In the past week alone, the price for a gallon of regular gasoline in Chicago and the surrounding areas has soared by a startling 18¢, reaching all-time highs of $4.67 within the city and $4.51 in the suburbs. Record-high gas …
Personal Finance
Housing Prices Fall to 2003 Levels, But Demand May Be Building
It’s now officially a lost decade for home prices. With the release of the January data for the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Indexes, prices in a national composite dropped 3.8% from a year before, rolling back to …
A Step Backwards in Spreading Financial Literacy
A new report shows the that financial education movement is losing momentum. Fewer states are requiring coursework. In some, they’ve stopped teaching economics at a time when economics is on the front page almost daily.
5 Mainstream, Cost-Effective Alternatives to Alternative-Energy Cars
Soaring gas prices should be equating to free marketing for energy-efficient plug-in vehicles like the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt. The higher prices are at the pump, after all, the more a driver stands to save by using a car …
Credit Card Companies Offer Huge Bonuses — If You Have Stellar Credit
Credit card issuers continue to raise the stakes as they compete for customers with ultra-high credit scores, dangling sign-up incentives that can be worth more than $1,000. To get these bonuses, cardholders need to meet spending …
Ski Bums at Soup Kitchens: Warm Winter, Hard Times in Mountain Towns
Months of unseasonably warm weather have given the economy quite a boost: Mother Nature has been pointed to as the reason for increased spending on construction, restaurants, and home-improvement supplies, among other goods and …
Where’s the Beef? Expect Less Meat, Higher Prices at Steakhouses
For steak lovers, this is like a knife to the heart: Thanks to soaring meat costs, it’s growing common for steakhouses to raise menu prices at the same time they’re decreasing portion sizes. In some cases, even appetizers are …
Game Changers: 5 New ‘Next Big Things’
Imagine if you could pay for parking with a few taps of your phone, and that you’d never have to pay for more time than you used. Imagine if, after you’re done eating a bag of chips or drinking a carton of juice, you could scarf …
Exploding Ice Cream Scoops and Dangerous Dishwashers: A Year of Consumer Safety Complaints
After an unsure start and a threat to its very existence, the government-run database that documents consumers’ safety issues with everything from dishwashers to tricycles survived its first year and is beginning to mature into …
A Real Recovery? 6 Unconventional Economic Indicators Say Yes
Facebook Weighs In and Blasts ‘Shoulder Surfing’ by Employers
Employers’ practice of demanding access to job applicants’ privacy-protected social-networking pages has sparked concern among privacy advocates and outrage among ordinary Americans who object to tactics like “shoulder surfing”: …
AmEx Gives Prepaid Card Users a Chance to ‘Graduate’ to a Regular Charge Card
Prepaid debit cards catch a lot of flak for being loaded with fees, but that’s not even our biggest beef with them: When people use prepaid debit in lieu of credit cards, they’re not building a credit history, which strands them on the fringes of the financial mainstream. When Suze Orman came out with her prepaid debit card, she said she …