Screw NetFlix and Blockbuster! The future of movies, and TV for that matter, is online. Everything is going digital these days and Hollywood is slowly catching on. Fortunately for us, the virtual trend is affordable. Scratch that, it's more like free! Below are some really movies online for free:

• The Times of Harvey Milk is available on Hulu. This Oscar-winning documentary covers the successful career and tragic assassination of San Francisco's first openly gay man to be elected to office. (Hulu's movie description). This is a great documentary that follows the political path of Harvey Milk, an important figure who fought for civil rights. The first two minutes of this film is available on YouTube.
  

• Living With Lew is available on SnagFilms. A heart warming movie about a man living with Lou Gehrig's Disease. Watch as he copes with this medical condition and maintains his humor and lives his dreams.The trailer of this film is available on YouTube.
  

• Slacker is available on Joost. A social experiment of "slackers". You know, the outcasts of society made up of hippies, students, criminals, philosophers, bloggers, and the unemployed. All characters end up meeting each other, and the result...well, I won't ruin it for you.

So, as you take the time to unwind for this weekend, check out these free movies! WalletPop always has you covered. Enjoy!

Sometimes when you need to get something done, asking just won't cut it. As a company that moves around plenty of money, Paypal may know this better than anyone ... which is possibly why it launched a new service called Do Stuff For Money.

Its premise is simple: Post an offer to a friend to do something, in exchange for money, which you'll then presumably pay with Paypal.

Making an offer is easy enough: simply enter your name and the friend you want to do your bidding, as well as the task at hand, and you're good to go. You can email your generous offer direct to your friend, or send it via Facebook, where it's posted on your wall, and makes the offer a little more public.

In a thought-provoking column in Jeffrey Tierney's blog, Geoffrey Miller, author of a new book on consumer behavior, asked readers to make two lists; one of the 10 most expensive items they'd ever paid for (including services, experiences, taxes, divorce settlements, etc.) and one of the 10 things they'd paid for and had made them most happy. In a follow-up column, Miller and Tierney analyze the 207 comments.

Unfortunately, due to the great number of times those lists overlapped, the two decide that money does buy happiness (or, money buys cognitive dissonance, which is more likely in my opinion).

More interesting, I thought, were the items that appeared most often on one list, but not the other. Two that appeared on the "most expensive" list frequently, but not so much on the "happiness" list: cars (including insurance, gas and maintenance) and wedding ceremonies.

On the other end of the spectrum, appearing far more often on the "happiness" list and not on the "most expensive" list were bicycles (of all kinds, from commuter bikes to mountain bikes) and meals shared with friends, from dinner parties to potlucks.

Don't be fooled by the compact size of Jonathan Clements' new book, "The Little Book of Main Street Money: 21 Simple Truths that Help Real People Make Real Money." This small book -- part of Wiley's "Little Book Big Profits" series -- packs a good dose of practical financial advice to help you weather this brutal economy and work toward building wealth. Because the chapters are short, the book can probably be read by many people in a day.

Clements, a former Wall Street Journal personal finance columnist, offers 21 easy-to-understand principles based upon the financial philosophy he has developed over the years. His advice goes beyond simple money management and offers tips for living a more fulfilled life. The book's nuggets of valuable information include "We can't have it all," "Our Finances Are Bigger than a Brokerage Account," Time Is as Valuable as Money" and "Markets May Be Rational, but We Aren't."

Remember filing out your FAFSA form for federal aid in college?

When I completed mine for the first time, it was complex and time consuming. Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, asks more than 153 questions depending on criteria for first-time applicants.

This high level of intimidation leaves many students feeling overwhelmed. Some choose to hire a private financial aid consultant to complete their FAFSA for a fee, others seek help from their college's financial aid office, but many students either choose to take out private loans when they are actually eligible for financial aid.

Then there's always the unfortunate event when a student is immersed with fear about financing their college education, and just decide not to bother.

