dollars and sense

A lot of people are hurting these days because of the slow turn of the global economy. Few places are making them feel the pain of painfully slow growth more than the gas pump. But that doesn’t mean relief can’t unexpectedly happen.

News broke on Monday that Facebook had acquired the popular photo-sharing service Instagram for the princely sum of $1 billion in cash and stock. It’s the biggest purchase in the history of the world’s largest social network, and it made new multimillionaires of Instagram’s chief executive and the company’s handful of employees.

As gas prices rise, consumers often consider switching to smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. But while those cars are usually less expensive than their bigger counterparts, increased demand has resulted in higher sticker prices.

Finding out you’re being audited by the IRS can be pretty scary, especially when you have to meet with an auditor in person. But what if you could deal with the whole mess via video-conferencing from the comfort of your own home?

While educational debt is generally thought to be the problem of younger people, new data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reveals a startling fact: Americans ages 60 and over collectively owe $36 billion in student loans.

If you have a Visa Card, MasterCard or Discover Card, you’d better keep a close eye on your bills. Global Payments, a third-party processor of credit card payments, said Sunday that a data breach it experienced last week may have compromised about 1.5 million card numbers.

Seems there’s a bit of a bright spot on the decimated horizon of the real estate market — it looks a lot better than it did a few years ago. But how long before we see a full recovery?

When you eat at a restaurant, do you notice things like the size of the straws or the way the menu is laid out? You should — they could be costing you money.

The jackpot for the multi-state Mega Millions lottery now stands at $363 million, causing even those who don’t normally play to throw their hopeful hats into the ring for Tuesday night’s drawing. Are there things you can do to boost your chances of winning?

Having a service-related issue that no one can seem to do anything about? You don’t have to take it lying down. Sometimes you just have to escalate matters yourself.

While a depressed economy may be bad for your job prospects, a new study finds it could actually be good for your marriage.

If you can pinch the brass right off a penny, TLC may be looking for you — it’s currently casting for its new reality show, ‘Extreme Cheapskates.’