Personal finance from around the web:

• Do you toss all those missives from your credit card company, without even reading them? Now, as changes abound, it could really cost you. [The Wall Street Journal]

• Blippy, a new social networking service from someone who wrote a hilarious book about the turn-of-the-century Internet bubble, helps you tell other people, via Facebook and Twitter, what you're charging on your credit card. But why would you want to do so? People's opinion of the service ranges from "awesome" to "pathetic," according to one blogger; another finds the concept for the service intriguing. [My Bank Tracker, CNET]

• There are just two weeks left until the new year, but it's enough time to take advantage of some smart tax deduction strategies. Also: The five most bizarre tax deductions around the world. [MintLife]

• The new American thriftiness doesn't bode well for retailers. So they're profiling you –to figure out how to make more dough. [It's Your Money]

• Do you have a lot of holiday shopping left? You're not alone. The National Retail Federation's survey concludes that consumers are only halfway done — and when they finish they'll have spent less than in prior years. [Reuters]

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The Money's Two Cents blog from MONEY magazine was relaunched in October 2009 as More Money. Please visit CNNMoney.com/moremoney for the latest posts.

It's rotten enough, of course, that September's unemployment rate, as reported Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, rose to 9.8%; it's looking as if the unemployment rate will reach the 10% mark before the Dow hits its own nice round number of 10,000.

But the numbers are even worse for particular segments of the population. As USA Today reports, the jobless rate for single people is more than double that of married people — 13.5% for the unmarried in August vs. 6.3% for wedded workers. One likely reason for the disparity, a researcher tells the newspaper, is that married men, motivated by a family to support, are more likely to take a new job at lower pay than their single counterparts; also, he says, singles tend to be younger and have less education and experience than those who are married.

Other better-known disparities behind the 9.8% headline figure remain in force.  The unemployment rates for blacks and Hispanics are higher than the national average, at 15.4% and 12.7%, respectively; the rate for whites is a below-average 9.0%, and for Asians it's 7.4%. The rate for adult women is 7.8% and for adult men is 10.3%. For teenagers, it's a whopping 25.9%.

Among high-school graduates with no college education, 10.8% can't find work, while only 4.9% people with a bachelor's degree or higher face that problem.

Of course, that's just the people who are unemployed and looking for work, not those who are working part-time but wish they were working full-time. Nor do those numbers include people who have given up on looking for a job not because they don't want one, but because they've just given up on finding anything. So if you really want to get depressed, go to the EconomPic blog, which graphically (I mean that in the literal sense) shows how the unemployment rate would be even worse than it is were it not for the jump in people who have dropped out of the labor force. You can also see some unpleasant artwork showing how the hours worked per population member is falling off a cliff, and how the all-in underemployment rate is higher than ever.

Catastrophes or triumphs can define generations. If you're part of "The Greatest Generation," a moniker coined by Tom Brokaw, the Great Depression and World War II molded your early life. And those first 30 years of deprivation and struggle probably influence your decisions now.

Today's Millennials (roughly, Americans born after 1980) haven't had a world war to contend with. But as we speak, their worldviews are being shaped by the most severe recession since the 1930s. Where could that lead?

To find out, a professor at UCLA and a researcher from the International Monetary Fund looked at responses to the General Social Survey, a long-running study of Americans' demographics and attitudinal preferences. Since there wasn't a good sample of national recessions to study (the survey started in 1972), the researchers turned to regional recessions, where, say, the farm belt suffered while the rest of America did fine. They published the results of their research last month in a paper entitled "Growing Up in a Recession: Beliefs and the Macroeconomy."

Here's what they learned: If someone grew up in a region experiencing a recession, he or she was much more likely to express "a stronger preference for government redistribution and tended to believe that success in life was much more a matter of luck than hard work," according to the researchers. In contrast, the recession didn't morph the attitudes of respondents older than 25 nearly as strongly.

So what exactly might this recession teach young people? It's probably teaching them that the stock market doesn't create wealth, but destroys it. Other studies have confirmed that people who experience losses early in life stay risk-averse even years later. If the government turns to inflation to pay off debt, it will also teach them that the bond market is no better (since bond prices tend to fall when inflation rises).

And how about that conversation so many laid-off fathers and mothers have had with their children? How do you answer your kid's question of why your job was lost when the reasons have little to do with work ethic and a lot to do with bad decisions made by others? Your kid probably doesn't walk away thinking that hard work leads to wealth, but that randomness and forces beyond his control play the biggest role.

The result? The researchers theorize we'll have a generation that's willing to accept high taxes in return for social welfare and wealth redistribution. What do you think?

If you want to measure the impact of the recession, there’s no better place to look than college financial aid offices. According to a just-released survey by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, some 90% of colleges and universities reported a spike in financial aid applications during the last admissions cycle. To meet the surge in demand, schools provided financial assistance to a larger number of  students, as well as boosted the amount of grants, loans and work-study.