In an effort to ease the FAFSA process, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has announced some plans to tackle this issue. Under this proposed plan, students will be able to skip irrelevant questions, and some families can use tax related information that was already given to the IRS.

This plan is the latest attempt to encourage more low- to middle-income students to apply for federal aid. I think that the less complex the FAFSA form is the better.

However, the current system provides good support. The online application guides students through every step and financial aid counselors offer some useful advice.

I can understand why some families may feel intimidated by going through a process in hopes of receiving aid in the end. I would argue that during bad economic times, the uncertainty of receiving enough federal aid will influence families to gather up all of their documents and apply.

One rainy evening in New York, I was lucky enough to happen upon a CRT/tanaka sponsored benefit for L.E.A.D. Uganda. The organization, founded by photojournalist Stephen Shames, funds the education of young people in Uganda. The non-profit helps AIDS orphans, former child soldiers and laborers become leaders, get a basic education and win scholarships to continue their education at elite institutions. Shames has changed the lives of hundreds of people, and by accident, he's doing it in style.

At the event I purchased three necklaces made by one of the mothers of a student in Uganda. Shames says he bought them just out of consideration for her work and needs. He didn't expect them to take-off, but I have a feeling they're going to.

The necklaces are just so beautiful and unique and the majority of the proceeds go to a good cause. I've been wearing these Hope Necklaces nearly every day since I bought them and even sported a light-yellow strand onstage as the moderator for Walletpop's panel with the Huffington Post. Fellow Walletpopper, Ariston Anderson, a master of the sample sale, charged up to me at the event and started fiddling with my necklace. "Where'd you get this!"

Since I've been benefiting from the Hope Necklaces, I thought I'd spread the message that guilt-free shopping does exist. We come up with all sorts of excuses for spending money on the way we look and here's one: you're putting children, on the brink of survival, through school and helping them become leaders of their communities so that they too can change lives for the better.

As part of my participation in the personal finance bloggers weight loss challenge I decided to investigate what weight loss expenses I could pay for with my Health Savings Account (HSA).

The short answer is no, you can't use your health savings account to cover the cost of getting in shape but there are a few exceptions.

After taking my most pressing question, "Is the fact that my doctor told me I should lose weight at my last appointment enough to make a weight loss class eligible to be paid by my health savings account?" to several experts I asked Fred Adams, "The HSA Expert", to give it to me straight.

HP just announced a new printer that prints directly from the Internet. It's like an iPhone interface met a piece of office equipment, fell in love, got married and flipped off the matchmaker (in this case, the computer).

It's being billed as the world's first Web-connected computer. There are a lot of great wireless features like movie tickets from Fandango and photos printed directly from online sites, but the one HP executives were practically giddy about is the ability to print coupons directly from Coupons.com.

Pretty much everyone owns a digital camera now. Even your grandma, although she may not understand how to work it. But most of us are still using them exactly the way we used those old Kodak cameras: for souvenirs. They're best for that, of course, but there are other money-saving and life-saving tricks you can use them for.

1. When you accept a rental car
Take pictures of your new car from every angle before you drive it off the lot. In addition to the prior paper damage report you sign when you check out the vehicle, those images can serve as proof of its condition should your rental company try to pull a fast one and charge you for damage that wasn't there, or to claim you came back with a dent that was worse than what you left with. Make sure you get the license plate in there.

Though he was weaned from his mother's chauffeur services on his 10-speed, and actually spent some time in the early '90s as a bike messenger, my husband is a bit of a car addict.

One of the reasons I was eager to forgo our car three years ago when we started the "low car diet" (which quickly became a total car-free life) was his nasty habit of driving to the grocery store... three blocks away. And don't get me started on his eagerness to give people rides clear across the city.

But when we found out he'd be going to Iraq this summer; changing our financial situation from just north of "desperate" to a few ticks shy of "flush," he began to sneak this phrase into conversation: "I've been thinking when I come back, we could use some of my money to get a hybrid..." Or this one: "If I get that job as a cop I could drive to work in a hybrid..."

