We New Jersey residents are awfully proud of leading the country in car insurance rates, property taxes and political corruption. Now no less of an august authority than the University of Cambridge claims that modern life has turned my fellow residents into balls of stress.

According to a press release issued by the U.K. university, "New Jersey is one of the highest-scoring states for "neuroticism"; a personality trait normally associated with anxiety, stress and impulsive behavior. So, instead of the Garden State, maybe we ought to refer to ourselves as the Woody Allen State. By that I mean the funny Woody of the 1970s and 1980s and not the weird, creepy guy we see today.

We New Jerseyeans have issues: a governor forced to resign after admitting that he had an affair with another man, a dentist who allegedly decided to dispose of his medical waste at sea so that it washed up on the Jersey Shore. Then there's the jokes. People think that most residents in my state are a cross between Tony Soprano, Bruce Springsteen and Fred Flintstone. Bedrock certainly was a prehistoric stand-in for Bayonne or maybe Jersey City.

Researchers at Cambridge -- led interestingly by a native of Louisiana -- tried to create a personality map of the United States. The point of this exercise escapes me. I mean, did you need a study to prove that people in the Northeast are more uptight that people in the Midwest. It's common sense, no. The Cambridge researchers insist that they are about more than perpetuating stereotypes.

"Obviously it's not as simple as saying that a person is guaranteed to be more anxious if they come from West Virginia or more religious because they happen to live in New Mexico; but we did find pretty clear signs that there are meaningful differences in the personalities of people living in different areas of the United States," said Dr. Jason Rentfrow, the lead researcher, in a press release.

Last month my colleague Carol Vinznat wrote a great article which helped you figure out just how much your appliances were costing you just because they are plugged in, using several different power monitoring tools. The good news is that even if you haven't used one of these personal power meters you can check out Good Magazine's vampire energy chart to spot potential wastes in your house. The bad news is that now you'll have to take action to cut down on the energy lost to these power suckers, a place many households fail.

Thankfully, eliminating power waste from passive energy is about to get easier due to a new surge protector from Belkin which comes with a wireless power switch to let you control when the outlets are turned off. Carol pointed us to some very helpful surge protectors which turn off your computer peripherals when the main PC is powered down. This new offering from Belkin builds on this idea and looks to be an excellent way for home theater enthusiasts to stop power drain with minimal inconvenience all for just $50 from Belkin's website.

I've thought about just flipping the switch on our surge protector to save money on the passive power that comes with having two game consoles, a receiver, LCD TV, and more hooked into my home theater. But like many of your setups, the power strip is buried better than King Tut! By adding a wireless switch to this surge protector, Belkin provides an easy way for me to cut our power usage while still being in control of when the power is cut.

People love to express their gratitude for a favorite tool or gadget by claiming that it's worth its weight in gold, a reference which is lost on most of us who don't know how much a pound of gold is actually worth. Thankfully Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has cooked up a handy reference guide to help you measure the monetary density of things. This graphical comparison covers the weight value of U.S. currency, human blood, commodities, illicit drugs and pretty much everything else in between.

I'm still trying to take all this information in and it cracks me up how much a pound of many of these items are worth. Still, I noticed that a few items are noticeably absent from this lineup so I took the liberty of translating these into units to further expand your weight to value ratios.

• Gasoline - $1.79 / lb locally, a gallon of gas weighs 6.15 pounds.
  
• Crude oil - 39 cents / lb as of today, a gallon of crude is ~7 lbs, a barrel of oil contains 42 gallons at $118.35
  
• Quarter Pounder with cheese - $18 / lb, assuming 1/4 lb weight of burger and bun post cooking.
• With gold trading around $830 per ounce, and 16 ounces in a pound, a pound of gold is worth $13,280.

With energy prices coming across that low in pounds I wouldn't be too shocked to see pumps switching over to per pound pricing in the near future! In a more practical sense, I'm sure list will prove to be worth its weight in quarters when you turn a quick profit this weekend, betting some poor chump that a pound of peacock feathers is worth more than a pound of Uranium!

As a notorious deal hound I was excited to find out about a new service which makes use of Pricegrabber.com's comparison and searching abilities to provide users with email alerts when an item drops below a certain price. Its similar to having a limit order on a specific stock, except in this case, you have to make the purchase yourself. DealAlerter.com goes beyond traditional deal hunting which for example focuses on finding the cheapest LCD TV over 40 inches with 3 HDMI ports and helps you find the best price on a specific TV.

