Leave it to Moms to give researchers a spoonful of reality. A poll of online mothers conducted by Allen & Gerritsen on the economic challenges facing the US found that 80 percent thought Americans had been encouraged by the culture to overextend themselves and that 58 percent believed the average American is too greedy.

The researchers recognized that moms “teach and enforce family values” – and manage family pocketbooks – and believe that these findings may predict more saving and less spending. That seems confirmed by figures for retail sales for October, released this morning, which showed a 2.8 percent decline from the previous month. That’s the biggest drop the Commerce Department has recorded since measures began in 1993.

Maybe that isn’t so good for Coach and Gucci but it certainly will be for the culture at large. And this way Mom won’t have to ask Junior to support her down the road.

A&G surveyed moms to get a pulse on how the economy will affect their purchasing behavior. The report didn't make distinctions between divorced or married moms but I would bet the single moms have already been on a fiscal diet for some time and are quite good at it.

According to the report, 65 percent of the mothers said they were eliminating purchases that are not absolutely necessary, and 52 percent were cutting back in general. Some 71 percent say they have made more sacrifices this year than last. Only 49 percent say that the economic situation may improve within the next year, but perhaps President Obama can alter that view.

Guys use sex to reduce the increased pressure in their lives. With the Dow dipping, no prob if they were turning to wives and girlfriends. But according to a New York Daily News story, they’re down and getting down with sources of gratification that are potential trouble — with a capital T.

On lunch hours they are visiting massage parlors. They are hiring prostitutes. They are going to strip clubs after work. And they are indulging in Internet porn, sometimes at their office computers… and getting caught. They are becoming addicted to sex to relieve their stress.

In a tight job market, this is not an appealing thing to have in one’s file. Most of the men, by the way, are married.

In the Daily News story, psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert reports a jump in sex-addicted men at his Manhattan practice in the past six months.

"Since early spring, maybe late winter, there's just been an increase, and I believe it might have something to do with the economy," he says. "A lot of the Wall Streeters use sex as a way to cope with stress. Bankers do tend to rely on pretty unhealthy ways of coping with stress — drugs, sex.

"A lot of them will use adult services," Alpert adds. "Some of them come right out and say, 'I'm stressed. This is how I deal with it. It's not the worst thing in the world. I'm not using drugs.' But when it starts to increase, then it's a problem."

How do these testosterone titans practice safe sex? According to Alpert, they consider going to an Asian massage parlor to be permissible. To some, as long as they don’t go all the way, being masturbated doesn’t count as cheating.

Warren Buffett, the world's richest man, admits he made a poor choice. No, not that he didn't invest more in Google than Microsoft, but that he didn't work harder on his relationship with his late wife, Susie, the mother of his three children.

"The biggest mistake I ever made was letting her walk out the door," he says.

As with many separations, Susie was driven to it.

Buffett, 78, who spent hours and hours talking with the author Alice Schroeder for the book The Snowball, regrets that he gave Susie so many reasons to leave, say Rush & Molloy in The Daily News.

One was Katharine Graham, publisher of The Washington Post, and Newsweek. Buffett was 46 when Graham, then a 59-year-old widow, became smitten with him. They spent time at her Martha’s Vineyard home and traveled widely.

What is surprising is that Graham's own marriage was ruined by her husband’s infidelity. And who knew before this book that Katharine Graham was one of the early cougars? (While we at FWW approve of dating someone who's fabulously younger and cute, it is verboten to date a married man no matter what his age.)

Graham, it turns out, was pretty open about the affair with Buffett, and was seen tossing her house key to Buffet at parties. Schroeder writes that Susie "made it plain to several friends that she was furious and humiliated," but reports that she sent Graham a letter granting her permission to date her husband.

"Kay showed the letter to people as though it let her off the hook," Schroeder says.

Naturally the humiliation at home marinated into resentment.

Recent revelations by Heather Mills’s former publicist may make it more difficult for divorcing women everywhere to bring charges of spousal abuse into the courtroom.

The publicist, Michele Elyzabeth, says she launched vicious rumors against Paul McCartney on Mills's orders and now — surprise, surprise — regrets it.

What Elyzabeth also surely regrets is that Mills has stiffed her for her $295,360 payment. Thus her new title “former publicist” and her tendency to call Mills a “pathological liar, a witch, a bitch and gold-digger who married Paul McCartney for his money”.

In The Daily Mail in London, Elyzabeth, who is based in Los Angeles, now says the accusations against McCartney in the divorce battle were all lies. And she also tattled that Mills’s promised contributions to charity have not happened.

Elyzabeth worked for Mills for four years before their relationship unraveled in a screaming phone call.

One admission in the Daily Mail story resonated with me. Mills realized that horrible lies about McCartney — including claiming physical abuse — would eventually wear him down and give her a more favorable settlement.

But hurling the charge of abuse is dangerous. Moreover it is disrespectful to all women who have actually experienced it.

Now that Elyzabeth has revealed it was all a lie, it may make it easier for others to question the validity of claims in future cases.

According to Elyzabeth, Mills claimed of having a video where Sir Paul was abusive and threatened to sell it to a US TV station for a million dollars. But, in fact, the publicist saw it and "all she had was home movie footage, which showed nothing more than normal family life."

Popular socialite Blaine Trump, whose work includes supporting the New York City ballet, will be giving no more charity to her ex-husband Robert Trump.

Although separated for 3 years, she has now hired Robert Cohen, the pitbull lawyer who represented Christie Brinkley in her recent divorce, to get what she deserves.

