Personal Finance News

Remember when your parents said that someday, you would have to learn how to balance a checkbook? Did you ever learn how? I didn't.. Do you even use a checkbook? I don't.

The Internet, along with credit and debit cards, has (for the bulk of us) wiped out the need for checkbooks, let alone the need to know how to balance one. Today, all major banks, including Bank Of America, Chase, Wells Fargo and others, offer one-step access to records of every purchase and every transfer we make. Undeniably, this is a boon to the practice of making a budget. Learning how to take advantage of these tools though, can be difficult. And that's exactly where sites like Mint, SmartyPig, and Budgetpulse come in. Of course, this is the Internet we're talking about, and a host of other Web sites aim to help their customers follow a budget. However, I've narrowed the competition to these three, and for a few key reasons.

Here in Chicago, a lot of us are asking questions about Grace Groner (pictured), the elderly "secret millionaire" who gave $7 million to Lake Forest College, her alma mater, when she passed away in January. Allow me, a Chicagoan and the editor of the Money College, to step in and answer some frequently asked questions.

Q. How did a 100-year-old lady save $7 million?
A. The short answer is that Groner made a $180 stock purchase in 1935 in Abbott Laboratories, where she would work as a secretary for more than four decades. What's more, she avoided driving in Chicago, where parking meter rates quadrupled in 2009.

Q. Is it true she lived in a one-bedroom house in Lake Forest, Illinois?
A. Correct. And if you have ever visited Lake Forest, which has about two mansions for every four residents, she was probably the only person who lived in a one-bedroom house in Lake Forest.

Will Lauren McClusky, the Chicago teenager who raised the ire of McDonald's attorneys after she tried to copyright the charity concert name McFest, finally get to Have It Her Way

While it's too soon to tell, WalletPop has learned in an exclusive that high-level McDonald's officials reached out to McClusky on Friday to request a meeting to resolve the matter and move forward. Though on an ocean liner headed for Japan as part of the Semester at Sea program, McClusky has tentatively agreed to speak with McDonald's executives by video conference.

The McSummit could take place within the next two weeks -- and marks a huge break in the logjam between the fast-food giant and McClusky, whose McFest concerts have raised more than $30,000 for Special Olympics.

The ongoing saga of Chicago teenager Lauren McClusky and her fight to keep the name McFest attached to her charity concert event -- even as McDonald's attorneys seek to block her from doing so -- now involves an ocean liner, thousands of comments from AOL users, and public relations people who refuse to speak about the matter other than through prepared McStatements.

McClusky became a mini-celebrity in her home town and beyond Tuesday, as the WalletPop exclusive about McDonald's seeking to block the trademark application for her charity concert series name made the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times. National news outlets from Inside Edition to Fox News have flooded the office of her father Jeff McClusky, an independent record promoter, with phone calls seeking interviews.

Lauren's story has also been picked up by the Huffington Post and generated more than 70,000 views an hour on AOL -- and more than 1 million page views total.

Let's face it: We all do enough battle with the pests in our lives without having to face down the likes of ants, roaches and rodents. But when unwelcome critters decide to make themselves at home in your living space, what's the best plan of attack? We'll find out in today's Savings Experiment.

You couldn't blame Lauren McClusky of Chicago if she were a bit squeamish about using her last name in this story without fear of reprisal from Ronald McDonald and his legal posse.

For McClusky, 19, finds herself at the center of a thorny dispute that involves a series of charity concerts she's put on over the past three years. She dubbed the event "McFest" (more on that in a moment) -- but McDonald's sees that as an infringement on its trademarks, something the McDonaldland lawyers refer to as "the McFamily of brands."

These include (deep breath): McPen, McBurger, McBuddy, McWatch, McDouble, McJobs, McShirt, McPool, McProduct, McShades, McFree, McRuler, McLight -- and even the prefix "Mc" itself.

"But not McFest," pointed out McClusky, who declined to change her last name for this story. "The whole reason I called it McFest in the first place is my name."

Her original co-chair for the first McFest also shared the "Mc" prefix in her surname, so it seemed a natural. And indeed, not a single McDonald's attorney seemed to object in 2007 and 2008, when McClusky's McFests raised $30,000 for the Chicago chapter of Special Olympics.

In a year that saw 40,000 journalists lose their jobs and 143 newspapers fold, Editor & Publisher magazine stood like a sentinel, reporting every layoff, bankruptcy and closing with accuracy and integrity. But now, after 125 years of never missing a deadline or a chance to call industry leaders to the carpet for incompetence, E&P is being put to bed itself.

If a new owner does not step forward soon and buy E&P from current owner The Nielsen Co., the magazine labeled by many as the conscience of the industry will be forced to close. In fact, E&P writers have started convening at an informal blog site, "E&P in Exile."

But there's good news, newshounds: E&P has so many fans and supporters in the beleaguered industry that some frantic scrambling could save the venerable magazine at the last minute.

"Discussions are ongoing and there are several people who are interested," E&P editor Greg Mitchell told WalletPop Wednesday. "There's nothing signed, and we don't know exactly what they're interested in, so I can't say much. But there's this outpouring of support that's gratifying, and we're leaving with some good hopes."

Those good hopes come largely because journalists have rallied around the magazine (which traces its origins to 1884), making its struggle a major news story. The trouble for E&P began when Nielsen, which took over the magazine about four years ago, announced a deal earlier this month with e5 Global Media Holdings, LLC, a new company formed jointly by Pluribus Capital Management and Guggenheim Partners.

By now, you know the numbers statisticians and economists most often use to paint the picture of the Great Recession: unemployment percentages, jobs lost and created, and gross national product among them. Now, add to that another crucial though less obvious number: shifts in U.S. population growth.

While that might sound like a variable regardless of the economy, a recent New York Times story by reporter Damien Cave reveals that the recession has caused some dramatic demographic shifts. The evidence lies in new U.S. Census Bureau figures culled between July 2008 and July 2009, with the trends expected to take more solid form as we head into the 2010 Census year.

The tax gods smiled on me when they made me the younger brother of a CPA -- a guy who saved my butt countless times back in the day when I didn't know a tax return from toilet paper. Thus I've always had the advantage of instant, free tax advice when I need it.

Yet no matter how many times I asked Brother Joe about beating the IRS audit system, he was always pretty cautious, and 100 percent truthful. "There's no fool-proof way to do it," he'd tell me.

But now comes news from the most unlikely of sources -- the IRS itself -- that your chances of being audited are 1 in 100 if you follow one simple rule: Show an income under $200,000.

Last year at this time, one writer -- and only one -- in the entire Chicago Tribune features department was either brave or foolish enough to bare his family finances for all to see: yours truly.

In a two-page spread, I outlined 10 steps to a better family budget, using my own experiences with debt, savings and spending habits as the template. This led in short order to a roller coaster ride I could never have anticipated:

1. taunts from twisted readers who bombarded me with mean comments about how dumb my wife and I were.
2. a gig as the Tribune's recession columnist.
3. getting laid off by the Tribune about a month later.
4. hundreds of well wishes from fans who couldn't believe the Tribune would lay off the Recession Guy.
5. and finally: an immediate invitation from WalletPop editor Beth Pinsker Gladstone to move my "Recession Diaries" column to AOL, which I did.