Another bullet dodged. But the scramble to meet the needs of last year’s freshman class raises a couple of urgent questions. Will the schools be able to provide adequate aid for students applying for next year’s freshman class? And over the long run, will colleges remain affordable for middle-class students?

To answer to the first question seems to be: doubtful. Many college officials are already worried about their ability to provide sufficient financial aid.

Meanwhile, the colleges themselves are in worse shape than last year. Endowments have taken a big hit, which has left even elite schools, including Harvard and Yale, facing steep cost-cutting. State universities are also facing steep slashes in government funding. All of which means  it will be even harder for colleges to meet demands for financial assistance next time around.

The current aid crisis only underscores the never-ending problem of soaring tuition costs. As MONEY and many other publications have frequently pointed out, colleges are jacking up tuition costs at twice the rate of inflation; education expenses have far outpaced inflation for more than two decades.

Meanwhile, most families are less prepared than ever to meet those bills. Numerous surveys have shown that few have the cash stashed away to pay the five-figure tuition amounts required by many schools. So expect aid applications  to soar again.

But the recession does offer a sliver of a silver lining—the higher education establishment is finally taking a serious interest in controlling tuition costs. For one thing, research outfits like the Delta Project are taking apart college balance sheets to analyze the true drivers of price inflation—something that, amazingly, has not been done before. Armed with this type of information, college administrations and policymakers may finally make smart choices to rein in spending.

Even more promising, there’s growing competition for higher education dollars from online universities. In a recent Washington Monthly article, “College for $99 a Month,” Kevin Carey, policy director of Education Sector, discusses the booming number of students attending online classes at very low fees—a trend that threatens to disrupt the business model of traditional colleges.

Writes Carey:

“…the day is coming—sooner than people think—when a great deal of money is going to abruptly melt out of the higher education system, just as it has in scores of other industries that traffic in information that is now far cheaper and more easily accessible than it has ever been before. Much of that money will end up in the pockets of students in the form of lower prices, a boon and a necessity in a time when higher education is the key to prosperity.”

Unfortunately, that day won’t be soon enough for families caught in today's recession. And no one, even Carey, believes that high-priced Ivy League schools are facing extinction—there will always be families willing to pay up for brand name educations. Still, as a result of these market forces, hundreds of second- and third-tier colleges are already hard-pressed to justify their steep costs. And for students seeking an affordable education, that’s a promising sign of things to come.

This is sure to make financial advisers cringe, or at least send me a few angry emails. German researchers have found that on the whole, investors who use a financial adviser tend to underperform do-it-yourselfers.

Professors from Goethe University Frankfurt gathered data from a large German brokerage firm that allowed its clients to either run their portfolios themselves or use an independent financial adviser. On the whole, the adviser-led clients did better. But the researchers found that clients with advisers tended to be older and wealthier than average. Once the professors controlled for age and wealth, they found that the clients with advisers did worse.

The professors write, "Advisors actually tend to lower returns, raise portfolio risk, increase the probabilities of losses, and increase trading frequency and portfolio turnover relative to what account owners of given characteristics tend to achieve on their own."

Yes, there could be something unique about the brokerage that they studied. Or maybe German advisers happen to be particularly dense. But I'm more inclined to think that the advisers in the study suffered from the same biases that often make lay people such poor investors. They chased hot stocks and dumped ones that cooled off. Because they thought their job was to outperform the market, they felt a compulsion to do something — anything — when the right move was to stay put. Sprinkle fees and commissions on top — some of which reward advisers for being active traders — and the advisers didn't really stand a chance.

What could the brokerage clients have done to avoid getting screwed over? For one, they could hire planners who charge only fees, not commissions, and earn the same whether they make one trade a year or 100. They could also make sure the adviser espouses a passive, low-turnover strategy that focuses on keeping costs down rather than trying to beat the market.

But the study's also a reminder: You can't just outsource your finances. It's your future at stake, and you'd better look over your adviser's shoulder.

Of course you already use Google to look up movie times, settle trivia disputes or stalk, er, "research" former flames on the Internet. But the world's most famous search engine can also help you save some dough. Here are five money-saving Google features you might not know about:

1. Google 411

I only learned about this one when my uncle — who lives in Pakistan, no less — emailed to tell me about it. Next time you need directory assistance, don't bother calling 411 and getting charged anywhere between $1 and $4 for a phone number (my mobile phone carrier charges $1.79 per call). Instead, dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) and access local business information for free. If you're calling from a cell phone, you can ask the service to send you a text message with more details and a map — you just have to say "text message" or "map it." This video explains it all:

2. Google TipJar

Launched this past spring, TipJar is a site where users can submit and rank money-saving tips. The ranking feature allows the duds to sink to the bottom of the list. Some tips I found useful:

3. Gmail Voice and Video Chat

Sign up for a Gmail account and have voice and video chats for free with anyone in the world. You'll need to download a plugin and have a web cam and a microphone, of course, but the service itself is totally free. This video explains how it works:

4. Google Calendar

Besides keeping track of appointments and birthdays, Google Calendar is perfect for reminding you about upcoming sales or coupon expiration dates. If Pottery Barn is having a sale next month on the dinnerware you've been coveting, just create a new event on the calendar with all the relevant information. You can set up free reminders via email or text letting you know about the details minutes, hours, days or weeks in advance.

