dollars and sense

More employees wish their employers would just skip the holiday party this Christmas season and show their appreciation with cold hard cash instead, according to a recent survey by career site Glassdoor.

A good tip for bargain hunters: check retailer’s websites before you actually venture out to one of their brick-and-mortar locations.

With all the fees airlines have been packing on in the past couple years, it may seem that tickets are impossibly expensive. But there are times when it’s cheaper to buy them — and those times are fast approaching.

Even the best writers sometimes misspell things, but if you’ve recently gotten an awkwardly worded, typo-laden email that appears to be from daily deal site Groupon, you can rest assured that you didn’t just catch the editors on a bad day. That spelling-challenged missive is the work of scammers.

Beef lovers will soon feel the effects of the worst drought in 50 years as the price of meat rises sharply in the coming months. The ongoing drought gripping two-thirds of the country has caused crops to wither and sent the cost of feed soaring. Experts say this will cause meat prices to skyrocket.

Before you sign up for a new credit card, wouldn’t it be great to know which companies have the happiest customers? Thanks to a new publicly-available complaint database, now you will — and much of the work has already been done for you.

Many financial experts advise keeping at least three months of living expenses squirreled away in case of an emergency, but how many Americans actually do it?

Savvy consumers know having a higher credit score means getting a lower interest rate and paying less over the life of a loan — but how much less?

Money may be tight for lots of Americans, but that doesn’t mean we’ve lost our spirit of giving. A new study says we actually gave more to non-profits and charities in 2011 than in the year prior — but we’re still way off from the donations seen in 2007.

In the past couple of years, some consumers have opted to skip using their credit cards in favor of putting things like school clothes or holiday gifts on layaway. Now retail giant Sears is offering something else you can put on layaway: vacations.

There are many reasons why the idea behind prohibition not only failed miserably in this country, but has been long since buried deep in the American archives alongside slavery and the powdered wig.

Lots of people eat well and clock time at the gym to keep themselves healthy. But as it turns out, your well-being is tied to more than just your physical state.