Seems like the do-gooder debit card had gotten some serious steam lately over its evil older brother, the credit card, just when many Americans had found a good way to avoid wracking up debt – managing money on a real-time, rather than borrowed, basis. Clearly, the debit card is easier to use and carry than [...]

[Author's Note: After less than a month in existence, the Kardashian "kard" has been pulled, due to exorbitant fees and overall bad press.] Now, Pre-Paid Debit Cards that “Fit Your Lifestyle” I’m not sure what kind of lifestyle a teen is said to have (unless you count their willing parents’ contributions), but if the new [...]

If you have kids in middle school, high school, or you have really precocious grade school kids or kids who collect coins, you can take a free tour of the Federal Reserve Bank (101 Market St.) any Friday at noon. I know I’m a finance geek, but the tour is pretty interesting. Unlike the news, [...]

If you have a PayPal account, you probably got a promotional offer to receive $10 for opening a “student account” (a student is defined by PayPal as age 13 or over) [fill in the blank with the lastest offer]. Tempted? I went ahead and offered myself up as a guinea pig so I could give [...]

You need all the insider information you can get when you are trying to get a mortgage or refinancing an existing loan, whether you live in the pricey Bay Area or even out in the country. I caught up with Dale Robyn Siegel, author of The New Rules for Mortgages, a book designed to educate [...]

Here’s my list of ten local innovative do-good companies Bay Area companies doing cool things in 2009 (and beyond). All the companies below maintain offices or retail stores in the Bay Area. When you support these companies (buy or invest locally), you are helping to create jobs in the local SF Bay Area community, and [...]

There used to be a popular bumper sticker around the Bay Area that said, “It’s Your Town – Slow It Down” – presumably aimed at drivers who were going too fast, especially through small towns on their way to the beach. A different kind of slowing down is happening in culinary circles around the Bay [...]

Dude 1: Dude, come to the concert with us, it’s payday! Dude 2: Dude, I can’t, I have to pay back these payday loans. Dude 1: Dude, just get another one. Dude 2: Oh yeah! Then I’ll have money until next payday! (source: Urban Dictionary) It’s Friday and that means TGIF, cheap beer and payday [...]

The Human Capital Score™ (HCS) combines credit-risk tools and metrics with academic achievement information to generate possible future earnings at two and eight years post-graduation. It was devised by People Capital as a metric to help investors who want to lend in the P2P college loan space. It takes input such as test scores, GPA [...]