse clubs. Some experts claim warehouse clubs have good deals on mattresses, but it might be awkward to lie on it to try it out.
• Ways to lie. Trying out a mattress is far and away the most important shopping tip. But how should you lie down? On your stomach, side, back? Quick tip: whatever position you first wake up in in the morning is probably your preferred sleeping position, says Mark Owen, vice president of brand management at mattress-maker Simmons, one of the “Big S” mattress companies along with Sealy and Serta.
• Stay offline. Because trying a mattress is so important, it’s not advisable to order one on the Internet or over the phone without personally trying the exact-same model first.
• Mattress longevity. While mattresses can last a decade, you might be more comfortable replacing yours every five to seven years, especially if you’re over age 40. Our bodies get more fussy as they age. If you sleep more comfortably at a hotel or relative’s house, it could mean you need a new mattress.
• Buy after you try. Speaking of hotels, if you’re staying at a hotel and like the mattress, peel back the sheets and note the brand and model number. Many hotels have affiliations with mattress manufacturers and can facilitate a sale.
• Mattress sales are a good deal. Blow-out sales on Presidents Day or Independence Day can feature some deep discounts, but often the low-priced advertised mattresses are usually uncomfortable, allowing a salesperson to steer you toward a pricier model.
• Don’t flip. Most new mattresses sold today have only one sleep surface and do not require flipping.
• Spending is never done. Your spending might not be over when you buy the mattress. New mattresses are thicker, with some more than 14 inches deep compared with just 7 inches. You might need new sheets with deep-pocket corners.
• Box for those springs? I found different information about whether you really need to buy a box spring along with a new mattress. Manufacturers claim the box spring, or foundation, is engineered to work with the mattress. That makes sense. But my question — if these mattresses are so great on their own, why do they need a box spring?
• Beware the delivery. There are some nasty reports of cheaper mattresses being delivered than what a customer ordered. While at the retailer, take a picture of the mattress tag with your cell phone to remind you of the model number that you bought. This prevents them from later trying a reverse switch and delivering something other than what you purchased. And always remember to pay with a credit card so you’re protected from delivery problems or phony additional charges.
• Negotiate. Especially in this economy, put on your haggle hat and negotiate with the salesperson on price.

Do you have any other mattress-shopping advice?

“The financial literacy of high school students has fallen to its lowest level ever.”

That’s a quote from a report released last week by the Jump$tart Coalition’s 2008 survey (available here).

Ouch.

Worse, a common solution - teaching personal finance in high school - doesn’t seem to work, at least when it’s taught in early high school.

“We have long noted with dismay that students who take a high school course in personal finance tend to do no better on our exam than those who do not,” the Jump$tart report says. “This finding has been a great disappointment to consumer educators and to those who support efforts to make courses in personal finance a requirement for high school graduation, and it points to the need for better materials and teacher training.”

Worse than that, test scores over the past decade are actually going down instead of up. In a test with 31 questions, scores among high school students averaged 48.3 percent. See page 232 of the document to see the test question and how students answered them.

The survey showed that:

• Only 16.8 percent of high school seniors and 19.2 percent of college students feel that stocks are likely to have higher average returns than savings bonds, savings accounts and checking accounts over an 18 year period.
• Just 27.3 percent of high school seniors and 39 percent of college students realize that interest on a savings account is taxable if one’s income is high enough.
• Only about 40 percent of high school seniors realize that their own health insurance could stop if their parents become unemployed.

A silver lining is that a separate survey showed college students are becoming at least minimally literate about money.

A couple of quick resources:

-A recent Spending Smart column with three tips on how young people can spend money smarter.

-A recent blog posting about how to teach kids about money. It’s an excerpt from my new book, “The 1-2-3 Money Plan: The Three Most Important Steps to Saving and Spending Smart.”

If you have Sirius-XM satellite radio, tune into Oprah Radio (channel 156) about noon tomorrow, Friday, when I’ll be a guest on the Jean Chatzky show.

We’ll be talking about my new book, “The 1-2-3 Money Plan: The Three Most Important Steps to Saving and Spending Smart.”

Sunday’s Spending Smart newspaper column will include a quiz about ways to save money on gasoline. It will probably include tips you never heard before or dispel common myths you may have heard (those are my favorite columns to write).

The shame of a standard newspaper column is that it is, well, standard. Often I have more good information than fits. On Sunday, find the Spending Smart column here.

As a bonus, here is additional information and a few more quiz questions. Possible answers are true, false and maybe.

• Premium gas is better for my car. False. When your car manufacturer recommends regular gas, you get no performance improvement by using a higher octane. In fact, even some engines for which premium gasoline is recommended can run on regular without problems, although with slightly reduced power, Consumer Reports said. Consult your owner’s manual or dealership service department.
• Filling up in the morning is best. False, for all practical purposes. The idea is that gasoline is denser in the cool morning, so you’ll get more gas than if you filled up in the heat of the day. But gas is usually stored in underground storage tanks, where there’s little temperature variation. Even with dramatic temperature swings, the most you’ll save is literally a few pennies, Consumer Reports found in its experiments.
• Carefully planning errands can save fuel. True. You get better mileage when your vehicle is warmed up. So, combine errands and go to your farthest destination first, allowing more time for the engine to warm. Then on the way home, make stops from farthest to closest. If possible, plan to avoid left turns, which often result in idling.
• Loyalty cards can save money. True. Gas station rewards cards often offer 5 percent cash back. Even regular rewards cards often give you better-than-average cash or points for using the card at gas stations.
• Cruise control is only for setting a constant speed. False. You can improve gas mileage by using cruise control buttons not only to set a constant speed but to gradually accelerate or decelerate.
• Slowing down saves gasoline. True. In one test by Edmunds.com, a Buick Enclave improved gas mileage from 19.7 miles per gallon to 27.2 mpg by driving slower and calmer. That might be obvious, but slowing down might also allow you to avoid speeding tickets and accidents, which saves even more money. Your engine, transmission, brakes and tires will last longer too.

For more information, see such Web sites as drivesmarterchallenge.org, fueleconomy.gov and edmunds.com/fueleconomy. To download the free book, “62 Ways to Save Money at the Gas Pump,” go to http://books.lulu.com/content/98405. I also liked an e-book by Lynn Truong of the blog Wisebread.com. “Wisebread’s Wise Driving Guide” with 108 tips is available for $9.95 at www.wisebread.com/108-best-fuel-economy-tips.