5. Google PowerMeter

You could save between 5% and 15% on your monthly electricity bill if you knew exactly where your energy usage came from and could identify inefficiencies. To that end, Google is testing PowerMeter, a secure Google gadget that shows consumers detailed information on their electricity consumption. The company has partnered with utilities in the United States, Canada, Germany and India to test this product. This service isn't available everywhere, but the folks at Google tell me they are working on developing more partnerships and also on an option that will allow anyone to purchase a device, connect it to their fusebox and sign up for PowerMeter even if their utility is not an official partner. You can get news and updates on the service here.

Mortgage rates are below 5% again. But they might not stay that way for long — even though the Federal Reserve reaffirmed its ridiculously low, 0% to 0.25% target for the federal funds rate.

Yes, it's great for borrowers that the Fed kept its target rate so low. But the text you should really care about is this little tidbit from the Federal Open Market Committee's policy statement:

"To provide support to mortgage lending and housing markets and to improve overall conditions in private credit markets, the Federal Reserve will purchase a total of $1.25 trillion of agency mortgage-backed securities and up to $200 billion of agency debt. The Committee will gradually slow the pace of these purchases in order to promote a smooth transition in markets and anticipates that they will be executed by the end of the first quarter of 2010."

You see, for the last nine months or so, the Federal Reserve has stocked up on mortgage-backed securities to relieve that troubled area of the credit market. So in addition to keeping its target rate low, the Fed gave homebuyers an additional boost by buying up $650 billion worth of MBS from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. At its end, the buying program will eat up $1.25 trillion-worth of the distressed securities.

Why should you care? Because as long as the Fed buys gobs of mortgages, mortgage rates stay especially low. What's unclear is how much the Fed's moves are helping. According to one estimate from Calculated Risk, a well-regarded economics blog, it's probably depressing mortgage rates by about 0.35%.

The program was initially set to expire at the end of this year, but now the Fed says it will stretch the program through the first quarter of 2010. Granted, 0.35% might not seem like much help, but the difference between the payments on a $400,000 mortgage with a 5% rate and one with a 5.35% rate is more than a thousand bucks a year. Don't buy a house just because mortgage rates are low — home prices are still falling in many areas — but for those on the fence about refinancing, this should be welcome news.

Speaking of homes, props go to Carla Fried for pointing out the questionable benefits of the first-time home buyers tax credit a few days ago. It seems that many economists, on both the far left and the far right, agree with her. Check out this roundup of opinions over at the Las Vegas Sun. It quotes economists from the libertarian Cato Institute, the liberal Center for American Progress, and the Brookings Institution. They all had the same message: The tax credit is too expensive and doesn't work. Voices in support? Realtors and politicians. Go figure.

It's not shocking that the National Association of Realtors is working hard to have the $8,000 first-time home buyer tax credit extended past its current December 1st expiration. But what is surprising is how little public discussion there is of the downside of this extension.

It's a full-court press from the NAR: The powerful trade association has its lobbyists pushing the case on the Hill, and it's asking its members to get the message out too. In a video featuring member Realtors talking up the virtues of the credit, the NAR includes a message superimposed on a wave of stars evoking the U.S. flag: Congress: Don’t Let America’s Real Estate Recovery Expire.

As if NAR  members don’t have enough incentive to get the credit passed, the trade association is even sponsoring a contest for the best Realtor video imploring Congress to extend the credit. The grand prize is a $500 American Express gift card (wouldn’t Home Depot or Lowe’s been a better tie-in?) and the honor of having the video played at the NAR’s upcoming annual meeting. The NAR was even good enough to make a video explaining to its members how to make the video, complete with suggested material: “Tell us about the single mom who never thought she’d be able to afford her own house.” The NAR stopped short of suggesting a soundtrack of tear-rendering strings

Congress is listening. Six different bills are floating around the House and Senate that would extend the credit into 2010; one bill even calls for increasing the credit to $15,000. And the growing sense in Washington is that the credit could indeed live on into 2010. According to a source quoted in U.S. News & World Report the odds have recently increased from 50-50 to 75-25.

Which is sort of interesting  given that just last week there was this lovely bit of news: the Federal Housing Administration, which has seen its insured mortgages grow from under 5% of the mortgage market just a few years ago to more than  20% today, is taking an ugly financial hit. The default rate on its insured loans is now up to 7.8%.  In this Washington Post article, the head of the FHA insisted that although the FHA’s reserves have been whittled down to its lowest level ever (reserves will be below 2% when the new fiscal year begins October 1, down from 6.4% a few years ago),  there would be no need for a taxpayer rescue of FHA. That’s a bit of a head scratcher, but I will leave that topic for another post.

