I was recently having dinner with an old friend, discussing astrology over steamed dumplings. While my friend was skeptical, I insisted I believe in it.

I suggested she check out the only published horoscopes I swear by -- in Elle magazine. They have proved, in my experience, uncannily accurate. The next day I received an e-mail from Susan Miller, the famous astrologist who writes the horoscopes for Elle!

Miller invited me to cover her event, "Susan's Year Ahead 2010," an all-day program raising money for the Red Cross efforts in Haiti. Susan contacted me after running into a mutual friend at a coffee shop who suggested I might want to attend.

The very next morning, I cleared my schedule and I was there, sitting front row with editors and marketers of Elle, there to support their colleague and hang on Susan's every cheery word. (It's impossible to convey in print just how upbeat she is).

There's no better time to take a moment for yourself than in winter. And one of the easiest, most affordable ways to do that is with an all-natural at-home facial.

First and foremost, lock up the kids and your partner-in-life. Send them off to a museum or some activity that buys you a couple hours. Remember: recharging benefits not only you but those around you, since it renews your energy and frees your mind. And your skin will glow with a big fat thank you of satisfaction!

The Declaration of Independence says "that all men are created equal." Anyone who's ever dealt with a failed product or the world's most annoying customer service knows that not all corporations are created equal. But according to yesterday's Supreme Court ruling, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, that undid crucial parts of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, a corporation is equal to a person, when it comes to freedom of speech.

The five conservative justices on the Supreme Court want you to believe that your voice is just as powerful as a multi-national corporation with money to burn. But can you afford to produce and air a commercial on prime time television saying what it is you love about a candidate or what you think needs to change in this country?

Can you afford to hire an award-winning Madison Avenue firm to produce your ad campaign and then pay the major networks to run that commercial over and over again? If you can't, how is your voice or my voice equal to that of corporations when they can outspend us billions to one?

Here to discuss what this radical Supreme Court ruling means to us -- the consumers -- is Walletpop's own Mitch Lipka, the Consumer Ally.

Imagine fertilizing your garden with car parts. That's the dream of Debbie Mielewski and her team of bio-engineers at the Ford Research and Innovation Center in Dearborn, Mich.

I was invited to check out how Mielewski's Plastics Research Group is engineering an earth-friendlier plastic, at a time when crisis-levels are choking the Pacific Ocean.

The average car has about 300 pounds of plastic in it. That plastic is petroleum based. And if you've heard of the Great Garbage Patch -- a plastic soup the size of Texas floating in the Pacific Ocean -- you know that plastic is an enemy of the earth.

But it's practically everywhere and needed, for now, in the cars we drive. If we have to wean our cars off of oil, we also need to include weaning the car-parts off of it too.

A new site LearnVest.com: Learn, Earn, Invest just launched to help young women take control of their finances. The chic site helps recent grads learn how to maximize employee benefits to keeping their online presence professional and clean.

So goodbye keg stand Facebook photos and hello Roth IRAs. LearnVest and Reebok have joined together to launch a financial bootcamp to run January 4 to 29. All the clear tips and check-lists to help you assess your finances, ladies, will be delivered to your inbox. To sign up for these emailed action plans, go to LearnVest's "Rehab for your finances" event page here.

If you're in the market for New Years resolutions, here's one: cut back on eating meat.

Ninety-nine percent of the meat we eat comes from factory farms. Industrial livestock production is worse for the planet than the pollution from all transportation combined.

What's more, our beloved chicken and turkey are mutating on account of this heavy production. Inside the factory farms, turkeys have lost the ability to reproduce and most chickens can't live past 40 days, and if they do their bones break. (Plus, a North Carolina factory farm gave the world swine flu)

Remember Schoolhouse Rock!? Meet Flocabulary, a program that teaches science, Shakespeare, SAT words and ancient civilization through hip-hop.

The music, developed by producers who have worked with Jay-Z and Mary J. Blige, is the reason students take it seriously -- it's used in more than 10,000 schools.

On WalletPop's Big News Podcast, Jason Cochran and I chatted up Rick Harrison, owner of the Gold and Silver pawn shop in Las Vegas, Nevada and one of the stars of the History Channel's Pawn Stars. Rick told us how his store is doing in the deep recession, tips on how to pawn your stuff, and his hottest selling items. Apparently 2,300 year old coins are common -- who knew. As for celebs in his store? Well, he's seen his share of Super Bowl rings -- what stays in Vegas has to get paid for somehow.

Pawn Stars' new season begins tonight on the History Channel.

Do you lavish money on some things but pinch pennies on others? This interesting video by BigThink features Dan Ariely, Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University, explaining why we do this. Just in time for Black Friday madness...Happy deal hunting, everybody!