By letting me first select a specific item based on user reviews and brand experiences, DealAlerter helps find the best item at the best price! DealAlerter also recognizes that not every store on the Internet has stellar quality and customer service, allowing you to choose what stores to include in the alert. You can further limit your price alert by quality to include brand new items or to look only for refurbs, which often provide an excellent quality at a much lower price. Unfortunately as good as the Deal Alerter system is it won't catch deals which revolve around coupons such as the current 12% off coupon for BestBuy.

DealAlerter looks like it will free up a lot of my time and money the next time I am in the market for a major purchase. One final thing I like about this kind of deal alerting system is that it reinforces the idea that you don't need to buy something the second you decide it is what you want. With a little bit of waiting and the right technology you can hold off until the price drops to fit your budget. Too bad they don't have a deal alerter like this for used cars!

You might think all the stories left to tell in this genre are about quaint family farms in the mid-West being overrun by giant corporations, but the latest salvo comes from industrial Los Angeles.

Two years ago, a community garden was razed to make room for a warehouse for the clothing retailer Forever 21, and now community activists are looking at the still-empty tract of land and they want their plants back.

The Los Angeles Times says the story is complicated by political ties -- the company made hefty donations to the mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, who had initially opposed the destruction of the garden, which is located in South Central. This being L.A., there are celebrities involved: Daryl Hannah, Joan Baez and Danny Glover are among those who protested the initial plans, and it was the subject of the short documentary South Central Farm: Oasis in a Concrete Desert.

About a week ago, I wrote a post about the Styrofoam homes that are currently being manufactured by the International Dome House Company. Durable, whimsical, and wonderfully insulated, the bubble-shaped buildings have unbeatable energy efficiency, can be easily constructed in about a week, and can be adapted for multiple uses. On the other hand, they are basically huge foam hemispheres, which might make them less than attractive for anybody who isn't a Smurf or a hobbit.

With that in mind, anybody interested in building a reasonably-priced, energy-efficient home might want to check out KitHAUS. Starting at $29,500 for a 117-square foot module, KitHAUSes are designed to be attached to each other to form larger houses, offices, and getaways. Constructed of double-pane glass and aluminum frames, they can be assembled in a few days and come pre-wired for electricity. Although neither as energy-efficient nor as whimsical as their Japanese Styrofoam counterparts, the KitHAUS modules fit much more easily into the traditional Western concept of a home. Better yet, since they don't need heavy building equipment and can be easily carried, they fit very comfortably into places where a traditional home would fear to tread!

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. Although he loves the KitHAUS design, the idea of living in a glass house just makes him want to throw stones.

When I was a kid, my father's mother was what some people (my sisters and I, for example) would call a battle-axe. She could never pass me a plate of hamburgers without warning me about what would happen if I dropped it, and even her sweetest compliments were tinged with the piquant flavor of sharp criticism.

One of her favorite complaints involved my posture. Grandma always jumped on me about my supposedly slumped shoulders, sunken chest, and generally dissolute appearance. Much of my time in her presence was spent with shoulders back, stomach sucked in, and spine ramrod-straight. I used to parody her ideal, walking like an honor guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier. Somehow, she never got the joke.

Now that Grandma's gone to that great chiropractic office in the sky, my posture has suffered somewhat. Every now and again, when I hurt my back or am applying for a job, I will revert to form and demonstrate my amazing Marine guard impression. Most of the time...well, I'm only a little slouchy. Now, however, modern technology has done the impossible: it has replicated my grandma. The iPosture, a futuristic little disk that you wear around your neck, detects when you have allowed your posture to deviate from its ideal. If you slouch for more than a minute, it will deliver a slight vibration, warning you to stand up straight. At only $99, it could save a fortune in back surgery!

Now if they can only invent a machine that will criticize my clothing choices...

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. Sometimes, late at night, he imagines his grandma getting her hands on a bunch of Emo kids. He then cackles quietly to himself.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should begin by pointing out that I live in New York City, where I am a regular and enthusiastic patron of the city's amazing public transportation system. I approach the train in much the same way that a cocker spaniel approaches car rides. If I could open the window, put my hands on the sill and let my tongue loll out of my mouth, I definitely would.

