EconomyEinstein

Joel Greenblatt teaches at Columbia University in New York City. He also wrote the enormously successful "The Little Book That Beats the Market". Following his strategy from 1988 to 2004 you would've earned an annualized return of 31% so there seems to be something to it. That's about 2 and a half times what the S&P 500 returned. Best of all, Joel keeps a free stock screener on his site!

Drop on by Joel's site at MagicFormulaInvesting.com and run your own stock screen.

We all know the depressing math. If you would have saved $10,000 20 years ago and if it returned an average rate of 8%, you'd be sitting on $46,609 today. Or would you? The answer is no.

Swipe your debit card at the checkout register and there's an increasing chance that more than the purchase price and tax will be subtracted from your checking account. A fee for using the debit card also may be deducted. Debit card fees have been around a long time but they used to be pretty rare; now they're much more common.

The key to avoiding this charge is to say "credit card" when asked if you want your purchase treated as debit or credit. Here's the rest of the story [Source: bankrate.com]

Eliminate the need to manage multiple Web sites to get a comprehensive view of your personal finances. Mint.com connects securely with more than 5,000 US financial institutions. By adding your bank, credit card and investment accounts to Mint.com, you get a complete perspective of your finances in one, easy to use location. Planning your personal budget just got a lot easier.

Mint.com seriously fills a sorely needed solution for managing personal finance. If you find it too hard or just too annoying to use Quicken or Microsoft Money, this one's for you. I use it myself and I love it! No more manual updating of my accounts, Mint.com downloads it all for me into one easy to use system that can show me where money is going.

Mint.com

When it comes to personal information, your credit report is just the tip of the iceberg. Insurers, landlords, banks and other companies have access to additional personal data about you, and if that information is wrong, you're in trouble.

Among the information in these reports are your current and past medical conditions, residential and tenant history, check-writing history and homeowner and car insurance-claim history. While not every American has a report, many do, and it pays to find out if the information collected on you is accurate.

Guess what? You can get a free copy of that report too!
Specialty consumer reports reveal your secrets [Bankrate.com]