Logan Abbott

Let’s start with the bottom line here:    Don’t take out a loan or advance on the tax refund that you are expecting.   Period.  End of story.   If you want your money quickly, just file electronically and tell the IRS to direct deposit your refund to your bank account.  If you made $56,000 or less in 2008, you may qualify to file your federal taxes for free.  If you do direct deposit, and there

Although our mission is to save consumers money on household services, that information is of little value to someone lying in the hospital or worse.   To that end, we present this widget from the Food & Drug Administration to help you figure out if those peanut butter crackers in the back of your closet are affected by the salmonella outbreak.

This Sunday, February 15th, Verizon will launch a new feature on select rate plans called "Friends & Family". Similar to programs at T-Mobile (MyFaves) and Alltel (My Circle) -- now owned by Verizon -- customers will be allowed to select a group of numbers to whom they can make and receive calls, without the airtime counting against their monthly allowance.

The Kindle 2 from Amazon is now available. The original Kindle has been a huge favorite since its launch in late 2007, letting consumers download books wirelessly. (For those interested, Amazon uses the Sprint 3G data network; there is no charge to consumers for the wireless service used).

MetroPCS, which offers unlimited local calling in plans ranging from $30 to $50 per month, has now launched service in New York City and Boston areas. The New York coverage area goes from a line roughly from New Brunswick and Paterson, NJ eastward through the 5 boroughs of New York City through the western half of Long Island, including Islip and Smithtown.

The Samsung Memoir (T929) is expected later this month. It will sport an 8 megapixel camera with 16x zoom, far better than the best camera phones currently on the market. The Memoir (aka the SGH-T929) will offer high speed data, a full HTML browser, a touchscreen QWERTY keyboard and expandable memory.

Do you text message? If you do, and you aren't on a text messaging plan with your carrier (or have free messaging as part of your rate plan), you are likely wasting money. This is the case even if you are sending or receiving just one text message a day. If you are sending & receiving just 4 messages a day, you could be overpaying to the tune of $200 per year.

Recommendations:

Recommendations:

Recommendations:

1. Check your break-even point on a refinance
2. Refinance (if it makes sense) while rates are low

Annual Savings Potential: Can be thousands of dollars/year