Right now, one of my biggest worries involves funding of the city's subway system. A little over ten years ago, the city and the state slashed funding. It would be prohibitively expensive to have an entirely rider-funded system, so the MTA began borrowing money. Lo and behold, a few years later, the subway is still underfunded, is seriously in debt, and is looking at massively raising fares while scaling back on service.

New York is only one of many cities currently experiencing problems with their public transportation systems. At the same time, these systems also offer one of the best solutions to the country's current gas crisis. America's subways, trams and buses conserve 4.2 billion gallons of gas per year. They reduce wear and tear on public roads, keep cars out of city centers, and allow citizens to cheaply move from place to place. In terms of pollution, each person who rides public transportation reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 20 pounds per day. In New York, that works out to over 3 billion pounds per year.

However, unless a consistent, reliable funding source emerges, the sort of feast-or-famine situation that is plaguing New York and other cities will continue. With that in mind, it was particularly satisfying to discover HR 6052, the Saving Energy Through Public Transportation Act of 2008. This bill would provide federal subsidies both to cities and to "non-urban areas" for the development and improvement of public transportation systems. It is designed to improve the public transportation grid while lowering fares for travelers. The bill has passed the House of Representatives and is currently working its way through Senate committees.

Between cheap public transit, fewer drivers clogging the highways, lowered petroleum dependency and reduced carbon emissions, HR 6052 seems like a great idea for pretty much everyone. Now if we can just get it passed...

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. He even has favorite subway beggars: the current winner is the magician on the four line.

If you or your kid is new to college this year you've probably heard horror stories about book costs from your friends who have already crossed the archway to higher education but fear not! WalletPop is providing you with some great ways to save money on textbooks. The first part of our series covered 5 ways to avoid purchasing a textbook, while still doing all of your homework and reading. This post will help you find the cheapest version of the textbook out there.

As you'll soon find out there are many other places besides the campus bookstore to get your textbooks and companies are finally beginning to offer textbooks in new, exciting and of course CHEAPER ways. The following list will help you locate cheap copies of those books that you need to buy because borrowing just won't cut it.

As anyone who's done a bit of dating can attest, playing the field can be a learning experience. Personally speaking, my years of dating taught me many key things that have helped me greatly in my marriage. I learned that I should never miss a birthday, that leaving the seat down is a great way to say "I love you," and that one needs to deal with problems quickly, honestly, and directly.

My biggest teacher in this regard was Holly. During one Christmas break, she ducked my calls, made cryptic statements about friends that she was seeing, and refused to get into a conversation that lasted more than a few minutes. After about two weeks, she finally admitted that an old boyfriend had proposed to her and that she was dumping me. Later, when I had my own break-ups, I was careful to avoid Holly's mistakes. I tried to make things quick and clear, and I generally sucked it up and did my dirty work face-to-face.

Still, the Holly method is actually pretty popular; in the age of e-Mail, text messaging, and cell phones, it seems somewhat old fashioned to actually conduct one's relationships in person. In fact, between webcams and social networking sites, I'm beginning to wonder if one even needs to actually meet a boyfriend or girlfriend!

A while back, my wife and I passed one of the major landmarks of adulthood: we took out life insurance policies.

While we had both had life insurance before, it was provided by our employers; this, on the other hand, was something that we paid for all by ourselves. While we didn't contract for spousal-murder/film noir levels of insurance, the money should keep our daughter and the surviving spouse covered for a while if the worst should happen. If, by lucky happenstance, we make it to the end of term, we have the option of cashing out the policies and taking a long, long trip.

Recently, I learned about another possibility: if we should manage to live into our sixties, we have the option of selling our life insurance policies. Some companies, including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, purchase life insurance polices, often for as much as 20-30% of the death benefit. As this far outstrips the premium repayment that my wife and I were thinking about, it is a pretty attractive option. Some sites, including Policysettlement, offer estimates on the value of extant life insurance policies.

Nowadays, some students are easily spending $500 or more on textbooks each semester, prompting some professors to provide their new books online for students anywhere to use for free.

Since this is unfortunately not yet the norm in many institutions around the nation, in a few weeks most parents and students will need to crack open the wallet to get ready for a new semester.

Most returning students will already be familiar with the best ways to get the books they need on the cheap, but for incoming freshmen and their parents, this guide will provide a great toolkit for getting the best deal on textbooks.