What I can’t get past right now is why there’s seemingly no discussion of how these two issues might, um, be related. Does it really make any sense to encourage more first-time buyers by extending the tax credit into 2010, when the FHA data sure make a case that there’s a problem brewing with plenty of those first-time buyers?

While the FHA does more than back loans to housing-market newcomers, it undisputedly has become the go-to lender for first-timers. An FHA-insured loan requires a down payment of just 3.5%, compared to the 10%-20% down you need these days to land a conventional mortgage (read: those backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac). FHA-insured mortgages also became a more viable product for many borrowers this year courtesy of another Congressional gift: Loan limits were raised to as much as $729,750 in high-cost areas. But given the deteriorating finances of the FHA, do you really want Congress to rubber-stamp extension of the first-time buyer tax credit?

Employment figures are poor all around, but if there's any class of workers that's held up relatively well, it's the college educated. Unemployment stands at only 4.7% for those with college degrees, versus 9.7% for those holding just a high school diploma, according to the latest figures from the Labor Department.

As much as a college diploma may assist today's youth with their future employment, paying for that education is giving their parents a severe headache. New surveys released by Fidelity Investments, the College Savings Foundation, and Sallie Mae have found that parents understand they're not saving enough, are worried about it, and are even planning to delay their own retirement to pay their kids' tuition.

Saving for college nowadays has been like trying to climb a sand dune: While 63% of parents have started saving for college (versus 60% last year), 43% say that they'll have to delay retirement to pay for it, up from 35% last year, according to Fidelity.

Some other tidbits from the research:

• Families in the Northeast have saved the most on average for college ($15,846) followed closely by the West ($15,589) according to Sallie Mae and Gallup. Southerners have saved $13,722, and Midwesterners come in last $9,693.
• 44% of parents are "not very confident" that they'll reach their college savings goals, up from 31% in 2008, says the College Savings Foundation. Only 12% say they are "very confident."
• Despite that, a full one-third of parents say they're saving less this year for college than last year. Forty-one percent haven't saved anything at all.

Make no mistake, college is expensive. This year's numbers aren't out, but college costs have risen 23% since 2000, after inflation. It's great that many parents are willing to delay retirement a few years. But if it comes down to a decision between retirement savings and college savings, don't feel guilty for making your kid finance his education or work his way through school. If you're able to save more down the road, you can always help him pay off his loans, but no bank is going to lend you money to supplement your retirement savings if you come up short.

If you're able to save for both and are just getting started, sticking your money in a 529 is your best option. 529s let you withdraw your earnings tax free when it's time to pay for school.

You'll find that the options within plans are similar to mutual funds. But make sure to choose conservative funds with expenses less than 0.5%. The older your child is, the more bond and cash-heavy your portfolio should be. Unlike saving for retirement, where your time horizon can be 40 years, you'll only have a few years to make up for losses if stocks take a big dive.

You might be tempted to stay within your own state's plan because of the tax break it gives you, but most of the time, those breaks are insignificant if you're tied to options with high fund fees. Instead, just pick the best plan you can find. Savingforcollege.com lets you compare fees across plans. Some of our favorites include Utah's Educational Savings Plan and Ohio's CollegeAdvantage Savings Plan.

Will success spoil Mint.com? That's the $170 million question following Monday's news that tax software giant Intuit is spending that whopping sum to buy the startup, which operates a popular, free online service for tracking and managing people's financial lives. (MONEY gave Mint top honors last year when we reviewed four online money trackers, including Intuit's.)

Even though the Internet is all about change, users of both Mint.com and Intuit's free QuickenOnline.com are suddenly anxious about changes that might result from the deal (which is expected to close by year's end). Maybe it's because personal finances are so…you know, personal.

Felix Salmon at Reuters is worried that the two-year-old Mint will lose some of its tang once it's part of Intuit's corporate beast. Jordan Golson at GigaOm predicts that Intuit will designate Mint the company's free, entry-level consumer offering and start upgrading — and charging for — Quicken Online. And a friend even emailed me with the question, "Should I be worried and/or delete my account?"

Maybe this will calm you down:

You'll still get a free ride.

Both Intuit and Mint seem committed to offering a free management tool, and charging money for it would only lose customers they could otherwise engage. "They're looking to get more people involved," says Ron Shevlin, a senior analyst at Aite Group. "When you do that, there's an opportunity to develop the relationship and expand." But Mint users will become "prospects for cross-selling other Intuit products." Translation: Expect a lot more marketing aimed at Mint users.

Mint founder and CEO Aaron Patzer says, "The product you see now from Mint will always be free." Mint may, however, charge a fee for optional new features, such as credit-score access and expense reporting tools.

Neither site is going away, but expect some integration.

"Mint will serve as the primary online service — the way we get new customers to Intuit. And Quicken Online will become something that helps connect our 11 million desktop customers to mobile and web," says Intuit spokesman Scott Gulbransen.

