Is this what we have finally been waiting for? Really good news about foreclosures. My guess is, don't get too excited by any short term "trends"--- but, that said, the latest news from RealtyTrac just out today is encouraging.

Foreclosure filings decreased again in November, down almost 8% from the previous month. That marks the fourth month in a row that was the case.

Of course, there is still plenty of bad news because the foreclosure rate is up an enormous 18% from a year ago this time.

Right now, the RealtyTrac report reveals that one in every 417 households got a foreclosure notice last month alone.

Get $20 off when you spend $75 or more by Dec. 16 at Hot Topic, a low-budget fashion-forward retailer that describes its clothes as "music-inspired." I consider them in the same category as Forever 21, Charlotte Russe, and H&M.

They have a couple other promotions going on but I'm not sure you can combine more than one discount. See what gives you the biggest savings!

You can get two Kid Rock T-shirts for $25 now through Dec. 29. Shoes are 25% off through Dec. 31.

Shopping at Hot Topic supports WalletPop.

If you've eaten a steak at Ruby Tuesday and wondered why it seemed smaller than you expected, you might not be imagining things. The restaurant chain's meat supplier was cited by Massachusetts officials after an inspection showed widespread short-weighting of shipments of its steaks.

After a consumer complained to the state that his steak seemed too small, inspectors visited Ruby Tuesday to check. They ended up going to five different restaurants and found steaks smaller than their advertised weights at every one of the restaurants.

With 11 nieces and nephews spread across the country, Bruce Kin Huie of San Francisco finds it difficult to be the "doting uncle" he wants to be at Christmas.

Last year Huie sent checks, which he found a bit impersonal, for kids who range in age from 1 to 16.

"I don't know what they're interested in because I see them once or twice a year," he said in a telephone interview.

This year Huie, 52, is budgeting about $40 per child, and is asking them for wish lists on Lottay.com, a Web site that helps people give the gift of money for specific gifts that people want. One of his nephews, for example, is into triathlons and will get $40 in a PayPal transfer from his uncle to buy himself some triathlon gear.

Experts tout talking about money as one of the best ways to avoid financial miscommunication in a relationship. But what if you and your honey aren't really hearing what the other has to say? Or even worse, what if you two speak a completely different money language?

Having the "money talk" is essential to keeping your Debt Diet on track. It's also (believe it or not) one of the cornerstones of a good relationship. That's why, with just two weeks left in the holiday shopping season, it's important to make sure you and your mate aren't just talking, but that you're truly listening to what each of you has to say about money. Otherwise, you're likely to blow your budget -- and your partner's likely to blow their top -- while you're scooping up gifts this weekend.

Get a free, customized vitamin plan based specifically on your health when you click on the image at right. No purchase is required -- though they gently suggest you buy vitamins -- so this is useful if you already take vitamins or are interested in starting.

According to a new survey by consumer electronics shopping Web site Retrevo, more individuals are doing their holiday shopping online than ever before and for most shoppers free shipping and coupon codes are an important part of the decision to buy gifts online.

The survey of 750 Retrevo users found that the number of individuals who will shop for electronics in-store dropped 6% from last year while the number of people who split their shopping between the online and offline, those who do it mostly online and those who do their shipping completely online all grew from 2008 to 2009.

They're the chirp heard round the world. Peeps, those little sugar-dusted marshmallow treats shaped like chicks and bunnies, now have their own store. Peeps & Company opened Thursday at National Harbor, a development on the Potomac River near Washington, DC.

Lots of people find Peeps boring, but because their true fans can be an obsessive set, the shop exists not so much to furnish them with marshmallow puffs -- any drugstore can do that for 99 cents, although the shop has those, too -- but to satisfy collectors' demand by selling 850 different Peeps items.

WalletPop's Aaron Crowe talks with Scott Ginsberg, author of "Stick Yourself Out There" and "Get Them to Come to You" about how to be an approachable job candidate, in this week's "Your Job Will Come" podcast.

Among the the tips are cleaning up your name search on Google and making everything around you part of your image as a job candidate.

We've warned you plenty of times about issuers' terms, conditions and requirements that can eat away at the balances on your prepaid cash or gift cards. Now, this article from the Times-Union newspaper in Albany, NY, highlights yet another threat to your unused gift-card balances: New York and a growing number of other states will take the money on them if they go unused for five years.

