Alpha Consumer

For a recent story on life coaching, I interviewed several coaches and clients who benefited from hiring them. Sometimes the coach provided extra confidence to launch a business or learn how to interact better with colleagues. In the case of style coach Rachael Shayne, she counsels people on how to feel good by looking good. (For example, people often wear pants that are too short, which ruins their silhouette. Pants should be about one half-inch off the ground with shoes on.)

While hiring a coach can seem like a wasteful indulgence during a recession, the people I interviewed told me that it was during tough times, or times of transition, that they most valued such targeted mentoring. Still, with the average coach costing around $500 per hour, it doesn't come cheap.

I recently hired a voice coach to help me improve my Alpha Consumer Podcast. While I haven't turned into Cokie Roberts over night, I do think that that my coach's advice will help me improve over time. Have you ever invested in a coach, and was it worth it?

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When President Obama announced his proposal to reduce the amount that taxpayers can deduct for charitable donations (for those earning over $250,000 a year, the deduction rate would go from 33 or 35 percent to 28 percent), charities protested that they would suffer from decreased giving.

But a new survey conducted for Bank of America by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University finds that most donors won't let that kind of change stop them from being generous. Even if they received zero deductions -- and Obama's proposal would only reduce the deduction rate -- 52 percent of wealthy households said their contributions would not change. Only one in ten said that their contributions would "dramatically decrease" if they were able to take no deductions.

As for potential increases to the estate tax, the survey against found that most wealthy people -- 54 percent - -would not change their donations if their estates were not taxed. In other words, it seems that most people do not base much of their giving decisions on their tax liabilities.

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The fact that Annie Leibovitz has been pawning her famous photographs has a lot of people wondering why. How can this esteemed artist, creator of famous portraits of stars from John Lennon to Miley Cyrus, be forced to use her prized possessions as collateral?

Now, After Ellen is reporting part of that answer. The website says it's because she's been forced to pay the so-called "gay tax." While married couples can inherit each other's property upon death without paying taxes, gay couples cannot. So when Leibovitz's partner, Susan Sontag, died in 2004, Leibovitz had to pay hefty taxes on the property that Sontag left to her. In fact, the Human Rights Campaign, a civil rights organization for people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered, says that there are over 1,000 federal provisions that offer benefits and protection that do not apply to same-sex couples. Here are a few:

• Unmarried couples often cannot include each other on employer-based health plans without paying tax penalties.

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On this week's Alpha Consumer Podcast, I interviewed Anneli Rufus and Kristan Lawson, authors of The Scavengers' Manifesto. They explain the joys -- and money-saving benefits -- of used clothes, appliances, and sometimes, even food. Before you walk away with a feeling of disgust over the prospect of someone else's half-eaten lunch, consider this: Rufus and Lawson estimate they spent just $10 on clothes in the last year, yet their closets are full of designer labels. People give away so much valuable stuff, they say, that they find themselves hardly needing to buy anything. (And about that half-eaten lunch -- Rufus and Lawson have rules, and one of them is avoiding gross food.)

You can also pick up this week's Alpha Consumer Tip of the Week on saving money by exchanging your own skills with someone else's.

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