Illustration: Michael Klein for Newsweek

For families, fall marks the start of germ-fighting season. Kids catch an average of one to two colds per month during the school year; parents catch fewer but suffer just as much. Mom and Dad miss work to care for their children, then end up missing more work once they catch what their kids brought home. And the cycle begins again. A series of runny noses and fevers may not land anyone in the hospital, but it can take a serious toll on productivity.

What are the best strategies for staying healthy during the cold-weather months? We all know that washing hands regularly and getting the flu shot are good places to start, though there is new information on those recommendations, as well. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now says all kids, ages 6 months to 18 years, should get the flu shot (previously, the recommendation had extended only to kids younger than 5), and doctors agree that you need to scrub and rinse your hands for at least 20 seconds in order to kill germs most effectively.

What about less scientific-sounding advice like wearing a sweater and chugging orange juice? TIP SHEET looked at the new thinking on some old wives’ tales.

• Wear a hat. True. Mom always said to bundle up before leaving the house, and it turns out she was right. If you’re dressed inappropriately, your core body temperature can drop, and that can lower your immune system’s function, says Dr. Ted Epperly, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians. Your body loses the most heat through your head, but wearing gloves or mittens will also help.

October 13, 2008 

Fewer Americans are buying organic. The number of people who regularly consume organic food and drinks dropped from 25 percent to 22 percent in the last year, according to a new report from consultant NPD Group. With the economy in the dumps, who can blame them? If you’re concerned about pesticides and added growth hormones but want to save money on groceries, knowing which conventionally grown items are highest in contaminants will help you prioritize.

• Milk. If you or your kids are big milk drinkers, it pays to buy organic. “There are so many hormones and antibiotics [in many brands of conventional milk],” says environmental activist Deirdre Imus, author of the “Green This!” series. Some studies have found organic milk to have higher levels of healthy fats and antioxidants, such as beta carotene.

A new study says Medicare patients prefer cheap generic drugs only when they’re footing the bill themselves—when government pays, they want brand names. Recent news may shed some light on why: the FDA is investigating reports of faulty generic Wellbutrin, and last month it banned 28 generics made in India. If you’re taking a generic, should you switch to a brand name? Probably not. All generics, prescription or over-the-counter, go through a rigorous approval process. Generics are supposed to be “bioequivalent” to their costlier cousins (their active ingredients are equal in dose, safety, strength and efficacy). Although their inactive ingredients (such as flavors and dyes) differ, it’s very rare for those to cause reactions. Generics made in the United States are manufactured under the same standards as brand names. But the FDA has no authority to oversee those made abroad. (India and China make about a fifth of the generics sold here.) The agency’s only option is to ban those drugs and demand manufacturing upgrades, as it did last month. It also assured consumers there’s “no evidence of harm” from what’s already on the market.

See “Dialogue Among Giants: Carleton Watkins and the Rise of Photography in California.” This exhibition of approximately 150 works by Watkins (who became the official photographer of the California State Geological Survey) captures the social, political, economic and artistic developments in California as it reached statehood in 1850 through the mid-1880s (through March 1, 2009; getty.edu).

Rent “Le Doulos.” Is JeanPaul Belmondo a crook or a police informant? In Jean-Pierre Melville’s tough, tricky, fatalistic 1964 film noir classic, nothing is as it appears to be, and the twists come as fast as a speeding Citroën on a rainy Paris street.

Hear “Only by the Night” by Kings of Leon. These Southerners have executed a fourth album that stays true to their hard-rock edge yet interjects raspy wails and guitar riffs with sweeping mellow tracks you’ll be singing in your head. Try: “Closer.”

Shop Target starting Sunday for the debut of its line of Anya Hindmarch handbags ($19.99 to $49.99) and Sigerson Morrison shoes ($29.99 to $39.99).

Get away for Columbus Day. Check smartertravel.com for a review of last-minute deals, including early-season ski trips, Oktoberfests and spas.

By Amber Haq

 
Gimme Shelter: For now, money-market funds may be as safe as bank accounts
Illustration: Mark Matcho for Newsweek

If you’re scared, you have reason. We’re BATTLING a financial collapse in the teeth of a spreading recession, not only in the United States but in the other industrialized countries, too. The risks fall especially hard on workers in their 50s and 60s who are hoping to retire (or fearing it, if their companies are pushing them out). But anyone trying to defend a paycheck or personal investments will be facing tougher times. Amid the rubble, only a few things are safe.

