Personal Finance News

President Obama's calls for bipartisan health care reform reminds me of pleas during the holiday season for "peace on earth and goodwill to men." It's nice in theory but nearly impossible to implement.

The reform proposed by Obama today would merge parts of the reform plans passed by the Senate and the House. It will not be cheap, costing about $1 trillion over 10 years. Moreover, it would allow the government to roll-back insurance premium increases that it considers "egregious." It seeks to merge the bills that passed without Republican support in both houses of Congress and are stalled in conference committee.

The survey recently issued by Insurance.com claiming that lawyers are the most dangerous drivers would seem to offer a golden opportunity to crack wise about the only profession held in lower esteem than journalists. I am going to resist the temptation to crack wise, however.

Insurance.com's data is based on the numbers of customers requesting a quote from the Web site, hardly a scientific survey. Perhaps these drivers are worse than average and are seeking quotes because their insurance companies are dropping them for being bad drivers. There also is no differentiation between fender-benders and more serious accidents involving injury or death.

Until recently, Jon and Kate Gosselin were this decade's answer to "The Brady Bunch." Now, they are considered more like the "Addams Family," The Bundys from "Married with Children" or The Osbournes.

America's least favorite married couple, and stars of TLC's hit program "Jon and Kate Plus 8: now face accusations that they violated child labor laws in their home state of Pennsylvania.

"We're not saying that there was or was not a violation, just that we're conducting an investigation," a spokesman told usmagazine.com, which broke the story.

Whether or not some disgruntled viewer or angry family member turned in the Gosselins remains unclear. Government agencies are required to act on complaints brought to their attention. What government can not do is fine the Gosselins for lacking common sense.

Family members are quoted in the celebrity magazine as saying the children hate having the cameras around. I can't say I blame them. But exploiting their 8-year-old twins and five-year-old sextuplets on basic cable is lucrative for Jon and Kate who earn as much as $75,000 per episode.

America can't enough of this dysfunctional clan. Almost 10 million viewers tuned into the recent season premiere curious about whether the program would address Jon's reported infidelity with a college student and Kate's with her bodyguard. It's like watching a train wreck.

If the Gosselins split up, they better save their money to pay for the therapy they and their kids will need once America grows tired of their antics, which by my calculations will take about a year.

Richard Overton never sought to become one of the many poster children for tort reform, but he felt he had little choice but to start his Quixotic fight against beer giants Anheuser-Busch and Coors. Walletpop heard from him recently when we referred to his case in a quiz on infamous lawsuits and he called to set the record straight, according to him.

The 58-year-old government employee from the Detroit area was outraged when he found his young children watching a commercial for beer that glamorized the beverage without discussing the risks from alcohol abuse, which he knew first-hand from his time as a police officer and the struggles he and his father faced with substance abuse.

He insisted he wasn't on an moral crusade against intoxicating beverages.

"When I quit drinking, I didn't say you should too," Overton, a Vietnam veteran, said in an interview.

At the ripe old age of 41, I have seen trends come and go. None was annoying as the Cabbage Patch Kids.

Back in 1977 an artist named Xavier Roberts stumbled upon the idea of having people "adopt" cute squishy faced dolls. Roberts' toys grew in popularity until they became a must-have toy in the early 1980s. Cabbage Patch Kids even spawned a satirical counterpart named Garbage Pale Kids.

My older sister Laura had one of the dolls. Being a bratty younger brother, I took it upon myself to "kidnap" her Cabbage Patch Kid from time to time. I think I even held the doll for "ransom." Luckily, Laura forgave me for my misbehavior.

Unlike other relics of the 1980s such as David Hasselhoff, the Cabbage Patch Kids still are going strong. I remember they had talc smell. Maybe that makes people think they are holding a "real baby." To be realistic, they would need to smell like poop.

One of my fondest childhood memories was our 1978 road trip from our home outside of Philadelphia to meet some friends of my parents in Taos, New Mexico. It was made all the more memorable by the CB radio that we kids insisted my dad purchase for the trip.

This was the height of the CB craze. Two years earlier, the song "Convoy" had been a number one hit on both the pop and country charts. If you are old enough, you may remember when trucker slang like "breaker, breaker 1-9" and "rubber duck" was considered the height of coolness. The song was later made into a movie of the same name. Remember the 1970s were a funny (peculiar, not ha-ha) time.

Anyway, the trip was wonderful. We traveled through the south and hit New Orleans, where my dad told me to say "Hi" to the nice lady dancing in an open-door bar on Bourbon Street that I was way too young to enter. All the while we spoke with our "good buddies" who gave us recommendations of where to eat and offered use advice on how to avoid speed traps from the "smokies."