How do they do this? New York and other states have dug up an old law referring to a practice called "escheatment," the article says. This is the law that lets a state claim abandoned property. Now, you might think of abandoned property in terms of deserted buildings and junked cars, but New York puts that gift card sitting at the bottom of your drawer in that category, too.

There's some good news for fast food lovers.

With a tight economy forcing consumers to eat at home instead of going out, fast food chains are slashing their prices to keep cash registers ringing. And the slashing trend should continue in 2010, according to USA Today.

McDonald's is rolling out a dollar breakfast menu in January. Fast food rival Burger King is already luring customers with its $1 double cheeseburgers. Taco Bell is going even lower, offering an 89-cent, beefy, 5-layer burrito that goes on sale in two weeks.

Unlike paper coupons, which require some level of effort to clip, keep and use, online coupon codes are so simple a blindfolded 10-year-old could do it. Thanks to ease of use, the trend of using online coupon codes is growing quickly, with Google traffic showing a 30% increase over last November. It's clear people are searching for coupons online, but where are online coupon codes most popular?

CouponCodes4U.com surveyed 7,500 consumers about their coupon using habits and found that 34% of Southerners search for a coupon code before shopping online. In addition to the survey, CouponCodes4U analyzed the 1 million visitors that came to look at the 100,000 plus coupons and deals in the first month after launching and found that a whopping 64% of visitors hailed from below the Mason-Dixon Line. Comparatively, only 4% of the traffic originated from New York.

You might be able to count the number of steps you take on the newly unveiled 5th Generation iPod Nano, but you certainly can't spin records on it.

The retro "feel" and iconic static sound has music lovers flocking to vinyl albums (you know, those REALLY big circle things children of the 70s and early 80s listened to as kids) and the turntables they're played on.

Some record stores, like J&R Music, are even stocking "records" of classic artists like Aerosmith and the Beach Boys, as well as freshly pressed LP versions of Lady Gaga and other current music sensations.

That box of wine you bought for daily sipping can become a magical wellspring of uses for the holidays. To get into the Christmas spirit, WalletPop offers five thrifty ideas to think outside the box.

1. GINGERBREAD HOUSE OF WINE

Turn your wine dispenser into a storybook dream that will have guests sipping happily ever after. Wall the box with gingerbread, add a roof, make room for the tap, and decorate. It might be the only real estate on your block worth toasting.

Make up a tale of how the cottage morphed into a wine fountain and put it in writing on a placard next to the house. Something about a witch and Ernst Gallo? You won't be able to use a custom gingerbread house kit because you'll have to cut the dough to fit your box. Unbaked gingerbread sheets are available from Pillsbury and others. Or ask your local bakery to make gingerbread sheets for you and cut them according to specs.

Make the mortar with a standard royal frosting by beating together one pound of powdered sugar, one teaspoon of cream of tartar, three egg whites and a teaspoon of vanilla. Apply gum drops, candy canes, maybe even old corks. This vintage house will never be confused with a fixer-upper.

"It's a nice way to serve wine," Lisa Commitante, the manager of Monteleone Bakery in Brooklyn, N.Y., told WalletPop. "Very festive." ($11.95 with the store-bought sheets)

Nearly 9.5 million sleep products for infants and toddlers -- cribs, bassinets and play yards -- have been recalled in the past two years following 16 deaths and more than 2,200 incidents. Yet, many of the products that have proven fatal are still in use, putting children sleeping in them in extreme danger.

The child safety advocacy group, Kids in Danger, tallied the enormity of the recalls in a just-released report. Shortly after the report was released, yet another sleeping product was recalled -- the Amby Baby Motion Bed/Hammock -- following the deaths of two infants.

Nicola Johns knows just how important it is to get the word out about these unsafe baby products. One April night, she put her son, Liam (pictured), to bed in a crib made by Simplicity, a company that is responsible for many of the recalls that have occurred in recent years. Johns looked in on Liam in the morning and couldn't see him; he had become trapped between the mattress and rail when the rail pushed away.

"When I walked closer I could see he was hanging," Nicola Johns wrote in an account for Kids In Danger. "I lifted up his arms. He wasn't breathing."