• Your insured bank account is safe. Some of the customers of struggling Washington Mutual are moving their money to other banks. That’s a waste of time. Deposits up to $100,000 are totally safe—insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Odds are that WaMu won’t fail; it will be sold with government help. In cases of failure, the FDIC arrives on Friday night and moves the accounts to a new bank, which opens for business as usual Monday morning. Over the weekend, you can even use debit cards and ATMs. If there’s no buyer, the FDIC liquidates the bank, mailing out checks for insured deposits immediately. They will always be paid off. By contrast, uninsured deposits are at risk. If you have more than, say, $95,000 in your account, move the excess money to another bank so it, too, can be insured. No sense tempting fate. More than $100,000 can be insured in a single bank if you have different types of accounts—details at www.fdic.gov.
  
• Your money-market mutual fund is safer than it was last week. Money funds serve as checking or savings accounts that pay higher interest rates than you’d get at a bank. Your money is supposed to be safe. For every dollar you put in, you expect to get a dollar back, plus interest, any time you want. These funds aren’t FDIC-insured, but, in their 37 years of life, they’ve never lost a penny for individuals.
  
• That is, until last week. On Wednesday, the Reserve Fund group’s giant Primary Fund—owned by Bruce Bent, the man who invented the business—got stuck with $785 million in worthless commercial paper from the failed investment bank Lehman Brothers. The fund “broke the buck,” meaning that each dollar dropped in value to 97 cents. Redemptions were frozen for seven days, but not before $27.3 billion—more than 40 percent of Primary’s assets—flew out the door, according to Peter Crane, publisher of Money Fund Intelligence. The Primary Fund didn’t return calls.

All the marketing mail you get about retail partners from your credit-card company may be annoying, but take another look. You may be leaving money on the table. Most major credit cards now have their own online shopping portals, stocked with big-name retailers like Target, JCPenney and Zappos. Click from the card company’s site to the merchant of your choice, and you can bump up the amount of money that shows up as cash back on your card. For example, use a Chase cash-back card to shop at Lands’ End through the Chase Rewards Plus program, and you can get as much as $15 in rebates for every $100 you spend. “These programs are a win-win-win,” says Justin McHenry of indexcreditcards.com, who reviewed several portals for NEWSWEEK. Here are four major programs available with no-fee cards:

• Shop Discover (discover card.com/shopcenter). This is the most generous of the programs, according to McHenry. It offers cash rebates as high as 20 percent.
• Chase Rewards Plus (chasecreditcards.com). An online mall with many of the same merchants offered by Discover, though the rebates aren’t always as good. Rebates earned via this portal don’t count against annual cash-back caps that the cards hold.

The sinking stock market could be forecasting the results of the November presidential election— or vice versa. Stocks will behave differently after Nov. 4, depending on who wins. TIP SHEET’S Linda Stern asked Jeffrey Hirsch, editor of the Stock Trader’s Almanac, to read the tea leaves.

STERN: What does the year-to-date performance of the stock market predict about the election’s outcome?
HIRSCH: This is a stock market that was in trouble, even before last week’s sell-offs, and the malaise we’ve been experiencing makes the ouster of the incumbent party more likely. Strong Septembers and Octobers usually lead to an incumbent-party win. You would think despite the closeness of the polls that we still are going to see Democrats retake the White House.

Given all that you know about election-year patterns, how would you expect stocks to perform through the election and for the rest of the year?
Election years are traditionally up years. Incumbent administrations shamelessly attempt to massage the economy so voters will keep them in power. But sometimes overpowering events occur and the market crumbles, as it did last week. The bailing-out was too little, too late, and I think we’re going to continue to have market weakness through October. Once we have the settlement on the election, the market would be more inclined to be happy.

Stock traders can talk about numbers all they want. But it’s emotions that move the market. Anyone who spent last week checking their 401(k), biting their nails, calling their broker and selling everything already knows that.

Now researchers are getting more focused on exactly how investors let their moods move their money. “There is an important relationship between emotional intelligence and investment behavior,” says John Ameriks, of Vanguard Investments. He’s seen investors engage in a host of self-defeating, psychologically driven behaviors.

Sometimes they simply freeze in the face of market turmoil. Or they trade too much. They fall in love with loser stocks they have chosen, and refuse to sell them until they’ve recovered—which may never happen. They follow the pack in and out of tech firms, real estate, oil-company stocks and the Dow, rationalizing that it’s safer to stay with the crowd. They bounce between fear and greed, buying high and selling low. People who are emotional tend to trade more often than people who are emotionally controlled, says Ameriks, and all that trading tends to be unprofitable.

Car sales are flat, dealers are hungry and the price of gasoline is still threatening to revisit the $4-a-gallon levels it saw in July. Does that make it an ideal time to sell the clunker and spring for a fuel-efficient hybrid?