"No!" I'd say, firmly. "No cars!" I love the money we save, $200-300 per month just in gas, insurance and tags; I love that we have to think carefully about all our bike trips, keeping us closer to home; I love my conscience, clean as the air around me as I bike.

So Thursday morning, when some nice people from Ford's social media test drive program delivered us the sparkliest Escape Hybrid you've ever seen, I immediately gathered the two boys nearby and drove off -- before he could arrive home and suddenly remember his uncle (0.75 miles away) needed his groceries carried upstairs; or his friend (0.23 miles away) hadn't chatted in a while; or that we desperately needed to take the cans back to Safeway for recycling (0.4 miles away).


But before we hit the road to pick up film (3.7 miles away: this is how you do it, honey!) and take my four-year-old to preschool, I took a gander at the rundown on our car... $33,725 including "destination and delivery" for the model in our driveway. But "THIS VEHICLE NOT FOR SALE," said the page. At least there's that...

Long before frugal living and keeping your finances tight became part of the daily life of making due during the recession, the Amish had it covered.

They watch what they spend, learn to save at an early age, are entrepreneurs, and have a network of friends and family to help in emergencies.

When is the last time you saw a homeless Amish person? Never. Why? Because they have a social network in their church that helps provide for members who are having a tough time.

While it helps to have severance, a working spouse, parents who will give you cash, or money set aside for such emergencies, "funemployment" is a great way to be unemployed if you can afford it.

A recent Los Angeles Times story about the term points out that the happily jobless tend to be single and in their 20s and 30s. Instead of filling out job applications and networking, they're volunteering, returning to school and taking cheap vacations. San Francisco Weekly recently profiled the term.

While it's no surprise that not working can be fun, especially if you have money from some other source, what's happily surprising to me is how the "funemployed" embrace their new lifestyle, at least until the money runs out.

During the almost one year of being unemployed myself, I've taken a weekday here and there to enjoy, but nothing like the stories I've come across or some of the people I know who are out of work.

Here are some examples of how the funemployed are getting by, as discussed in a WalletPop podcast "Your Job Will Come," a weekly discussion looking for work.

How much interest are you earning on your savings account? Checking? Now when was the last time you checked that amount?

You may be surprised to find out just how low you're "High Yield" online savings account's rate has slipped over the past year. Since banks aren't required to inform you of every rate change the way credit card companies are it can be hard to track how hard your money is working for you but thanks to BankFox you can now get e-mail alerts anytime your rate changes.

According to BankFox founder Josh Schanker, "Even people who think they know their rate are often surprised when they discover what they're actually earning."

The television Powers That Be have made true castaways of Jeff Probst and company. To save money, CBS will produce back-to-back seasons of Survivor in the same locale, forcing the production crew to spend four months on location instead of the usual six weeks.

Usually, the show shoots once around June and once in the fall. But rather than move the 80 containers of cargo it takes to produce each elaborate season of the show, TheInsider.com says, Survivor producer Mark Burnett elected to maroon the production in the South Pacific for double duty, with only a short break between competitions.

"This season we're doing back-to-back seasons is because of budget cuts, and that's just the truth," Probst told Reality Blurred. "We are having to do two seasons to save money, because every television show is undergoing some sort of a cut."

A recent survey by online banking business HSBC Direct reports that people who are longtime active savers are enduring this economic downtown virtually unscathed.

Nearly half, or 46%, said they remain comfortable with their financial situation and have not had to cut back on spending, eating out or making large purchases. By contrast, 37% of non-active or periodic savers said they had to scale back on living expenses.

The old adage of saving for a "rainy day" is still good wisdom. But how many people are really willing to save? According to the survey, 85% were wiling to save more and spend less in order to get through the recession but more than 76% indicated they would return to old ways once the economy improves.

The survey also showed that most active savers started at a young age with the "saving" value taught early by their parents. Makes me wonder how many parents are teaching the value of saving in this age of "affuensa."