They say New York is the city that never sleeps, but that's because no one can afford to.

People who live outside the five boroughs are probably aware that New York is expensive. What would probably shock them along with some residents of the "town so nice they named it twice" is just how much cheaper it is to live elsewhere.

According to the New York Daily News, someone making $123,322 a year in New York would have the same standard as someone making $50,000 a year in Houston. A $60,000 Manhattan salary equals $26,092 in Atlanta. New York rents average $2,801, 53% higher than the second-highest market San Francisco, the paper said.

New Yorkers also pay the most for phone service, home heating and childcare. The Daily News pegs those costs at $25,000 a year for one child depending on the neighborhood. Of course, some of the more selective daycare centers are tougher to get into than an Ivy League college.

Increasingly, people are moving farther and farther from the city because of its costs. New York commuters have discovered the Poconos in Pennsylvania. They are even traveling far south down the New Jersey Turnpike to the suburbs of Philadelphia where I live. Buses to New York are always full. I used to make that trip every day and it sucked.

So, my hat is off to you New Yorkers. Between the cramped apartments, crowded trains and the guys passing out newspapers on the subway, I don't know how you cope with the stresses of city living. I, for one, am glad to be hold up in my fortress of solitude in the suburbs.

For me, New York is a nice place to visit. If you are wealthy, it's a great place to live. It's a struggle for everyone else.

It turns out that F. Scott Fitzgerald may have been wrong when he famously opined that "the rich are different than you and me." These days, celebrities are being forced to pinch pennies just like us common people because of the recession. Well, not exactly like regular folks, but they are experiencing their share of hardships.

According to MSNBC.com, Ugly Betty star America Ferrera has decided that she only needs one house and is putting her $1.5 million place in the Hollywood Hills up for sale.

Think that's tragic? There are even more heartwarming examples of celebrity frugality on the Web site.

Eva Longoria of Desperate Housewives was seen -- get this -- wearing elements of the same outfit twice. Teen queen Miley Cyrus shopped off the rack for t-shirts and a pair of jeans. Former spendaholic Britney Spears has turned over a new leaf and drives a Mitsubishi. What has the world come to?

You can hardly blame the celebrities. They read the newspapers like everyone else. Britney probably watches the TV news. They know that fewer people are buying movie tickets, CDs and books. Studios and record companies are feeling pinched too, so they are clamping down on salaries paid to the talent. That applies to Britney as well.

Gone are the days when actors and entertainment personalities can spend with reckless abandon and expect someone else to pick up the tab. MC Hammer and Ed McMahon even exploited their dire financial straights in those pathetic commercials for Cash 4 Gold.

Like all fads in Hollywood, this one will end unless Wal-Mart opens a store in Beverly Hills. Then, all bets are off.

For more on cheap stars, see our gallery on the Most Frugal Celebrities.

Whenever I hear stories about multiple generations living under one roof, I wonder how people don't wind up killing one another. My worries are heightened because of the recession.

According to USA Today, increasing numbers of people are living together out of economic necessity.

"Nearly 3.5 million brothers or sisters are living in a sibling's house, according to 2007 Census Data, up from 3 million in 2000," the paper said. " And 3.6 million parents live with their adult children, up from 2.3 million. About 6.7 million householders live with other relatives, such as aunts or cousins, compared with 4.8 million in 2000."

Of course, given the state of the economy, those figures have no doubt increased over the past year as the real estate market continues to plummet and foreclosures continue to soar. It's the hidden cost of the economic downturn, and it's scary.

After nearly 25 years, the nightmare of "New Coke" may finally be over.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that Coca-Cola "has quietly removed the word (classic) from the label of a new 16-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola that is being sold in some southeastern U.S. markets, as part of a broader plan to refresh the brand's image, according to a report in industry publication Beverage Digest."

Taking the "Classic" out of "Classic Coke" is supposed to make the sugary water more appealing to young people. Exactly why and how that is supposed to happen is anybody's guess. The truth is that people of all ages drink soda, but their numbers are dwindling. That's why companies such as Coke are making a big push into non-carbonated beverages.

Can you imagine the meetings that occurred at Coke's Atlanta headquarters before this momentous decision was made? I am sure there were many sleepless nights in the marketing department. They had to ask themselves, do they want people to remember how Coke changed its formula in 1985 and was forced by outraged consumers to change it back? The new "old" Coke was given the name "Classic" to distinguish itself from the attempted change no one liked.

About the only thing "classic" about the soda was the lesson it taught business school students that if it ain't broke, don't fix it.