Was your dog one of the many around the country that ate the tainted pet food last year? You've got until November 24 to file a claim. According to USAToday, only 6,000 pet owners have filed so far, though many times that had dogs that potentially ate the food and got sick. We still don't know how many animals died from the poisoning.

Today (September 12th) is the last day you can file an objection to the $24 million settlement, an amount that upset many dog parents as being far too small.

As you'll recall dogs started getting sick from Menu Food products in February, 2007 and eventually the crisis engulfed 90 pet food brands. After weeks scientists figured out that Chinese manufacturers were substituting the plastic ingredient melamine to boost protein readings.

The settlement money is for "documented, reasonable economic damages" the settlement document says -- for anyone who bought the food. In other words, they're treating pets like just things and not acknowledging how much they hurt both animals and people. The settlement specifically includes "veterinary treatment costs, death-related expenses, deceased pet purchase price or fair market value, whichever is higher, or new pet cost, property damages and other economic costs." They'll give $900 for a claim without documentation.

If you have had a loan, credit card or any other type of credit line in the past 21 years, TransUnion is offering up to 9 months of credit monitoring services as part of a class action lawsuit settlement. You can opt for the basic service which includes 6 months of credit monitoring as well as unlimited access to your credit report and TransUnion credit score. This option allows you to still receive some form of cash from the settlement. If you don't care about the cash portion you can opt for the enhanced service which nets you 9 months of monitoring and a mortgage simulator to help you see what your mortgage rate would be as well as access to your insurance scores.

The credit monitoring service offered by TransUnion provides 24 hour monitoring and email notification of major changes. A credit expert notes that all consumers can benefit from a free credit monitoring service and that TransUnion's credit monitoring is top notch. Experts are less impressed by the mortgage simulator and the offer of a TransUnion score because the number isn't your real FICO score and less than 5%of banks use the TransUnion number. While it isn't the same number the TransUnion score is usually within 40-50 points of your FICO score and may at least alert you if your score is drastically lower than it should be.

While I think this is a good deal for a free service that may prove useful, it's sad that it is only coming about due to a lost lawsuit based on TransUnion's greed. You see back before 2001, TransUnion was selling customer information to marketing lists and others. That's right this credit monitoring is just a way of saying sorry, even though we didn't do anything wrong, for all of that junk mail you used to receive!

You can visit www.listclassaction.com to sign up for your benefits, which you can activate after the court accepts the settlement.

For the last ten years or so, credit card companies have been charging transaction fees on foreign currency purchases, but most cardholders never knew. The fees were hidden in your conversion rate, and you were probably none the wiser.

Were you like me? I traveled abroad and used my credit card for everything. I was told this was the way to get the best currency conversion rate. Except when I got home and looked at my bill, the conversion rate didn't look so hot. And this is the reason why.... the credit cards were charging me fees but hiding them in the conversion rate.

A class action suit was brought, and now we all have a chance to get some of this money back via the $336 million settlement. If you traveled abroad between 1996 and 2006 and used a Visa or Mastercard, you can get at least $25 back. You might get more if you have the right documentation.