This guest post comes from Kevin at The Red Stapler Chronicles.

Do you consider yourself to be an honest person that would never steal? I am sure that most of us would like to believe that this is indeed the case.

We look at those who steal as evil criminals that need to be punished. However, although we all know that stealing a car is wrong, we tend to justify taking smaller items and do not consider it to be stealing. In fact, sometimes avoiding paying for small things is actually celebrated as being frugal. Indeed, during these tough economic times, the line between being extremely frugal and stealing is slowly being erased.

Below, I have identified six common scenarios in which normal, everyday, taxpaying citizens often resort to a debatable form of stealing. 

 

It’s Friday the 13th, and we have the good luck of bringing you the Friday food freebies and deals.

 

Some of last week’s deals are still valid, including coupons from Quiznos, Denny’s and Buca di Beppo. When you’re not eating, you can get free wi-fi at airports during the holidays or send your kids to free craft workshops.

• Bing: Where do kids eat free?

The sale at Restaurant.com that gives you a $25 gift certificate to a local restaurant for $2 has been extended until Monday, Nov. 16. Use promo code ENTRÉE.

 

Flexible spending accounts are a great boost to the budget since they let you pay for health and dependent care expenses with pre-tax monies. Since this is a "use it or lose it" situation, it's important to make sure you've spent all your funds by the end of the grace period, which ends March 15, 2010.

There certainly are plenty of ways to spend the money. For example, condoms, IUDs and birth control pills are all on the eligible expenses list.

Or you can head in the other direction, since sterilization reversal, ovulation kits, Viagra and Levitra, in vitro fertilization, pregnancy test kits and Lamaze classes are also allowed.  

Verizon Wireless is already charging you up to $350 if you want to terminate your service and $3 to pay your bill in person.

 

Now New York Times technology columnist David Pogue has revealed “another bit of greedy nastiness,” as he put it: Verizon is charging customers $1.99 for any bit of data download, even if it’s done in error -- and customers complain the phones are designed to make such errors inevitable.

 

Here is what one of Pogue’s readers reported:

Virtually every bill I get has a couple of erroneous data charges at $1.99 each -- yet we download no data.

Here’s how it works. They configure the phones to have multiple easily hit keystrokes to launch ‘Get it now’ or ‘Mobile Web’-- usually a single key like an arrow key. Often we have no idea what key we hit, but up pops one of these screens. The instant you call the function, they charge you the data fee. We cancel these unintended requests as fast as we can hit the End key, but it doesn’t matter; they’ve told me that ANY data -- even one kilobyte -- is billed as 1MB. The damage is done.

 

We love stories about people who change careers, even though we have not actually done it. Several years ago we interviewed a number of people who had changed jobs in mid-life, including an insurance agent who become a fine furniture maker, a PR specialist who became a garden designer and a science teacher who finally fulfilled her lifelong desire to be a doctor and graduated from medical school at age 50.

 

Who among us hasn’t dreamed of leaving a job that bores us and doing something totally different, no matter what our age?

 

For some, the recession has thrust that change upon them, whether they were ready for it or not. Several of our journalist colleagues have become teachers. Some are again considering law school. One is studying nursing, courtesy of a state program to retrain downsized professionals.

 

In a win for consumers, banks will have to secure customers' consent before charging exorbitant overdraft fees on ATM and debit card transactions, The Associated Press reports.

In other words: No more $35 charges against customers who accidentally overdraw their accounts for a $4 latte.

The new Federal Reserve rules announced Thursday require banks to notify customers of their overdraft services and give customers the option of being covered. If customers don't "opt in," any debit or ATM transactions that overdraw their accounts will be denied.  

If you're looking for ways to cut your electricity bill, Fred Schebesta at My Next Buck shares 72 ways you can reduce your consumption.

With a list that long, there's bound to be some redundancy. A big chunk is ideas we've all heard before: Turn off lights and appliances you're not using and unplug "vampire" electronic devices. But despite the number of no-brainer solutions, several gems caught our eyes: 

This guest post comes from Frank Curmudgeon at Bad Money Advice.

I like few things more than writing posts that cause consternation. A recent gem was on my confusion over debit cards, and who can forget my assault on the irrational fear of identity theft. So why not combine the two themes?

Consumerism Commentary has a nice post on writing "Check ID" in the little strip on the back of your credit card where you are supposed to sign it. Turns out that this is a relatively common practice and that it is against Visa and MasterCard's rules. I guess I'm not really surprised at either of these facts.

• Bing: How to properly destroy a credit card
  

Why would a person write "Check ID" on a card? I can only assume that it is an attempt to deter a potential thief from using the card if stolen. Does anybody really think this would work? How often do cashiers actually look at the back of credit and debit cards? And then there are all the situations, from the self-checkout line to Amazon.com, that there is no cashier.