Maybe not. It’s true that as gas prices rise, hybrids will pay for themselves more quickly than they used to. But the combination of getting a low price when you trade or sell your existing car and the extra amount you’ll pay for a hybrid means it’s probably more cost-effective to keep the heap for a while longer. Even if you need a new car, you’d probably be better off buying a regular-engine compact car instead of a hybrid, suggests Jesse Toprak of Edmunds.com. Those regular compacts are almost as fuel-efficient as most hybrids and cost far less. The best candidates for saving money on hybrids are people who drive at least 15,000 miles a year, mostly in city traffic, and “keep a car until the wheels fall off,” says Toprak.

Don’t worry, get busy. These sites will help you figure out how to respond to the Wall Street tumult and how safe your money is now.

• fdic.gov/edie: Use the calculator at this site to see how much of your bank deposits are insured.
• sipc.org: Yes, your brokerage accounts are covered, to a point. The Securities Investor Protection Corp. lays it out.
• naic.org: Find your state’s insurance rules and guarantees via the National Association of Insurance Commissioners Web site.
• finra.org: The brokerage industry’s own cop explains what to do if your broker gets sold or goes belly up.
• treasurydirect.gov: Feel like fleeing to safety? Here’s where you can buy Treasury bills and bonds.

A number of companies are starting to offer consumers free peeks at their credit scores, and not just their credit reports. That’s handy because it’s the score that lenders use to decide how much to charge in interest and whether to approve you for loans or credit cards.

You can get free credit scores at eloan.com, creditkarma.com and credit.com. The hitch is that they offer scores devised by the credit-reporting companies, mostly Trans-Union and Experian, and not the most widely used score developed by Fair Isaac Corp. (FICO). It will still cost you $16 to get a copy of your FICO score at myfico.com.

Why bother? If you’re getting ready to borrow money, your score can make a big difference—particularly in the current tight economy. A high score (760, say) can save you about $250 a month in interest over a middling (650) score on a 30-year fixed rate $300,000 mortgage.

Vacation-home owners are about to lose a sizable tax break. Until now, they could move to their retreat, live in it for two years, then sell and take full advantage of the capital-gains exclusion of up to $500,000 per couple ($250,000 for singles) that applies to primary homes. But Washington closed that loophole in the housing-relief legislation that passed this summer.

Under the new rules, that exclusion will be prorated by the amount of time the owner actually used the home as a primary residence. So if you owned the home for 10 years, but lived in it only the last two, you’d be able to exclude 20 percent of the gain.

See “Leonardo da Vinci: Drawings From the Biblioteca Reale in Turin” at the Birmingham (Ala.) Museum of Art. One of the most significant groups of drawings by the great draftsman, the works appear here for the first time in their entirety outside Italy (through Nov. 9; artsbma.org).

Hear “Rattlin’ Bones” by Australian husband-and-wife duo Shane Nicholson and Kasey Chambers. This raw country album has pitch-perfect harmonies, quick guitar and exuberant banjos, and will get any foot tapping. Song to wind down to: “Wildflower.”

Rent “Ken Russell at the BBC.” Early in his notorious career, Ken Russell reinvented the biopic on TV with these wild and marvelous dramatizations of artists’ lives. This collection features his feverish film on Isadora Duncan and the lyrical “A Song of Summer,” about Frederick Delius.

By Clara Zabludowsky

Framed by mango trees, palm trees and pink and blue haciendas, this oasis town, with its array of galleries, restaurants and uncorrupted natural beauty, offers visitors a breathtaking haven away from Baja’s more touristy locales. In 2006, Todos Santos was named a “Pueblo Magico” or magical village by Mexico’s Secretariat of Tourism. After a brief sojourn there, the town’s undeniable charm will leave no doubt as to why.

SURF or otherwise enjoy the sea at Los Cerritos beach, where the swelling waves are home to world-class surfers. It's also a prime spot for whale watching in the winter months. If you want to try your luck at riding the waves, check out Pescadero Surf Camp. Their certified instructors should have you up on the board in no time.

DINE at Café Santa Fe. Owned by Italian émigré Ezio Colombo and his wife, it is located in front of the main plaza. One of the best Italian restaurants in Mexico, the combination of the unbelievably fresh seafood, the Colombo’s fantastic homegrown organic vegetables and a full bar make for an unforgettable meal. Don’t miss the stir-fried shrimp and octopus with arugula and lime (Calle Centenario #4). For those looking for an authentic Mexican meal, one can do no wrong at Los Adobes. Dining is done al fresco within the wonderful setting of the restaurant’s own botanical garden. The cuisine is top-notch and an excellent opportunity for those unfamiliar with Mexican food to give some of the country’s best dishes a try. The shrimp sautéed in garlic and chile guajillo with a touch of white wine are a must, as is the famous seafood soup, which is made with organic vegetables and the catch of the day. Wash it all down with agua de jamaica, water made from the hibiscus flower, unique to Mexico and incredibly refreshing.