Free Republic

Dear Dave, Is it ever a good idea to sell your home and buy a smaller, less expensive one in order to get out of debt more quickly? Autumn Dear Autumn, It’s a good idea in some situations. If you don’t really like the house, or maybe you were thinking about selling it anyway, then I’d say go for it. It would also be a smart move if you simply have too much house and the payments are eating you alive. I usually recommend that your monthly mortgage payment or rent be no more than 25 percent of your take-home...

The Maryland Department of Natural Resources Inland Fisheries (DNR) is hoping so and is offering $200 gift cards through Bass Pro Shops to residents who capture and kill a snakehead, an invasive species from Africa that is upsetting the natural order of the local ecosystem. "We do not want snakeheads in our waters," DNR Director Don Cosden tells FoxNews.com. "This initiative is a way to remind anglers that it is important to catch and remove this invasive species of fish." The snakehead was first seen in Maryland back in 2002, after an 18-inch adult was caught in a local pond....

Lionsgate has already booked a November 2013 release date for the wildly-anticipated sequel to The Hunger Games,Catching Fire. But might the studio have trouble meeting this deadline? The question arises because negotiations aren't going smoothly with director Gary Ross, who executives want to return based on the overwhelmingly positive reviews for the first installment of the franchise. Ross earned $3 million for The Hunger Games - plus back-end profits - and, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter, is angling for a major sequel raise. All other major players have signed on for both Catching Fire and Mockingjay -from Jennifer Lawrence to...

Update: The pictures can no longer be accessed through Facebook. Screen captures can be found below. The Democratic Party’s newly appointed Jewish outreach liaison is pictured on Facebook in a series of provocative photos with her friends holding dollar bills and referring to themselves as “Jewbags” and the “Jew cash money team.” Dani Gilbert, who has been a staffer in the office of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.), was recently appointed as the Democratic National Committee’s Jewish outreach liaison, according to her Twitter feed. Photos publicly available on her Facebook page depict her engaged in the kind of youthful...

March 31, 2012: Last night ONE PERSON won the $650 MILLION Mega Millions Lottery . . . and one woman took to Twitter to BRAG about winning. The woman, a model named Melissa claims that SHE WON - and she posted pics of her lottery ticket.

Dear Dave, I want to keep one of our credit cards open and use the bill-pay option for utilities and other monthly bills. I want to do this so we can continue earning rewards points, and the way I look at it, we’d just be re-routing the money and paying it off every month. My husband doesn’t like this idea and thinks we should get rid of them all. Am I just asking for trouble by wanting to keep the rewards card open?CherylDear Cheryl,Yes, you are. Life never works out exactly the way you think it will. You can make...

Two suitcases crammed with counterfeit $100 bills were seized in Kuala Lumpur this week from two Iranian traders who flew in to the Malaysian capital on direct flights from Tehran. One contained 153,000 forged dollars and the second 203,000. The traders claimed they were issued the bills by tellers at the Iranian central bank CBI to finance their business transactions and had no notion they had not been dealt genuine greenbacks.

Capitol Hill lawmakers want to change the color of money amid growing concerns about the federal deficit and the constant pressure for Washington to live within its means. The House and Senate each have introduced legislation that would replace the dollar bill with a $1 coin. “Change can be difficult,” Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., said. “But doing things as we’ve always done has contributed to our debt. We've got to latch on to any reasonable handhold we can find to climb out of this hole.” This is not the first time Washington has considered eliminating the paper dollar, which became...

Dear Dave, Is there some way to put a block on a credit report prior to sending a kid to college, so that the credit card hustlers can’t get to them?TrevorDear Trevor,No, there’s not. Unfortunately, in today’s culture that’s part of becoming an adult. When you hand them car keys there’s no way to put a block on how they drive. And when they turn 21, there’s no way to put a block on what they ingest.About the only thing you can do is to teach your kids to the best of your ability, and be a good parent and...