Patzer, who will head Intuit's personal finance group, is more frank: "There's no point in two engineering teams developing two different products. We'll try to keep it looking a bit like Quicken, but the data, history and categorizations of Quicken Online users will be imported into Mint." So Quicken Online users may experience more changes than Mint users, but they're in good hands. Mint is routinely praised for its strong interface and user experience.

Mint users will probably soon have the ability to enter transactions manually, a feature Quicken Online currently offers. Quicken Online users will gain access to Mint features, as well. To some users who have expressed frustration with Quicken products, Patzer says candidly, "Instead of Mint becoming bad like Quicken, expect Quicken to become good like Mint."

Intuit should make Mint more stable and robust.

Intuit's wealth and resources will allow Mint to add features it couldn't develop in the past. For example, Mint currently sends readers reminders when credit card bills are due. Patzer wants to incorporate Intuit's bill-pay technology into Mint so that users will also be able to easily make payments on those cards. There are also plans to offer tools that will make tax prep easier, like importability of transactions tagged with labels such as "business expense" directly into TurboTax.  Finally, adds Patzer, "Intuit has the resources to go global." So maybe Intuit will be exporting Mint as well.

When the Obama Administration announced the Making Home Affordable program in February, it estimated that the refinancing part of the program, known as HARP, could help as many as four million to five million homeowners with little or no equity (and even up to 5% underwater) refinance into less costly loans. So far it hasn’t exactly played out to expectations. Through July just 60,000 or so homeowners have landed a refi through HARP.

That makes it unlikely that HARP will come anywhere close to delivering on the administration’s goal by the time the program’s current authorization runs out in June 2010. (Its sister program, Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, is authorized through 2012.)

While Treasury has the power to extend HARP past next year's deadline — which won't really help unless Treasury can also arm-twist lenders into doing these deals — a handful of other crisis-induced rule changes will need  Congressional action to be extended beyond this year.

• $8,000 First-Time Home Buyer Tax Credit. You must close on the new home by December 1, 2009 to qualify for the maximum $8,000 credit. There are indeed bills floating around to extend the credit into 2010 — and even raise it to $15,000 for all home buyers — but so far no action.

• Required Minimum Distribution Waiver. Retirees caught a break in 2009:  The rule that mandates taking an annual RMD starting by April 1 of the year after you turn 70 ½ was waived for 2009. (Is it just me or is that mouthful all the proof you need that our tax code is insanely obtuse?) This bone was offered so retirees who didn’t need the income would not be forced  to liquidate battered 401(k)s and IRAs if they didn’t want to. (What really would have helped is if Congress had made the law effective for 2008, which is when retirees got totally whacked, as their 2008 RMD was based on their account value on December 31 2007 — before the bear market started. But I digress.) The current waiver expires at the end of ’09. A proposed house bill would extend the waiver through 2012; a Senate bill would keep the waiver through 2010.

• Double-Rebalancing of 529 Allocations. Until the financial crisis and bear market took hold in 2008 no one really noticed an odd IRS quirk that says owners of 529 College Savings Plans can only rebalance their portfolios once a year. Then when all financial hell broke loose, and families that had rebalanced early in the year weren't allowed to do some shifting around later in the year. So for 2009 the rule was stretched to allow two switches.  Yep, there’s a bill floating around that will extend the two-times-a-year rule past 2009.

But the odds that any of these bills will get much attention before year-end seems dicey. Health care debate/legislation seems to be sucking all the oxygen out of Congress. As Jackie Williams of the New America Foundation told the trade magazine Investment News, "Everybody is so focused on health care legislation that everything else has to wait."

It's Friday — time to catch up on some of the week's most interesting, and sometimes puzzling, news in the world of personal finance.

1. Thought you had health insurance? Hah! The Washington Post ran a great story Monday about how insurance companies have canceled the health insurance policies of thousands of people after those policyholders have filed for claims related to expensive medical problems. The cancellations, known in the trade as "rescissions," are ostensibly justified by policyholders' failure to disclose previously existing medical conditions — think of someone who survives a heart attack who doesn't admit to cardiac problems when applying for health coverage the following year. The problem, according to the Post, is that rescission has become not only a tool for fighting fraud, but an excuse for insurance companies to weasel out of paying claims. One such case: After a woman filed a claim for emergency gallbladder surgery, her attorney alleges, her health insurer canceled coverage for her and her husband because he had failed to mention his high cholesterol.

2. No rest for the retired: Forty-four percent of retirees surveyed by Charles Schwab admit to supporting at least one individual financially. Of these givers, 53% are giving dough to children, 37% to grandchildren, and 12% to their own parents.

3. Bizarre Madoff story of the week: The Los Angeles Times reports that after a California couple, ripped off by Bernard Madoff, surrendered their Malibu beachfront home to their bank to help satisfy debts, an executive at the bank started spending long weekends at the home and used it to host parties. Furthermore, a local real estate agent alleges that the bank declined to permit the $12 million home to be shown to interested buyers.

