Headline News Archive

2012

January

12

• 'Hactivists' decried as new breed of censor. Global affairs website Stratfor relaunched Wednesday, three weeks after hacktivists put it in the dark. The Statfor caper serves notice about a troublesome new strain…

11

• January airfares at cheapest levels in 12 months. Need to recover from the holidays? With airfare at its lowest point in a year, now is the best time to get away. Even though…

10

• Suze Orman’s new prepaid card makes questionable claims. Renowned financial advisor and author Suze Orman is the latest in a long line of celebrities to release a branded prepaid debit card. The “Approved…

• Free tax prep out of Walmart. Ugh, taxes again? Yeah, unfortunately it’s time the tax talks start happening. For those who want to get the tax preparation process out of the…

• E-payments rapidly phasing out paper checks. Even in this fast-paced, high-tech electronic age, some of us prefer letters to e-mails, phone calls to texts, and one-on-one conversations — ideally, over a…

• Some doctors charge your credit card number upfront. After a year abroad, my daughter came home last summer, unusually fatigued and with more severe asthma symptoms than when she left. After a thorough…

07

• Weekend Money Watch: How to secure steady retirement income. Q: What is the best vehicle for a steady income stream in retirement? A: The best vehicle for the creation of an income stream in…

• Resolutions: Use these three steps to set up a budget. One of the most popular New Year's resolutions is to get on a budget and stay there. Yet many people don't accomplish even the first…

06

• Gasoline prices start the year at a high — and rising. Not only are we worrying about the end of the world in 2012 — thanks, Maya calendar makers — but this also may be the…

05

• Harder for Americans to rise from lower rungs. Benjamin Franklin did it. Henry Ford did it. And American life is built on the faith that others can do it, too: rise from humble…

• Obama appoints Cordray to head consumer watchdog bureau. In a bold act of political defiance, President Obama installed Richard Cordray as head of a new consumer watchdog agency Wednesday, bypassing Republican opposition in…

04

• Free credit information that's positively 100 percent free. Most offers for “free” financial information come with strings attached. Usually that means automatic enrollment in some sort of ongoing service. That’s why they want…

• Plan ahead now for next season's holiday shopping. Who among us didn't make at least a couple of holiday spending and shopping mistakes? Whether it's forgetting what you already bought — and buying…

03

• BofA severing some small-business credit lines. Bank of America Corp. under pressure to raise capital and cut risks, is severing lines of credit to some small-business owners who have used them…

• Airfare ads must include taxes, fees. Fly from Albuquerque to Tucson on Southwest Airlines for $59. Jet from Asheville, N.C., to Orlando, Fla., on Allegiant Air for $49. Fly from Boston…

• Better not to claim Social Security benefits early. The U.S. economy has made modest gains recently. Consumer confidence rose during the fall, and the stock market has stabilized. Meanwhile, employment appears poised to…

02

• If you resolve to pay off credit cards this year, do it right. Many consumers this New Year will resolve to pay off their credit cards, and their intentions are in the right place. But, according to a…

• Bamboozled: scams, banking problems, questionable deals. Economic uncertainty was the source of many consumer complaints in 2011. Unscrupulous contractors, bureaucratic banks and plain old scammers took big chunks out of the…

01

• Consumer protection made big gains in 2011. The last year was a remarkable one for consumer protection. Among the wins: A new watchdog agency opened for business, regulators cracked down on a…

2011

December

31

• New year will bring new laws and regulations for small business. Small-business owners will be greeted Jan. 1 with dozens of new laws and regulations. In California, they will include new mandates concerning employees, including a…

29

• What to do with your old cellphones, cameras and computers. If this holiday season was all about upgrading for you -- upgrading to a better computer, phone or camera -- then it's time to think…

• Incandescent light bulb phaseout begins Jan. 1. The nation's light bulbs begin facing new efficiency and labeling standards starting Jan. 1, but don't expect old-fashioned incandescents to suddenly disappear from store shelves.…

28

• Santa do you wrong? Gift return tips. No need to hurry to redeem those gift cards — no matter how many e-mail reminders you get — but think twice before you dawdle…

• The biggest cut in unemployment benefits. While Congress has been debating whether to cut the duration of unemployment benefits, perhaps the largest unemployment benefit cut occurred when the stimulus law expired.…

27

• Time Warner Cable's price going up again. Happy holidays. Your cable rates are going up. Again. In its most Grinch-like fashion, Time Warner Cable, the dominant cable company in Southern California, is…