This economy has been tough on everyone –with seniors on fixed incomes especially hard hit. I spent a few hours doing research for an article today and thought I would share some of what I found with my readers.

So here are some of the best sites I found with tips to budget, save money, reduce expensesmake extra money or  raise some fast cash.

Budgeting

Personal Budgeting is a great site that walks you through the right way to set up a budget. Another great site is Always Frugal. It has tips on on frugal living, suggestions on how to save money on groceries, a budget worksheet and more. Ten tips for staying on a budget from How Stuff Works is also very helpful.

Dave Ramsey has a very different view of budgeting that you may want to look at.

Saving Money  & reducing expenses

The Simple Dollar is a great site with 101 money-saving tips.

DoughRoller has 75 Painless ways to save money

ZenHabits offers up 106 Money-Saving Tips for a Frugal Lifestyle

Frugal Dad gives you over 100 money-saving, expense reducing tips from his readers.

Making Extra Money

The MSN Money Blog offers up 52 ways to make extra cash quickly.

Us News Personal  Finance Blog offers 7 ideas to make extra money in your spare time.

The Wisdom Journal covers 26 ways to make extra money while keeping your job.

Data just out from the National Council on Aging  show that the number of seniors looking for work has swelled more than 120% to over 1.8 million in the last year. Within that group, those who were 75 and older increased by 80 percent.

There are some 29 million seniors – those 55 and older – employed or actively looking for work in the United States, which is about 18 percent of the civilian labor force. And their numbers are expected to grow. Seniors from the early phase of the baby boom are now retiring at the rate of 14,000 per day. That number is expected to increase 12-15% by the end of 2010.

According to a story from the Reuters News services  “This economic crisis has had just a horrible impact on the entire population, but it has had a very severe impact on older people,” said Sandra Nathan, workforce development vice president at the National Council on Aging.

Nathan said her organization was seeing a record number of people seeking assistance with job training and employment. “Before people used to retire and stay retired. Now what we have are people 75 years old and older who are still in the workforce,” Nathan said.

With a national unemployment rate at 9.4 percent, the highest in more than 25 years, the odds are stacked against older Americans seeking work. An array of new or expanded programs, however, are aimed at leveling the playing field.

The U.S. government has allocated stimulus dollars to bolster programs targeted at getting older workers onto private payrolls and off of the shaky U.S. social security system. Even individuals over 75 are being encouraged to get training and job hunting help.

We are seeing this effect here at Official Geezer Guide as more and more seniors are looking for information and ways to supplement their retirement income.  Both traffic to the site and sales of Geezer Guides are up sharply.