Wealth

When it comes to the economy, there's no silver bullet. However, if you're trying to formulate a plan to bring your personal finances out of a recession, experts say you've got to do some number crunching.

Tracking certain economic indicators can help you decide the most opportune time to buy or sell a home, expect a raise, or how to distribute your 401(k). With hundreds of indicators fighting to garner your attention it can be confusing to know which ones mean the most to you.

Ken and Daria Dolan, America's first family of personal finance, answer your questions every Friday.

Click here to ask Ken and Daria your question.

Every Friday, Ken and Daria answer a question from a WalletPop reader. This week, they tackle a question that has come from dozens of WalletPoppers: Where is the best place to invest my money now? If you're wondering what's ahead for the market and your investments in the new year, you'll want to watch today's video!

You can get Ken and Daria's personal finance advice every day at Dolans.com or follow them on Facebook.

I'm sure Terrance Watanabe expected his luck to turn around soon with every step he took toward losing nearly $127 million at the tables in Las Vegas.

It never happened, and now the former millionaire is in a desperate legal battle with Harrah's over the $14.7 million the casino company claims it advanced Watanabe, money he failed to repay. His counterclaim states that the casino kept him liquored up and supplied with pain meds to keep him in the game.

He is by no means the only mega-loser in the gambling world, though. Other big-time marks include:

Despite the recession, it's still possible to make money fast. In fact, you can make millions in a matter of months. It starts when you turn on an iPhone.

Apple's genteel TV ads would have you believe that the little programs you can buy for the iPhone or the iPod Touch, called "apps," are sober-minded, highly constructive tools. In truth, though, some of the biggest profits for the people who make those little programs are pointless time-killers. Invent the right one, and you can take boredom to the bank.

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.

Sorry, entrepreneurs. You're going to have to find another magic wand to bestow magical sales upon you. The Huffington Post reports that Oprah Winfrey has decided not to do her annual "Favorite Things" giveaway episode.

For the past seven years, the big O aired her orgy of consumerist passions around Thanksgiving week, and the publicity routinely sent audiences and manufacturers into fits of apoplectic joy.

But this year, apparently because the recession has proved intractable, Oprah has realized that such a celebratory spending frenzy is not in order. Last year, she toned down the unmitigated opulence of the telecast, choosing affordable goodies and broadcasting from the unlikely locale of Macon, Ga.

This year, she has pulled the plug entirely -- just a week after pulling the plug on the series itself, which is now set to end in 2011.

With Oprah backing out of her current television series, we hereby enter the period of Lame Duck Oprah, in which the seismically powerful culture force realigns herself for her future role. Is the elimination of her "Favorite Things" a harbinger of the new, yet-to-be revealed Oprah? Or is it merely a calculation designed to telegraph empathy for the hard times so many of us are having?

If money doesn't bring happiness, why do we devote so much of our energy chasing it? Perhaps the old adage is flawed, but not according to a study recently completed at the Universities of Warwick and Manchester, UK, which found that psychological therapy is 32 times more likely than money to bring you happiness.

The study compared the change in happiness of people who had gone through therapy to those who had received a windfall of money, such as lottery winnings. The results showed that people would have to receive over £25,000 ($40,000) in cash to bring as much happiness as they could get from four months of counseling, the cost of which was estimated at £800 ($1,320).

The results don't surprise me, given the sad tales of what happens to many lottery winners. What did surprise me, though, was another conclusion the study's authors, Chris Boyce and Alex Wood, drew from the results. Instead of giving big cash awards for pain and suffering to plaintiffs in civil suits, they speculated that courts might do more good by awarding the plaintiffs some couch time with a psychologist.

The idea surely won't please attorneys who specialize in injury suits. They, I suspect, still believe that more money brings more happiness.

Remember the days when gold credit cards were the gold standard? Then platinum credit cards became the new mark of exclusivity. Since then, the platinum of platinum credit cards have morphed into black, clear, blue, plum, titanium and every other color imaginable in the status rainbow. How do you choose?

The good news is platinum credit cards are more available to average consumers. You don't need the highest income or credit scores to qualify for members only benefits, but generally just need a solid credit history and a FICO above 650. If you pass the criteria, you can earn platinum credit card points redeemable for prizes and merchandise, tap customer service benefits, accrue frequent flyer miles, get discounts and reap cashback bonuses. Most platinum credit cards also guarantee over-the-limit services, so you'll never again have to deal with the embarrassment of getting your card declined.