A Day in the Life of a Financial Advisorby: seyah21

MADISON — While organized labor’s strength may be waning overall, public-sector unions are retaining their numbers and pumping up their power to push public policy at the taxpayers’ expense, according to a new report by a conservative, free-market think tank. The Manhattan Institute’s pointed report, “Dues and Deep Pockets: Public-Sector Unions’ Money Machine,” released Wednesday, doesn’t mince words. Public-sector unions, unlike other advocacy organizations in the political process, have used mandatory revenue and membership streams through “dues checkoff” rules and “agency shop” laws to build their political base and push policies that sustain themselves and government benefits at ballooning public...

40% of American women now earn more than their husbands. and the number is growing...fast. How should a blue-collar husband and father react when his college-educated wife begins making twice his salary? Will ambitious women begin to want more of their mates than the men expect of themselves? In The Richer Sex, Liza Mundy draws on the latest research and the experiences of men and women across America to examine what happens when women become the breadwinners. The big unpleasant question, Mundy says, is just how much will the tables turn? Will it be some men who wait at home...

How they campaign is how they govern — and vice versa. So it should come as no surprise that political pros are beginning to wonder if President Obama’s campaign is running out of money, even though he is unopposed in the Democratic primaries. Last week he brought in Bill Clinton to help him raise money. Ouch. Obama is Justin Bieber hoping to be saved by ‘N Synch. Follow the money. I did. Barack Obama sure is spending a lot of money: $63,236,869 through January 31. That left him $75,953,128 in the bank. He already has spent 45 cents of every...

Money and math are two of my very favorite topics because I am always shocked by how little people seem to know about either one (including me). For instance, there is always an assumption that if the government is spedning money that is "targeted" at a particular sector that the sector in question will be stimulated. This is pablum aimed at vast swaths of people who don't grasp the following: Money is fungible. Allow me to illustrate. I want to give my teenage daughter some money but I only want her to use it for gas and not collectible Harry Potter figurines. I give...

Budgeting is not easy. Despite how simple it sounds, it’s not always easy to create a budget that can account for everything and still be easy to stick to. One of the biggest mistakes we made early on was not being honest with ourselves. We would budget too small of an amount for some things and completely ignore others. This led to a lot of frustration because we would never have the money left at the end of the month to put towards debt that we expected. The problem was that we wanted to see as big of a number...

Unfunded liabilities tied to public employee pension plans are bankrupting communities and school districts and are doing so without much attention from state officials, says Michael J. Hicks, director of the Bureau of Business Research at Ball State University, and an adjunct scholar with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Politicians don’t address the issue because the effects of the promises they or their predecessors made come long after they leave office. But it is urgent that the unfunded liabilities of state pension funds be addressed immediately, Hicks said at a March 7 speech in Lansing sponsored by the Mackinac...

YouTubeWell this seems sure to be the buzzy Wall Street story of the day. It's also sure to be another PR nightmare for Goldman Sachs. Greg Smith, a Goldman Sachs executive director and head of the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, has announced he's quitting the firm in a most public manner: He did so by writing a long NYT op-ed denouncing what the firm has become. After nearly 12 years, he says, the place is as "toxic and destructive" as he's ever seen it. He slams the culture under Lloyd...

Supermarkets are designed to promote impulse buying by leading shoppers through a maze of aisles. But something incredible has happened since the recession. Shoppers are going only to select aisles. And this is killing store margins. UBS cites research from Kantar Retail: Consumers are not going down most aisles at the frequency they used to. Today, the more common way to shop is to only go down select aisles. 50% of consumers shop this way, which is a 6% increase since 2008. Consumers are highly focused on specific sales and specific coupons when shopping conventional supermarkets. This strongly suggests consumers...

President Obama, America’s basketball-fan-in-chief, brought British Prime Minister David Cameron to Dayton, Ohio, this evening to take in one of America’s favorite sporting events: the NCAA basketball tournament. Obama and Cameron, dressed casually in slacks and jeans, respectively, watched courtside as Western Kentucky defeated Mississippi Valley State in the opener of the men’s tournament at the University of Dayton.

The Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF) announced today that it has launched a new 30-second television spot highlighting the conservative record of Don Stenberg, candidate for U.S. Senate in Nebraska.