Personal Finance News

You see them at almost every corner of the Internet -- free iPads from contests that require you to do nothing but enter a drawing, write an essay, or tweet about it. It's a simple and relatively inexpensive ($499 is the entry price for a new iPad) way for a company to get people to its Web site, using social media to attract readers instead of paying for advertising.

But how do you know if the contest is legitimate or a ruse to get users to provide personal information to phishers? There are lots of telltale signs that a Web site could be phishing for your information, which we'll get to later. But first, why iPads, and why so many contests?

Depending on your view on guns, you may feel either a whole lot safer or less safe ordering a coffee at Starbucks.

That's because the coffee chain has a policy allowing "open carry" of guns in its stores in states where holstered handguns can legally be carried in public. Openly carrying handguns is legal in 43 states, including those where concealed firearms are banned.

Carrying a gun openly in public, while legal, can prompt a 911 call from a nervous coffee customer, as seen in this video:

Daylight Saving Time begins Sunday, when for eight months people will be fooled into thinking that the extra hour of light will save them money -- or at least not much money.

Last year at this time I wrote about how moving the clock forward an hour will get you more light during the day, but won't save you money because the extra savings gained in not turning on the lights for an hour in the evening was offset by people using more gas and turning on their air conditioners early, among other things.

I won't go into those reasons again why Daylight Saving Time, or DST, is a scam as far as saving money, but I did a rough calculation to find out how much money I'd save by turning on the houselights one less hour per day.

The bottom line:1 penny saved.

A homeless man in Orange County, California is living a hotel version of the movie "Up in the Air," using frequent flier miles and hotel reward points to live in hotels while he looks for a job. Jim Kennedy, 46, turned 7,000 points from United Airlines and $100 in cash into a four-night stay this week at the Holiday Inn Express in San Clemente, according to a story in the Orange County Register.

Kennedy, who earned $120,000 a year for a software company before being laid off 19 months ago, earned loyalty program points by traveling for his former jobs in IT and finance.

He doesn't have the 10 million frequent flier miles that character Ryan Bingham, played by George Clooney, did in the film "Up in the Air," or the 9 million miles that Tom Stuker has with United Airlines. But after using loyalty points to stay in hotels for the past two months, he estimates he can continue it for three more months before the accounts are empty, he told ABC News, which featured his story on "Good Morning America."

More Middle Boomers -- those 52 to 58 years old -- expect to work about five years beyond their planned retirement date, thanks to the recession, according to a new study of that segment of 29 million people.

The "MetLife Study of Boomers in the Middle" showed 54% saying they were behind in their retirement-savings goals. Economic conditions have hurt 76% of those surveyed, and almost half of those are concerned about their ability to recover.

A month of lost workplace productivity officially begins Monday with the start of March Madness.

The brackets for the NCAA men's basketball championship tournament will be picked Sunday, and although the games don't begin until Tuesday, the annual march of not doing much work at work begins Monday when workers will return to work with bracket printouts in hand to join office pools to see if they can pick which of 64 teams will win the tournament.

The global outplacement consultancy firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas estimates that workers distracted by March Madness could cost employers as much as $1.8 billion in unproductive wages during the first week of the tournament, which ends April 5 with the championship game.

And that loss is based on only 20 minutes of wasted time per day. That probably only includes a few peeks at scores throughout the day.

It may not be the best $74.95 you'll ever spend, but Mattel's "Mad Men" dolls sure have a lot of possibilities for fun.

That's the suggested retail price for one of four "Mad Men" dolls to be sold by Mattel in specialty stores and at amctv.com and barbiecollector.com, although I couldn't find them on those sites yet. Not that I'm anxious to buy dolls, but getting Don Draper and the "Mad Men" gang together with a Ken and Barbie doll could be endless fun.

Being a celebrity has its perks, and becoming an Internet celebrity can lead to its own perks, as one Michigan woman is finding out after Conan O'Brien made her the only person he is following on Twitter.

Sarah Faith Killen, AKA @LovelyButton on Twitter, saw her life change overnight when O'Brien, the former host of "The Tonight Show," chose her at random to follow on Twitter. Killen has almost 18,000 Twitter followers, and O'Brien has almost 595,000 people following him on Twitter, and before you know it, strangers are offering to help her with her wedding.

E-mail and the Internet may be the quickest ways to get customer service, but the back-and-forth of e-mails doesn't always resolve the issue quickly.

A telephone call -- if someone answers the call and you don't end up on hold forever -- is often the best solution and can lead to immediate answers instead of waiting a day or more for an e-mail to be answered.

But what if the operator is too busy to answer, as they were last year at the California Employment Development Department, where callers heard a recorded message about unemployment benefits because its call centers were so swamped with calls?

Rudy McComb has an answer: Call the line for Vietnamese speakers.

The Senate voted earlier this week to extend unemployment benefits, allowing Sen. Jim Bunning to watch college basketball in peace and the jobless to collect benefits while looking for work.

Bunning had been opposing the bill extending benefits for 1.2 million Americans because he wanted the money to come from federal stimulus funds, but in the end his fellow Republicans got him to support the bill and not face the wrath against the party of voters tired of inaction in Congress.

For the 14.9 million unemployed Americans, there was more good news, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that the national unemployment rate remained unchanged at 9.7%. At least it's not climbing.

The BLS reported that employment fell in construction and information sectors, while temporary help services added jobs. Severe winter weather in some areas of the country may have affected payroll employment and hours, it reported.