Take heart: Paying top dollar gets you a good education, but there are always attractive and far cheaper publicly funded alternatives available.

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Last Saturday, I went to a local farmers market in the morning, had lunch at an excellent locavore vegan restaurant ( Pura Vida, check it out if you are in Vegas) where I used a Yelp coupon over a less attractive Foursquare coupon, and then checked out a gourmet food truck festival in the evening.

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Yet smaller opportunities with a much lower risk and commensurately lower payoff, pebbles if you like, are less attractive in the short term but more valuable in the long term.

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If you want to be a little more risky, I think the emerging markets, based on the valuation standpoint, are more attractive than both Western Europe and the United States, and from a growth standpoint, as well.

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