4. Unemployment: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: The good news: The Federal Reserve said Wednesday that the economy is showing signs of stabilization. For the bad and the ugly news in graphic detail — make that detailed graphics — go to the always-entertaining EconomPic blog for a visual representation of how tough the job-hunting market is nowadays.

5. Bullish on America: The New York-based Westrock Group, which operates a brokerage and a wealth management unit, has been acquired by the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe of South Dakota, according to the trade journal Financial Planning. The deal, says the magazine, creates the first financial services firm to be wholly owned by a Native American tribe. Is this an alternative to a casino, or the same thing under a different name? You be the judge.

A personal finance course at Wellesley College in Massachusetts is one of America's 10 Hottest College Classes, proclaims The Daily Beast. An impressive feat, given that other courses on the list include a Yale lab that takes students on a trip to an Amazon rain forest and the University of Michigan's History of College Athletics, which brings in storied Big 10 football coaches to address the class.

One former student of the personal finance course told The Daily Beast: "Students take out loans and credit cards all the time without even thinking about it. [The class] should be renamed ‘life skills’ and be mandatory."

Taught as an economics course by Ann Witte, the class focuses on everything from insurance to taxes to investing. And that's a very good thing, considering that high school seniors who took the Jump$tart Coalition's financial literacy survey in 2008 scored worse than their peers did in 2006, answering only 48.3% of the survey's questions correctly. In fact, only 48% of those surveyed knew that a credit card holder who only pays the minimum amount on monthly card balances will pay more in annual finance charges than a card holder who pays the balance in full. And just 17% correctly answered that stocks are likely to yield higher returns than  savings bonds, savings accounts and checking accounts over the next 18 years.

But your kid doesn't have to go to Wellesley to learn the basics of personal finance. PBS is airing "Your Life, Your Money" tonight, Wednesday, September 9, at 9 p.m on most PBS stations (check your local listings for details). The one-hour special for young adults is hosted by Scrubs star Donald Faison and will feature insights from special guests, such as hip hop icon Russell Simmons. The show "isn't a dry recitation of financial factoids or an abrasive lesson of economic terrors to avoid," says producer Tom Simon. "It presents young adults in realistic situations that most people can relate to in a serious, but upbeat, manner." The program will address banking and credit, investing, budgeting, insurance and self-employment through the stories of six young people, including a college senior with $30,000 in credit card debt, a freelance graphic designer and a woman working at her family's Mexican restaurant.

Faison talks about his own money mistakes in the special too. "I spent a lot of money before I made it, and that was a big mistake," he told IGN.com "When I make a purchase now, I'm always like, 'I know this is a little bit more than I want to spend, and am I going to regret this later?'"

For more information on the show, visit PBS.org.

Okay, so that headline packs all the shock value of  "Sun Rises in the East." But given the widespread annoyance so many readers have with their credit card issuers (check out comments to blog posts here and here) I thought it might be, well, satisfying to know card wrath is a bit of a national epidemic.

J.D. Power reports that overall customer satisfaction with credit card issuers hit a three-year low, clocking in at 703 (on a scale of 1000) in 2009. That was slightly lower than the already anemic 710 score from 2008, and is the lowest showing since the firm started looking at credit cards in 2007.

On the sub-topic of fees and rates, the 2009 satisfaction score slumped from a solid D (640 in 2008) to a D-minus (603 in 2009) as the percentage of respondents who were hit with an interest rate increase nearly doubled over the past year, to close to 20%.  Customers reporting complaints/problems also shot up; from 10% in 2008 to 18% this year.

No surprise then, that J.D. Power says credit card issuers own the dubious distinction of having the lowest satisfaction score across the financial services industry, trailing investment services, insurance and banking.

Those of you who’ve reached your annoyance limit with a current card issuer might want to check out the two most satisfying card firms in this year’s survey: American Express (762) and and Discover (751).

Or you can hold on in the hope that the impending new consumer-friendly regs scheduled to go into effect in February 2010 will help matters. I’m not holding my breath. Industry analyst firm R.K. Hammer estimates that credit card issuers will pocket about $20 billion in credit card fees this year. Something tells me they will come up with new and unsatisfying ways to keep that gravy train running in 2010 and beyond.

If you want evidence that our economy may be on the way to recovery, forget about car sales and new home starts and all that stuff — and instead look at men's underpants. If they don't have holes in them, good times may be coming soon.

That's the premise of an interesting theory proffered — at least half seriously — in a recent article in the Washington Post by writer Ylan Q. Mui. "Here's the theory, briefly," she writes. "Sales of men's underwear typically are stable because they rank as a necessity. But during times of severe financial strain, men will try to stretch the time between buying new pairs, causing underwear sales to dip."

What do our shopping habits tell us about the economy?

