I subscribe to Lee LeFever's YouTube channel because I love the Common Craft “In Plain English” series of instructional videos. (You've probably seen them — “Blogs in Plain English,” “Wikis in Plain English,” “Social Media in Plain English,” just to name a few.)

So you can imagine my excitement when I received an e-mail announcing the latest addition to the series — “Saving Money in Plain English.”

“Perfect!” I thought. “A video that combines the brilliant simplicity of Common Craft with the CPA profession's passion for financial literacy. What could be more valuable?”

Turns out you can save your excitement.

The video is almost too simplistic. It offers a rudimentary look at compound interest and annual percentage yield — important concepts, to be sure, but ones you'd expect even beginning savers to understand. You get an A for effort, Common Craft, but if we're going to tackle our financial literacy problem, we're all going to have to dive deeper than that.

Still, the fact that innovative folks like Lee LeFever are thinking about this stuff at all is a step in the right direction. The financial crisis offers the perfect backdrop for discussions — any discussions — of financial literacy.

And that leads me to a recent CBC Newsworld video. It features an interview with TrendHunter's Jeremy Gutsche, who talks about the top money-saving trends in 2009. Granted, you'll need a lot of money at the outset to take part in some of these trends, but you get the idea. Watch the video here.

What kind of money-smart advice are you giving your clients these days?