Did you know that kids between the ages of 5 and 14 are four times more likely to be hit by a car and killed on Halloween night than on any other night? If you’ve got kids, then be sure to take a look at this quick list of five Halloween safety tips and put them into practice. While pretty much all of them are common sense, they’re definitely worth keeping in mind just the same. [more]

In honor of Halloween, MSN/Money has some suggestions for frugal, healthy Halloween treats. If you ask me, you can’t go wrong with chocolate (and lots of it), but not everyone is on board with the whole junk food thing. Be forewarned… Most of these suggestions actually suck pretty badly, and would leave me disappointed if I were to trick-or-treat at your house. But what are the odds that I’ll actually show up on your doorstep? So if you’re looking to shake things up, then read on… [more]

This one comes from the ‘what goes around comes around’ files… An Oregon woman who allegedly used a stolen credit card to buy a lottery ticket that turned out to be worth $1M will wind up with nothing if she’s convicted. Apparently she lifted the credit card from her mother-in-law, who died over a year ago, and is now up on a variety of charges including theft, forgery, and methamphetamine possession. Aside from being amused by this story, I was also quite surprised to learn that you can charge lottery tickets in Oregon. Many (most?) other state-run lotteries have the good sense to restrict sales via credit cards.

I just ran across a fun little tool for estimating the value of your blog. This calculator uses: (1) the dollar-to-link ratio of the AOL-Weblogs, Inc. deal, and (2) the number of incoming links that your site has (according to Technorati). Despite being wildly inaccurate, it’s kind of fun to play around with. Now I just need to find someone willing to pay me $47,985.90 for this site! So… What’s your site worth?

The other day I noted that we’re in the process of opening an Emigrant Direct savings account. Just two days after applying, the small deposits (and withdrawals) have now been made, and I’ve logged in and verified the amounts. Next up… Emigrant will pull the initial deposit from our linked account and then mail us a letter with our account number and instructions for accessing our account online. So now we wait.

Acccording to recent reports, the feds will require bank web sites to strengthen their security precautions for internet customers. To this end, bank web sites are expected adopt some sort of “two-factor” authentication scheme by the end of 2006. In other words, customers will soon have to verify their identity using both a password (or PIN) and some sort of physical item, such as a hardware token that produces constantly changing access codes, or perhaps a ’smart’ card that the customer inserts into a card reader attached to their computer. [more]

President Bush has nominated Ben Bernanke to replace the venerable Alan Greenspan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. According to Bernanke, his main priority will be to “maintain continuity with the policies and policy strategies established during the Greenspan years.” That being said, Bernanke favors adopting formal inflation goals to help guide interest-rate policies, whereas Greenspan is opposed the setting of such targets, as they tend to restrict the Fed’s ability to act. Regardless of this difference in opinion, the stock market responded favorably to the news, notching its biggest one-day gain in six months. Greenspan, who is 79, is set to step down on January 31, 2006.

[Source: National Business Review]

Well, I finally got around to opening a savings account at Emigrant Direct. I’ve been keeping an eye on interest rates in general, and have finally decided that it’s time to stop settling for what ING Direct is offering and to move on to greener pastures — as of this writing, Emigrant Direct offers a 4% APY, whereas ING is at 3.4% APY. Thus far, the account opening process has been very easy. It took about five minutes to fill out and submit the application, and now I just need to keep an eye on our linked (external) checking account such that I can verify the amount of two small deposits (and matching withdrawals). This should happen within 2-4 business days. Once I’ve verified ownership of my checking account, they’ll pull our initial deposit from it (I opted to fund the new account via ACH) and we should be ready to roll. Then it’ll just be a matter of establishing a link between Emigrant Direct and ING Direct ($25 account opening bonus), such that we can move our money between them without having to use our checking account as an intermediary.

The folks over at JibJab.com are back at it with their ‘Big Box Mart’ video. Very amusing (and kind of depressing at the same time). Either hop on over to their main page, or check it out via the direct link here. Note that there’s a short ad before the video starts rolling, but it’s well worth the wait.

[Via: MightyBargainHunter]

Last month a friend told me about an e-mail that he received from BellSouth regarding his FastAccess DSL service. They had written to offer him a ‘free’ upgrade from DSL Ultra @ 1.5 MBPS to DSL Extreme @ 3 MBPS. Alternatively, he could stick with DSL Ultra and get a $10/month price break. As a BellSouth DSL customer, I was very interested to hear about this. While I never received a similar message myself, I was recently able to follow up on this offer based on the information contained within his e-mail. [more]