There's an appealing logic to the underpants theory, but the track record of these sorts of whimsical economic indicators is mixed, at best. Remember the Lipstick Index? This was the notion, set forth by the chairman of Estee Lauder back in the dogs days of 2001, that lipstick sales would actually go up in a recession, as women who couldn't afford Manolo Blahniks tried to pamper themselves with cheaper indulgences.

Unfortunately for Estee Lauder, that hasn't happened in this recession, with sales of lipstick down 8 percent over the past year, as Mui points out. Indeed, as The Economist noted earlier this year, a look at what data we have on the subject suggests that lipstick sales bounce up and down seemingly independently of what's going on in the economy.

Then there is the Hot Waitress Economic Index, recently put forth by New York magazine writer Hugo Lindgren. As he explained the notion: "The hotter the waitresses, the weaker the economy. In flush times, there is a robust market for hotness. Selling everything from condos to premium vodka is enhanced by proximity to pretty young people (of both sexes) …. That leaves more-punishing work, like waiting tables, to those with less striking genetic gifts. But not anymore. A waitress at one Lower East Side club described to me what happened there: 'They slowly let the boys go, then the less attractive girls, and then these hot girls appeared out of nowhere. All in the hope of bringing in more business.'"

So how's that indicator at the moment? Lindgren noted that he'd recently been served by a waitress "who looked like Winona Ryder in her Heathers heyday." That's bad, bad news.

On the other hand, I'm thinking about buying some new underwear. So maybe there's some hope for this economy yet.

Money market funds have long been a refuge for investors seeking safety and liquidity. But ever since the market meltdown, money funds have been under siege. Last September Reserve Primary Fund, which had invested in suddenly worthless Lehman Brothers commercial paper, "broke the buck"—that is,  allowed its net asset value to fall below a $1 per share. That led to panic, as frightened investors began pulling their savings out of these funds. In the end, the federal government stepped in to offer a temporary guarantee for the $3.6 trillion in money fund assets.

The panic subsided—and the federal guarantee expires in two weeks—but the regulatory scrutiny is still underway. The Security and Exchange Commission has proposed money fund rule changes that include higher credit quality and shorter maturities. But the most controversial notion, which is not in the proposed rules but was offered up for public comment, is a so-called  floating NAV, which would mean that a fund's net asset value per share would be free to move up and down, instead of being pegged at $1 per share. After all, that $1 share value is really accounting fiction, since the value of the investments fluctuates slightly from day to day. And, as some investing pundits point out, shouldn't accounting better reflect reality?

The Obama administration, meanwhile, will be unveiling its financial reform proposals on Sept 15. In a previous report, the administration had also considered a floating rate NAV for money funds.

Nervous mutual fund firms are denouncing the idea. Vanguard declared in its comment letter to the SEC that a "floating NAV would eviscerate a successful and important product for investors."  And Fidelity said that such a change would lead to "significant shareholder outflows," which would destabilize the money market fund industry. (You can read the comment letters here.)

But other investment firms fund groups see an opportunity in the reforms.  In its comment letter, Deutsche Bank, while backing a stable NAV, also supported the notion of a floating NAV. The bank has even filed a prospectus for such a fund, the DWS Variable NAV Money Fund, which would not stick to a $1 per share net asset value. The fund would require a $1 million minimum investment.

Will a floating NAV money fund satisfy investors? Perhaps not so much. Consider the record of ultra-short bond funds, which were designed to be super safe, just one step up from money market funds. Many were even marketed as cash equivalents that would give you a higher yield without much extra risk. But some funds began buying riskier investments to produce those higher yields. You can probably guess what happened next—triple AAA-rated subprime mortgages, any one?

The results were painful. As subprime mortgages tanked, the typical ultra-short bond fund fell nearly 8% in 2008, which was a far bigger loss than the pennies per share that investors gave up in Reserve Primary fund. And many bond fund investors were hit much harder. The Schwab YieldPlus fund, for one, lost 35% in 2008. Other troubled funds were liquidated.

Perhaps floating NAV money market funds would not deliver those kinds of losses. And perhaps investors, if they knew what to expect,  wouldn't  panic if their accounts dipped by a penny or two. But money funds would have to deliver higher yields than bank accounts to compensate investors for that volatility. Right now, however, the typical taxable money fund yields just 0.06% vs. 1.2% for a bank high yield money market account. That's a big gap to make up without taking on higher risk.
What do you think? Would you invest in a floating NAV money market fund? Let us know in the comments below.

In the Science Fiction world of Isaac Asimov, robots are required to abide by three simple laws:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

The FTC has now added a fourth: A robot must not call you up during dinner and pester you with dubious commercial come-ons. Yep, as of this Tuesday, the FTC has outlawed robocalls.

Well, some of them, anyway. This new law of robotics comes trailing a lot of fine print. Politicians and survey-takers can still robocall you, as can banks, debt collectors, and charities. For all the gory details — 42 packed pages of them — see here.

If you're not already on the national Do-Not-Call registry, or want to make sure that you are, make a quick trip to donotcall.gov. For more info, take a look here.

