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I'm constantly annoyed at those financial gurus whose solutions to your money woes are such "easy" solutions as "Each month, put 10% of your gross paycheck in a savings account for each child for college."

Good advice? Of course. But practical? I have three children. The chances of me finding an extra 30% of my gross paycheck to stash away for the three of them are pretty slim. I'm still paying off my own college loans, for goodness sake.

I think that advice like that makes parents pause and think, "Wow, I can't do that. I might as well do nothing." Wrong, wrong, wrong. There's lots of things that you can do without spending a fortune. The biggest mistake that you can make is to do nothing at all.

That said, here are five financial flubs that I see parents make that can be easily corrected:

1. Not having a will. As an attorney, this one just sets me off screaming. I hear it all of the time, "But I don't really have anything?" You probably have a lot more than you think. And you need to protect those assets from your children (yes, you read that right) until they are old enough to properly manage them. More importantly, you need to plan for guardians and trustees - who will watch your children and the money if you're not around?

2. Not having life insurance on you (meaning as a parent). I had no idea how much life insurance cost until I contacted an agent. Term insurance is cheap. Really. And it's an easy and inexpensive way to protect the rest of your assets for your children. Now, here's the kicker: there are bad agents. You know this, I know this. Find a good one. Call around, ask your friends. Find an agent who can help you buy what you need, not more, not less. If you weren't around tomorrow, what would need to happen to ensure that your children's lives went on as normally as possible under the circumstances? Most likely, you'd need to pay off some debt, including the mortgage, and pay for school and living expenses. Life insurance is an easy, affordable and practical way to do this.

3. Buying life insurance on your child. I imagine that there are a host of agents who will seethe and tell me I'm wrong on this one. I'm willing to deal with it. Life insurance is a game, more or less. The company is hoping that you'll pay a lot of money in premiums over time and not die while you're insured (yes, sounds callous, but that's it in a nutshell). As you get older, your chances of dying in any given year increase - that's why your premiums go up. Premiums for babies and children are small because statistically, the chances of death in any given year are slight. That's why buying life insurance for children, even if cheap, is generally the equivalent of throwing money out of the window.

4. Spending "fun" money. Okay, this one is kind of a trick. I happen to think that you should spend fun money, just not all of it. My parents send my kids pennies for holidays - they are all under the age of five. That's right, I said pennies. Not $100 a pop. My kids don't need that kind of money. My girls save their change in a little plastic bank. Every so often, we go down to the bank and put the change through the coin counter - it really adds up. I opened a passbook savings account for each of the children (yes, they still make them) so that they have the satisfaction of getting the "stamp" in their own books every time that they make a deposit. They get to keep a little bit and we spend it at the dollar store, bakery or on some other treat. It's a nice way of teaching the value of money early on and keeping it fun. And remember what I said about it adding up? I think each girl has over $100 in their account from pennies and other change they've earned or received from relatives. You don't have to throw tons of money at your children.

5. Thinking you'll sort out college expenses later. College tuition is increasing dramatically. It's a scary thought to contemplate so many parents take the "easy" way out and don't think about it at all. I plan to devote an entire post to college planning shortly, but for now, I'll say that there are a lot of options out there and it's never too early to start thinking about them even if you're not ready to develop a full blown college savings strategy. You can start by just educating yourself about the options.