Let's take a look at some of the best platinum credit cards on the market.

The Queen of daytime talk shows has announced she is calling it quits after 2010. Oprah says, "ending the show feels right in my bones." She goes on to further explain how next season, the 25th, will be bigger and better than ever as she says goodbye to her fans.

What Oprah has "right to the bone" is an entrepreneurial talent to know how to maximize the bucks. She is able to get tons of publicity and interest by announcing the end of the show, thus guaranteeing good ratings and exposure for the Oprah brand. Oprah has amassed a large fortune with her company Harpo Productions, (Oprah spelled backwards), and is one of the richest people in the world, with a rating of 234 on Forbes Billionaire List.

Oprah took a fledgling local show and launched The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1986. Her show is now seen in 144 countries and brings in 44 million US viewers each week. Her production company, Harpo produces Dr. Phil, Rachael Ray, and is adding a show hosted by frequent guest Dr. Oz. She partnered the Oprah Winfrey Network with Discovery with a launch set for late 2009 or early 2010. And Harpo Films just inked a cable deal with HBO after 15 years at ABC.

There have been a lot of reports about which group of people have been hit hardest by the recession. Men have definitely been hit disproportionately hard by job losses. In fact, men held 71.9% of the jobs lost since the recession began, hurt by mass layoffs in construction and manufacturing, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

I've even written about how more households are relying on female breadwinners after husbands were laid off.

But single women -- many of whom are mothers or caregivers -- who get laid off don't have a second income to rely on while they hunt for a new job.

Who doesn't have an unmarried friend who lost the house, or at least their investment in the condo, when the relationship went sour?

The key question when buying property together, according to a new book -- "Living Together: A Legal Guide for Unmarried Couples" -- seems pretty simple: Does your legal relationship match your private agreement?

But who wants to have that conversation when you are newly in love, or at least new to nesting?

No one, the book's author admitted to WalletPop.

Looking for someone to help you manage your money? All too often money managers are more interested in making a sale rather then helping you with your financial future. Financial guru Suze Orman gives 10 warning signs of a bad financial advisor you need to be on the look out for.

Click here to read more!

Another week and another round of the national guessing game: when exactly will the Great Recession's alleged end impact me? Or my children? Or my neighbors? The "too big to fail" banking crowd has gotten lots of help from D.C. But the jobless rate, despite a decline of late in layoffs, continues to go skyward, or, in the words of that most famous working-class stiff Ralph Kramer to his wife, Alice, "to the moon!"

"This will be a very slow recovery," says Jack Kyser, founder of the Kyser Center for Economic Research at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation. In a telephone interview with WalletPop, Kyser said that "small- and medium-sized businesses still can't get loans from banks." It is, says Kyser, "the perfect stalemate" -- unemployment continues to rise, businesses (especially smaller ones) suffer, and banks don't want to risk lending out their money.

This is the fourth part of a five-part series about how the writer and her husband, Charlie, tackled a major overhaul of their home and the pitfalls they faced along the way. To read the first installment click here.

We continue to eat dust and stumble through piles of stuff. In spite of the inconveniences, I was starting to feel positive about the progress -- that is, until a large semi-truck pulled up to deliver the dome that goes over the tub.

Rick, our contractor, and my husband soon discovered the dome weighed close to 400 pounds. With daggers in their eyes, they asked, "And just how are we suppose to get this thing out?" Fortunately. I remembered reading on the website that the dome was actually quite light -- it was the packing that was so heavy. Grumbling and swearing under their breath, they emerged about 15 minutes later with a fiberglass dome to be temporarily stored in the living room.

Tom's Take: It always makes sense to add the cost of a few visits with your chiropractor to every home improvement budget.

The world has a new poker champ -- whose life story may inspire people to pursue their dreams of being a professional gambler -- but don't let the tale of Joe Cada fool you into following his career path.

Cada, 21, won the $8.55 million jackpot in the World Series of Poker, making him the youngest winner of the event.

Cada started playing poker on the Internet when he was 16, and he was so good at math that he later dropped out of community college to pursue a career as a professional gambler.

It's not a career path that Cada recommends anyone follow, although speaking to the Detroit Free Press from his high-roller, 9,000-square-foot suite at the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas is an odd place in which to be doling out that type of career advice.