The open question is whether or not the new regulations will shut up one chatty robocaller named Rachel from Cardholder Services. I'm one of the few Americans, it seems, who hasn't received a call (or two dozen) from this persistent but mysterious robo-lady, who sometimes goes by the name Heather or Michelle, and who claims to be able to lower your interest rates. But she makes a lot of calls, and she's not making a lot of friends: Do a quick Google search on the phrase "Rachel from Cardholder Services" and you'll find dozens of web pages complaining about her calls.

Now, banks and credit card companies, which are outside the FTC's jurisdiction, are exempt from the robocall ban. But no one seems to have been able to track down just who "Rachel" is or (more importantly) who she works for. James Shiffer at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune has been looking for her for months. Twice he's tracked the calls back to Florida financial companies — or perhaps one company working under multiple names — but the people there have denied having anything to do with her. (See here and here for his coverage.)

Whatever is going on here, it's shady. If Rachel (or Heather or Michelle, or any other sleazy robotic or human telemarketer) gives you a call, report it by visiting donotcall.gov or by calling 1-888-382-1222.

The pace of job losses has been slowing since the spring, a sign that a rebound for the job market may be underway.  We’ll get another read on the state of the jobs market Friday when the Department of Labor releases its latest unemployment report.  The report is expected to show that U.S. employers cut about 230,000 jobs in August, the smallest decline in a year, according to a Bloomberg News survey.

But even as job losses abate, the prospects for people who are still employed and hoping to get a decent raise remains dim. According to a report released by the Conference Board on Tuesday, the median pay raise for salaried workers this year is 2.5%, down from the original 3.5% employers forecast before the recession hit and 2.7% in 2008. In 2010, budgets for salary increases are expected to increase by just 3%, the smallest projected rise in 25 years. The Conference Board expects inflation to increase by 2% in 2010, leaving workers with an effective 1% bump in pay next year.

It’s no wonder that two-thirds of American workers say they are unhappy with their compensation, blaming pay cuts, lack of bonuses or stagnant salaries, according to the latest Adecco USA Workplace Insights survey coming out Wednesday.

You probably feel like griping too, but this isn’t the time to be a sour puss at work. With such small budgets for pay raises, companies are scrambling to figure out how to divvy up dwindling compensation dollars. Your boss is likely using her scarce salary resources to prevent high performing employees from becoming disengaged or leaving as soon as a better opportunity opens up.  How you can you be a standout performer when times are still tough? Here’s an article I did earlier this  year on that subject and one from the Wall Street Journal on how to get a raise at work during difficult times.

Have you gotten a raise this year? Do you expect to get one next year? Does the prospect getting no raise or a small one affect your performance at work?

- Donna Rosato

Apparently Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has more to worry about than interest rates and financial bailouts: he and his wife were recently the victims of identity theft after Anna Bernanke's purse, containing credit cards and a family checkbook, was snatched from the back of a chair in a D.C. Starbucks.

Though it's not every day a Fed chief finds himself the victim of such a low and petty financial crime, the case was fairly typical in one regard: the information stolen was stolen not in cyberspace but in the real world. According to a recent survey by the Identity Theft Resource Center, only about 9 percent of victims have their information snatched through phishing scams and other internet skullduggery; another 13 percent lose their info through computer database breaches.

The rest are victimized in relatively old-fashioned ways: by people stealing wallets or purses or burglarizing homes or cars; rifling through their mail or garbage; poking through their desk at work. Chillingly, some 40 percent of the time the info isn't stolen by some nefarious stranger but by someone close to the victim — a relative, neighbor, co-worker, roommate or "friend." (You can see the group's press release, or download a copy of the whole report, here.)

Does that mean you should stop worrying so much about hackers, and worry more about your skeezy uncle? Well, no. While you definitely should try to protect your info from the prying eyes of disreputable relatives and perpetually broke roommates, hackers are nothing to sneeze at. Indeed, they're getting more sophisticated — and more businesslike — by the day.

As hacker-turned-journalist Kevin Poulsen put it in a recent article in Wired, the future of hacking is "professional, smart, and above-all well-funded. In the old days, hackers were mostly kids and college-age acolytes sowing their wild oats before joining the establishment. Today, the best hackers have the skill and discipline of the best legitimate programmers and security gurus. … Money is the catalyst for this change: Computer criminals are scooping in millions through various scams and attacks."

While there's nothing you can do to prevent large-scale database breeches — of the sort these recently arrested hackers were allegedly involved in — there are lots of things you can do to make yourself safer online or off.

Here are some useful resources:

Protect yourself from Identity Theft
Keep yourself safe from scams while searching for a job
Thwart ID Thieves
Protect your information online
The FCC on ID theft

These sites will give you some basic strategies that can make a big difference. Do you need to go further and subscribe to some fancy and expensive ID theft protection service? Probably not. If you're tempted to, read this article first. Prudence will do you far more good than panic.

How much do you worry about ID theft and what, if anything have you done to prevent it?