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Karen Bennett | (TNS) Bankrate.com

Logging onto your bank account and seeing a low balance can be stressful, especially if you’re nowhere near your next payday. If you’re struggling to stay afloat — or even if you’re doing OK but want to be more disciplined with money — a spending diet may help you get on the right track.

Currently, around 1 in 3 (34%) Americans say they’re living paycheck to paycheck, according to Bankrate’s Paycheck to Paycheck Survey. If you often find yourself short on money, trimming extra fat from your expenses through a spending diet can help free up funds for savings or other financial goals.

Here we’ll delve into the ways you can put a spending diet to work, along with the potential benefits and drawbacks of following this type of money management strategy.

What is a spending diet?

Similar to watching what you eat to improve your health, a spending diet helps you improve your personal finances in order to live within your means and keep money in the bank.

A spending diet can be defined as taking steps to decrease your expenses. One way to do this is by following a monthly budget that ensures your income exceeds your expenses. A budget can help free up some of your dollars for other wants or needs, or simply to build up savings. read more

By Kimberly Palmer | NerdWallet

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Summertime often coincides with big spending on summer camps, travel and other seasonal fun. That can make fall the ideal time to focus on money management.

There’s still time to make adjustments before the end of the year, says Carla Adams, a certified financial planner and founder of Ametrine Wealth in Lake Orion, Michigan. “As you are getting out of the summer haze, you can make sure that all of your finances are in shape,” she says.

Here are some ways to get finances on track as the days shorten and temperatures cool:

Review summer spending

Before making decisions about future spending, Adams suggests looking at where your money went over the summer. She says tracking your spending is effective because, “you start noticing how much money you’ve spent on things like takeout and clothes.” read more

SeaWorld Orlando has released its entire lineup of haunted houses and scare zones of the upcoming Howl-O-Scream, its after-hours, extra-ticket Halloween scare fest.

The event, which starts Sept. 6, will feature five houses  — four of them are new concepts —  and seven zones alongside five themed bars.

The houses include:

• The Ultimate Gamble, which is set in a casino with ghostly patrons.

• Water’s Edge Wellness Center, in which a SeaWorld news release urges visitors of “Seek the remnants of promised serenity … within its haunted halls, where the living and dead collide.”

•  Atlantis — Journey Below, set in an “eerie underwater kingdom.”

• Farm 51 with rustling cornfields and crash-landed extraterrestrials.

• D3LER1UM666 Laboratories, the lone returning house, which SeaWorld dubs a “fan favorite.”

New scare zones include Paradise Palms (roadside inn), Cannibal Harbor (cannibalistic mariners) and Seeds of the Coven (mystic forest). Returning zones are Blood Light District, Toxic Turmoil, Terrors of the Deep and Carnevil Pier. read more

The future “Cars” attractions at Magic Kingdom will be built on Tom Sawyer Island, and the planned villains land will be in the “beyond Big Thunder” area of the theme park, Walt Disney World announced Monday.

“To make way for this completely new frontier, the Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island will be transformed into vast and rugged terrains for a rally race with some of the world’s most iconic racers,” a Disney news release read Monday in reference to the “Cars”  area, which will be considered part of Frontierland.

Tom Sawyer Island has been operating at Walt Disney World since 1973, about two years after the opening of Magic Kingdom. It was inspired by Mark Twain’s characters and stories and is accessed by log rafts.  It is surrounded by Rivers of America, home of the Liberty Belle riverboat attraction.

Disney: Liberty Belle’s move requires digging, divers, darkness

“We are thrilled to create this original Cars adventure and put our guests in the driver’s seat as we—quite literally—explore a new frontier in Frontierland,” Michael Hundgen, Walt Disney World portfolio executive producer at Walt Disney Imagineering, said in the release. read more

DEAR TRAVEL TROUBLESHOOTER: Enterprise Rental Car in Munich has charged me for damage to the car I rented last year, but I returned the car exactly as I rented it. Enterprise sent me a letter with a claim more than a month after I returned the car. I wasn’t expecting this email and didn’t read it. A month later, Enterprise charged my credit card $515. Not knowing what the charge was for, I called Chase to dispute it. I then reached out to Enterprise, and a representative informed me that there was a claim for my last rental.

Enterprise claims that I took a head restraint and a hat shelf from the car. This is entirely untrue and must be a mistake. The company sent photos of a car with a missing head restraint, but there wasn’t any identifying information, like a license plate or even the date that would prove it was the car we rented. Also, I returned the car at the end of July, and the claim is dated for September, which is more than a month after we returned the car.

How can I defend myself against this false claim? read more