We've been talking with Takeaway contributor Beth Kobliner, author of "Get a Financial Life", about how to get ourselves on strong financial footing, with our Do It Yourself Bailout series. This week, Beth helps us with a big dilemma: If we can't afford to do both, should we sock away money every month for retirement or save for our kids' college?

Even if you don’t have kids yet, you’ve heard the scary numbers: the parents of an entering college freshmen this fall can expect to pay $161,000 for a four-year private college education and $121,000 for four years at an out-of-state public college. And the once bargain-basement priced in-state colleges don’t seem like such a steal anymore: in-state freshmen heading to the average four-year public college can expect to pay roughly $66,000 over the next four years.

All that being said, you still need to put your adult-self first and save for your retirement before you save for college. Here’s why:

Think you’ve tried everything to save more money but are still coming up short of your goals? Here are five tips to boost your bottom line, based in the increasingly popular field of behavioral economics.

The government bailout of the big banks on Wall Street is still headline news. But nobody we know got a bailout, and lots of people are trying to figure out how to make it through the recession. Takeaway contributor Beth Kobliner, author of "Get a Financial Life", is helping us construct our own bailout; this week, she teaches us now to trick ourselves into saving money.

Anna Sale here on the day shift.

We had a great conversation this morning about President Obama's charge to secure the world's nuclear material in four years, but we still have more questions. Which countries possess unsecured nuclear material? Where is that material located, which groups want to get their hands on it — and which groups already have their hands on it? We’re hoping to answer some of these questions with Sharon Squassoni, an expert on nuclear proliferation and prevention with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. And we’re on the hunt for an investigator who works to track down stolen nukes for some insight into what kind of detective work goes into finding and securing dangerous nuclear material.