Trump, the brother of Donald, had been having an affair with a woman he worked with at his real estate office. Despite the affair lasting several years, Blaine still wanted to work it out since the couple had been married for 25 years.

But then Robert moved in with the woman who broke up their marriage. The woman, who left her husband and two kids to be with Robert, decided that she too wants to be in the tony environments of her predecessor. As part of the separation agreement, Blaine kept the Millbrook country house which she considered her sanctuary. As she told Post columnist Cindy Adams, "it is where I consider home."

So what does the homewrecker do? She tells Robert that she wants to move to Millbrook, a town that consists of only several blocks and a post office.

At first, they looked at a house within three minutes of Blaine's treasured home. As friends shared with me, this meant that Blaine couldn't jog her beloved route without worrying about running into her ex and his paramour.

Blaine begged him to move elsewhere. His family told him not to do it either. Blaine had been a devoted loving wife to him who also had married him when he had hardly anything.

It's not as though there are not many other places like Millbrook near New York City.

Football great Michael Strahan has been granted a Giant relief. A New Jersey state appeals court has ruled that he didn't have to pay $18,000 a month in child support of his 3-year-old twin daughters as part of his divorce settlement with his ex-wife, Jean.

But Jean isn't going to be shopping at the Dollar Store any time soon. In their bitter divorce, where nasty accusations flew like fumbling footballs, she caught a $15.3 million settlement, slightly more than what was specified in their prenuptial agreement. Strahan paid around half of that, and they recently settled a dispute over the remaining $6.5 million.

The court sent the child support case back to a lower court in Essex County and ordered it to recalculate the amount. Judge Lorraine Parker, one of the three judges involved in the decision, wrote, “Both parents have a shared obligation to support their children.”

In the decision, Judge Parker said that “as a healthy, educated, 41-year-old, [Jean Strahan] is capable of earning her own income.”

Perhaps Jean Strahan overstepped when she made certain claims for her daughters’ expenses, including $30,000 a year for landscaping, designer handbags, and $22,000 for baby pictures.

The three-judge panel also ruled that Strahan doesn’t need to pay for his wife’s lawyers, nor does he need to get a multi-million dollar disability policy.

Strahan announced yesterday that he has not accepted a request from the Giants to return to the team. Vacationing in Greece, he said he preferred to stay retired. It would have been his 16th season of professional football.

His salary would have been $8 million a year.

Instead he will receive a $2 million salary working for Fox Sports pregame Sunday show covering the National Football League.

Britney Spears is finding, like the rest of us, that divorce can be expensive. Not only emotionally, but financially.

To resolve her custody dispute with ex-husband Kevin Federline, the belly-baring singer had to pay her attorney $466,000 and his lawyers $250,000. Those bills are enough to give anyone a major bellyache.

Federline was granted full custody of their two sons but she does get overnight visits.

Spears and Federline married in 2004 and divorced last July. She is one of a growing number of women who pay "manimony" — Federline gets $20,000 a month from Spears.

But considering her immature antics, irresponsible behavior, and two hospitalizations, most saw Federline as a better alternative to parent.

However, news reports say that Spears is now expected to contest part of the legal bill as being too high.

According to Us Magazine, the largest bill comes from attorney Stacy D. Phillips, who says in court filings that she is owed nearly $407,000 for four months of work. Phillips claims she has written off another $125,000 in fees.

Phillips states in court documents the case was made more complicated because Spears is under the temporary conservatorship of her father, James. He took control of his daughter's personal and financial affairs after a series of high-profile incidents of erratic behavior and two hospitalizations.

Any payments will have to be approved by a Los Angeles court commissioner, and attorneys representing Spears' and her father's interests indicated last week in court they intend to contest Phillips' bill.

Diana Mercer, a California attorney who specializes in mediation, says she is sympathetic to Britney Spears’s lawyer.

Phil Collins isn’t having Another Day in Paradise this week, because he will be paying his third wife, Swiss-born Orianne Cevey, around $47 million in their divorce case, the largest payout ever by a British entertainer.

But at least the 57-year-old singer-songwriter has had a Groovy Kind of Love in the past few years with WCBS-TV anchorwoman Dana Tyler, a divorced woman, 49, who at least is closer to his age.

The two met when Tyler interviewed him in 2005 and they realized there was something In the Air Tonight.

Cevey acknowledged in a later interview that the couple had grown apart in 2005, and were leading Separate Lives. “We really got on well and then we realized our interests were not the same anymore,” said Cevey, 35, who met the singer when she was 22.

But she says, he will always Be in My Heart since she is looking on the “positive side.”

He has agreed that That’s Just the Way It Is, and, frankly, I Don’t Care Anymore.

Collins will keep a home in near Lake Geneva, in Switzerland, near their two young sons, Nicolas, 8, and Matthew, 4, as well as a bachelor pad in New York and a home in England.

But this is shaping up to be a far more amicable divorce than his previous two. Maybe he has learned from experience.

To end his relationship with his second wife, Jill Taverman, after he met Orianne, Collins gave her the heave-ho via fax. Apparently he couldn’t wait One More Night.

(The fax maneuver was worthy of the Artful Dodger.)

However, he still was generous in his divorce settlement, which at the time was more than $34 million for a 14 year relationship. They had a daughter, Lily, together.

Collins also had an earlier marriage to Andrea Bertorelli, which ended in 1980, and produced two children, Simon, 28, and Joelyi, 33.