This video has been around for a while but Rob Gruhl does such an excellent job at explaining how to purchase a car that it is well worth your time even if you aren't in the market just yet. Even though the focus of the talk is on how to buy a new car, you can easily adapt most of this advice to the used car hunt as well. I've lamented my last car purchase on WalletPop before and I wish I had watched this video before we set foot in the dealership last year.

My favorite piece of information from this video is to remember that you as the buyer have the power when you go into the dealership. There were numerous times during out purchasing that we thought things were iffy but we didn't walk because we got too attached to the car and forgot that we held the power in the transaction. Something that I don't think most people realize when they go in to purchase a car is that, unless you are buying a first edition Dodge Charger, there are thousands if not hundreds of thousands of almost identical cars out there for you to purchase.

I wish we had remembered that when we went shopping, instead I got in the mindset that this is the only one we will ever find in our price range and began justifying this and that to ourselves, eventually purchasing the car and getting suckered into GAP insurance and dealer financing. Both of which we ended up switching within a month and saving a bundle. Remember, "If you're doing it right, you'll feel like an ass."

Check out our previous coverage on "How not to buy a car" by Zac Bissonnette

When I was a kid, my parents bought a tract of land near the West Virginia border. Nestled in the Appalachian mountains, in the middle of a huge forest, it was incredibly isolated and incredibly beautiful. Over the next several years, my family worked on building our ideal vacation home. We started with a big basement and a log cabin kit. by the time we sold it, several years later, we had a partially-finished log cabin standing over a completely unfinished basement.

The biggest problem was money. Even the do-it-yourself (with-the-help-of-several-contractors) kit that we bought was fairly expensive, and the construction, bricklaying, staining, chinking, roof-building, and assorted other tasks tacked on a huge amount of money. Beyond that, there was the difficulty of transporting materials to the site, troubles with building a septic field, and assorted other miseries. Over time, the construction became a constant drain on our family finances and we never really finished the cabin.

With that in mind, I was really interested in the International Dome House Company. Constructed from pre-molded industrial-strength Styrofoam pieces, the buildings are designed to be constructed by three people of reasonable strength. They are flame-retardant, typhoon-resistant, and completely unappetizing for termites. On the other hand, they look like igloos or mold cultures. Still, given some imagination, a little bit of time, and a decent paint palette, there really doesn't seem to be any limit to the creative possibilities.

I'm not sure that these buildings are my ideal habitat. However, their energy efficiency, artistic potential, and cheap price ($30,000) makes them very attractive. Now that I think about it, a house that looks like an ice cream sundae might just be perfect...

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. He'd make his sundae home into a banana split if the Dome house people could figure out how to make a gargantuan Styrofoam banana.

A few months ago, I wrote a series of posts on budget funerals, noting that options such as cremation, natural funerals and burial at sea could save a grieving family a lot of money. At the time, my main interest was showing that there are options outside the realm of expensive, traditional funerals. In the ensuing months, however, the economy has gone south in a big way. Since death doesn't take a holiday for recessions, it's been interesting to see what the economic downturn has done for the internment industry.

While many people have opted for reduced-price funerals, the biggest effect of the recent economic woes has been a massive increase in cremations. Mike Nicodemus, a Virginia-based funeral director, noted that 45% of his customers are currently opting for cremation, a major jump over previous years. Similarly, Donald Williams, Vice President of the Bronx's Woodlawn Cemetery, pointed out that cremations generally increase by about 100 per year. This year, however, is on track for an increase of 300.

It's not hard to understand why so many people are looking into cremation. While traditional funeral plots generally cost around $5,000 apiece, cremation is a mere $400. Admittedly, it costs more if one wants to be made into a human reef, reconfigured as a diamond, or shot into space. Even these expensive choices, however, are often cheaper than traditional burials.

With bereaved family members increasingly taking a hard-eyed look at burial expenses, this might be a good time to discuss your burial preferences with your loved ones. I know, for example, that my wife wants to be cremated. She, on the other hand, knows that I want to be mummified, buried with 500 retainers, and permanently interred in a crypt that is big enough to be seen from outer space. I have also put in a request for a fridge full of Woodchuck cider, just in case.

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. His real burial plans are far more modest. He's willing to negotiate down to a mere 100 afterlife retainers, in return for a huge trunk full of twinkies.