Dollars and Sense

On Wednesday, the Powerball lottery reached a record $587.5 million. So far two winning tickets have been announced, one in Arizona and one in Missouri. But there's at least one more guaranteed winner: the Internal Revenue Service. Lottery winners can take their prize in the form of a lump sum or an annuity paid over the next 29 years...

For those holiday shoppers wanting a second chance at the deals they might have missed over Thanksgiving weekend, Cyber Monday awaits. And while there may be a bit less hand-to-hand combat involved, industry experts say that Cyber Monday is great for bargains—as long as you know where to look.

If you still need a list to check twice this holiday season, perhaps a good place to start would be the recently released annual Consumer Reports “Naughty and Nice” list.

Regardless of the American economy’s checkered enthusiasm, it appears as if consumers are currently aboard the fast track to higher taxes and rising prices on things like health care and grocery items scheduled to come around at the turn of the new year.

Earlier this week, Target announced that, like Best Buy and Toys R Us did recently, it would be joining the price-matching game this holiday season. The company said it plans to match the prices of online retailers as a way to stay competitive during the holiday shopping season.

Discussing salaries is taboo in many workplaces, but maybe it shouldn't be. New research suggests that knowing how your pay compares to your colleagues' pay may make workers more productive.

They say the best time to look for a new job is when you already have one. Turns out there might actually be something to this phenomenon: New research suggests that the longer you're out of work, the harder it gets to find a new job.

The dream of many college graduates—to earn a good-enough starting salary to pay off student loans without being rendered homeless or forced into starvation—comes easier or harder depending on where they graduate. With that in mind, which American colleges offer the worst possible opportunity for a earning a decent entry-level salary, and which offer the best?

Last week, Sears and Darden Restaurants (Olive Garden, Red Lobster) announced that they were seriously entertaining the idea of doing away with their traditional health insurance programs and opting instead to provide their employees with a heath-coverage allowance. The two major American companies plan to allow employees to select coverage through an online marketplace, where workers will have th

It might seem almost impossible to operate in today’s economic world without the use of a bank account, but a new survey suggests that many Americans are actually doing it, opting to finance their daily lives with quick cash services and prepaid credit cards.

Would you consider spending an extra couple hundred dollars a night to avoid staying at a dingy hotel full of circus pimps and other sleazy variations of the dark side trading company? Perhaps. But even that extra cash wouldn't come close to getting you a room at the most expensive hotels in the world. A night at of those would cost you much, much more. How much more?

Saying the phrase “keep the change” has been a nice way of tipping a little extra for good service for many years, but recently the gourmet burrito-slinging Mexican grill known as Chipotle has taken it upon themselves to keep it without your permission.