The frost has finally had it for the season, which means it's time to open some windows and doors, and Clear Out The Clutter. The sentiment is pretty widely shared: spring cleaning (whether we do it, or just think that we should do it) is a culturally engrained thing.

As with most culturally engrained events though, there's a whole industry that exists in response, trying like mad to get you to part with some of your hard-earned dollars as part of the festivities. (Think storage tote sales.)

In and among the multitude of links to sell me something when I searched the phrase, "get organized," I found one article, thankfully, that had this very salient piece of advice:

"Hold off on container shopping... getting organized does not start out with a shopping trip."

WebMD, 10 Ways to Cut Clutter in Your Home. Retrieved May 7, 2013.

Even just getting started, though, can sometimes require professional help. Do you sometimes wonder where to start? You're not alone. Enter, the professional organizer.

There's gold in them hills of clutter you're keeping in the basement. (Or garage. Or in the kid's rooms.) Ok, it might not be gold, but there is money to be made from a lot of the unused stuff you have taking up space at home.

There are two different kinds of garage sales though: Those where everyone leaves happy, where your house gets a good cleanout, and where you finish the day with an extra $500 in your pocket. Then there are the other garage sales that are just a lame waste of time for all involved.

Making yours one of the good ones takes work, but the task isn't complex. It boils down to three or four steps: Purge, process, piggyback if you can, and price things correctly.

If you're anything like me, there's a good chance you don't often notice the advertising put in front of you, virtually every time you open a web browser. Whether you're consciously registering the message (just taking it in on a subconscious level) or not, banks spend big money to get their campaigns in front of the people they think will be most receptive to their pitch.

Think you can guess which banks are spending the most to get their message out online? How much do you think they spend to get our attention? Take our quiz to find out more!

How good is your tax knowledge? Do you know which sources of income are actually taxable, and which are not? You might be surprised. Take our test to find out more!

Working from home, I'm generally not awash in the same cultural and marketing nuances that most people are subject to in their day-to-day lives. Maybe that's why the pervasiveness of Tim Horton's roll-up-the-rim contest was and is so striking to me: I left the house the other day, and traveled to another country, and still, there weren't many human interactions lasting longer than ten minutes, that didn't involve mention of those red paper cups, or what people had won (or not) in that contest.

Maybe my family and friends drink more coffee than average, but I don't think so.

This is not a lecture about the cost of take-out coffee and how it adds up over the course of a year. Instead, I was curious: Just what are the odds that you might actually win one of those grand prizes, and how do those odds compare to other lottery or gaming contests?

Tim Hortons has done a pretty remarkable thing here. Not only are they 'the talk of the town,' in virtually every single town with a franchise, but despite the contest's size, people seem to believe in their chances of winning - the contest feels smaller than it actually is.

"People haven't saved enough for retirement."

There's a lot of research talking about Canadians' lack of retirement savings. It looks like people are buying into those messages too.

Unfortunately though, the information appears to be affecting the would-be retiree's psyche, with troubling results: Half believe they'll exhaust their retirement savings in less than 10 years, but a significant number don't know for sure, and a large number of people won't even consider certain income options.

"This all suggests to me that people are trying to avoid thinking about it," says Investor Education Fund (IEF) president, Tom Hamza.

Do you know someone who is downsizing, specifically to finance their retirement? Perhaps they're renting out part of their home, or selling their home altogether to become renters themselves?

Be kind. It's an emotional, and difficult decision they've made - one that probably wasn't arrived upon lightly, and one they were probably driven to by real need.

Tis the season to wonder how much you'll be getting dinged by the tax man.

Most people think of the returns they'll make... A costly mentality, say tax experts who suggest consumers should actually arrange to have less tax deducted at source by their employers - you'll get less of a refund, but you won't be making an interest-free loan to the government either.

For those who do wonder how much they're paying, here are the latest rates from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) for the 2012 and 2013 tax years.