Editor's Note: This post on money 'magic' is a bit of a departure from our usual fact-based personal finance advice but in the spirit of Halloween, contributor Sierra Black explores folklore and saving money, with a little spookiness thrown in.

It's Halloween, the season of ghosts, ghouls, and witches! To celebrate, I thought I'd share a little money magic with you that really works. It's an old Southern folk magic spell called Money Stay With Me. This version is adapted from Cat Yronwood at Lucky Mojo, a hoodoo shop in California.

Got kids? If so, you're probably hoping to send them to college. And you know it won't be cheap. College costs are rising faster than inflation, and have been for decades.

But that doesn't mean you can't afford a good education for your kids, even if you have a modest salary or other substantial expenses. I'm not going to pretend college isn't expensive: Full scholarships are less common in real life than they are in the movies. You'll probably have to spend a pretty penny for the privilege of attending your son or daughter's college graduation.

The value of a college education
Even with the skyrocketing costs, a college education is still a good deal. Post-college educations tend to garner graduates salaries that are 60 percent higher than those of high school graduates. Over a lifetime, college graduates typically earn $1 million more than those without college educations.

A few weeks ago I wrote about how money really can buy happiness, but how much money is enough?

A big-screen TV isn't a ticket to happiness, but a vacation might be. Giving your money away can boost your well-being, and so can investing it in time with your family.

A new study from Princeton hangs a price tag on that happiness: $75,000 [PDF summary]. That's the annual household income that gives you the most joy for your buck. People with incomes below that magic number report less happiness, overall, than those at or above it.

Since my twin victories of paying off our last credit card and funding a summer of travel, my husband has begun to show interest in personal finance.

It's not that he wasn't supportive of my efforts before — he just preferred to support them from a safe, ignorant distance. A distance from which I handed him an envelope of cash each week to do the grocery shopping, he didn't ask too many questions, and somehow we were climbing out of debt. He was more than happy to adopt any frugal-living strategy I suggested, as long as he didn't have to think about the Big Picture.

That system worked, but I longed for more active participation from him. Not only because I wanted us to share equally in the journey toward financial freedom — I do want that — but also for a selfish reason. I wanted him to participate because he's better at this stuff than I am. He's a whiz at spreadsheets. The man has a Ph.d in Physical Chemistry. You don't get one of those without doing a few math problems.

Simple living is great. Avoiding shopping malls in favor of clothing swaps, cooking meals at home with your spouse, holding a music jam with friends instead of shelling out big bucks for a concert — all these activities not only save you money, but they also connect you more deeply with what you love.

In a sense, they make you more alive. Which is what getting rich is ultimately about: not simply achieving material wealth, but living a rich life.

Pay now, save later
Some things just shouldn't be scrimped on, though. There are expenses that save you money down the line. Some also save you time and improve your quality of life. It might be tempting to cut corners on this stuff, but the truly frugal person knows that laying out cash up front will pay off in savings later.

Contrary to popular belief, money can buy you happiness — if you spend it on the right things. That's the skinny from the New York Times Business section, which last week took a close look at spending habits and happiness. Stephanie Rosenbloom writes that increased spending on leisure, travel, and hobbies tends to make people more satisfied with their lives, but buying Stuff does not.

You don't have to spend a lot to be happy. In fact, simple living often leads to a richer life. The article opens and closes with a profile of Tammy Strobel from Rowdy Kittens, who gave up a solid professional life with all the cars, furniture, and Stuff her boring-but-lucrative job could buy. She's a freelance writer now, living simply with her husband in Portland, Oregon.

Like a lot of people who've shifted away from a consumer lifestyle, Tammy now has more money to spend on what she loves because her needs are small. She's not buying Stuff or keeping up a big apartment. She and her husband swapped their cars (and car payments) for bicycles.

Shopping momentum is the bane of many budgets. You may have a good grip on your money most of the time, but once you've opened up your wallet to make one purchase, it's easy to just keep spending.

People sometimes experience shopping momentum during times of stress or transition: when they're traveling, when there's a crisis at home or at work, during a big life change like a move or welcoming a new baby. You've just laid out a lot of money for an unusual expense, and something in your brain tells you it's time to spend more.

Shopping momentum
Crazy as it sounds, this is a real psychological phenomenon. Research at the Stanford Graduate School of Business showed that people who buy one item are more likely to continue buying others.

Who doesn't dream of quitting their day job? Every day, countless hours are spent in corporate cubicles daydreaming about lives of adventure, creativity, and play — lives spent doing what you love.

Last month, I took the leap. I quit my day job to write full time. Now I'm sitting in Buenos Aires writing while my kids play with their grandparents nearby. And I'm getting paid for it.

To say this is the achievement of a dream would be a vast understatement; I've wanted to be "a writer" since kindergarten. But I didn't just want to be a writer — I worked hard and planned for it.

When I was packing for my trip to Argentina, a friend advised me, “Put everything you're taking on the bed. Now put back half the clothes, and take twice the money.”

Good advice. I tried to follow it and still ended up bringing more clothes than I could possibly need. I didn't bring much money, though, because one of my goals for this trip is to keep saving even while I'm traveling.

Saving for travel is relatively simple: You set up a targeted savings account and put a little money aside each week or each month. Setting a schedule and sticking to it is the key to saving for anything. Travel is no exception.

I made my last credit card payment this week! That final payment ends more than ten years and $20,000 of credit card debt.

Getting out of credit card debt is a familiar story to readers of Get Rich Slowly. You wake up to the fact that your finances are a sinking ship, so you learn to track your spending, and that helps you figure out where your money goes. From there, you scale back your expenses and spending. You look for ways to boost your income. You start a debt snowball. Pretty soon, you're paying off debt like it's going out of style.

And then one day you make the last payment. What next?