Did you know you can get free passport photos from home? Or, did you know you can get free rental car insurance just for being a credit card holder? There are plenty of free services available if you know where to look and how to find them. Luckily, Yahoo! Finance and Kiplinger did all the work and compiled a list of free services that are available.
Click here to see the slide show of all 33 free services!

Yahoo! Finance posted an article with great tips on how to make each paycheck last longer and go further. Author Laura Cohn suggests first using a free, online budgeting service, like Mint.com or Buxfer.com , to really get a handle on how much is being spent each month.

For grocery shopping, Cohn suggests not shopping at gourmet grocery stores and start shopping at Trader Joe’s or warehouse stores. You can also use coupons found online from sites like CouponMom.com or Coupons.com. If you don’t mind spending a bit of money each month, a service called Shopping Nanny will customize coupons for you based on shopping lists. Shopping Nanny guarantees that if you spend $90 a week in groceries, you will save at least $40 a month, or your membership for next month is free.

Two other services that may come in handy with trimming costs would be BillShrink.com and MyRatePlan.com. Both services allow you to input information about your bills, like cell phone service or television service, and the site will analyze your information and show you the rate that would be best for you, including extras you also may want.

To see more of Cohn’s suggestions, click here.

Would you buy something you knew you didn’t have the money for? Most people would say no, but many people don’t realize they don’t have the money before buying. Budgeting is extremely important for individuals and families. Budgeting is something we learn about when we are younger, but many of us may need a refresher. Kiplinger posted some links to help households create an effective budget. Check them out and get your budget back on track!

5 Easy Ways to Budget
Get on top of your expenses so you aren’t living from paycheck to paycheck

How to Create a Budget
Here are the basics of money management to help you take inventory of your finances and make goals

Household Budget Worksheet
Get on top of your monthly living costs by projecting expenditures in various categories, and then comparing those projections to what you actually spend

The Trouble with Budgets
Here are 8 common problems that plague would-be budgeters

The national debt of countries represents how much money the government of that country owes. Like a household budget, national debt gets larger when a government spends more than it takes in. This can continue for years, or even decades. This budget deficit is the total amount of this debt that has grown over time, with interest charged adding significantly to the amount owed by the government.

The amount owed varies greatly with the amount of money a country generates, its population and how much its government spends. In Germany, the national debt is $1.79 trillion. This represents 62.6 percent of Germany’s gross domestic product, or GDP. In The U.K. the national debt is $42.2 trillion. This is 47.2 percent of the GDP of the U.K.

In Russia, the national debt is $151.3 billion. This is 6.8 percent of the Russian GDP. Italy owes a national debt of $1.89 trillion, or 103.7 percent of the Italian GDP. The national debt of France is $1.40 trillion. This is 67 percent of France’s GDP.

One of the highest levels of national debt relative to the country’s GDP can be found in Japan. The Japanese national debt is $7.47 trillion. This is 170.4 percent of the Japanese GDP. India has a national debt of $2.55 trillion. This debt is 78 percent of the GDP of India. Zimbabwe has a national debt of $472.51 billion. This level of national debt is 241.2 percent of Zimbabwe’s GDP.

In the Americas, The United States has a national debt of 8.68 trillion. In the U.S., this is 60.8 percent of the American GDP. The Canadian national debt is $814.26 billion. In Canada, the national debt is 62.3 percent of the GDP. In South America, Argentina has a national debt of $293.56 billion. The Argentinean national debt is 51 percent of the GDP of Argentina.

The gross domestic product of a country is the market value of all of the products and services that a country produces in one year. This includes spending that is done by the citizens of the country and by the government of that country. It includes the value of items produced within the county and exported elsewhere, but it does not include the value of any imported items. The GDP is the primary way to calculate the size and status of the economy of a country as a whole. It is calculated quarterly as well as yearly.
(from Visual Economics)

The new health care legislation will not come into effect for a few years still, but it is not too early to start looking at how the changes will affect your wallet. Many people may not even know how the health care bill will affect them. The Washington Post created a program that allows readers to input information regarding their current health care and then shows how the bill will affect them if their current health care situation remains the same. To find out how the health care bill could affect you and your wallet, click here.

Americans have become notoriously bad about taking vacations. 30% of American workers take only half the time of their allotted vacation and 20% only take a few days. In fact, Americans take fewer and shorter vacations than the Japanese who coined the phrase “karoshi”, which translates to “working to death”. Not only are we taking shorter vacations, we are also most likely to take the costliest. 18% of Americans plan to spend more than $2,472 on their vacation while only 6% of Europeans plan to spend that much. Compared to the rest of the world, we are very poor vacationers.

How Americans Vacation

The national debt in America is $12.8 trillion. $8.89 trillion of this debt is held domestically and $3.88 trillion is in foreign holdings. Mint created an infographic that shows the breakdown of our nation debt. It is quite interesting to see exactly how much money is going and where it is going.

Visual Economics put together an infographic regarding the current trends in American shopping. In many sectors, spending has increased compared to spending in 2009. This may show that the country is starting to feel more comfortable with the economic climate, although spending has not increased within the middle to lower income groups. On a personal level, people are spending more on the necessities like health care and groceries.

In a recent Readers Digest article, former identity thieves confessed how they were able to steal peoples’ identities and how generally easy we make it for them to get our information. To avoid identity theft, here are the tips from former identity thieves:
1. Watch your back. In line at the grocery store, I’ll hold my phone like I’m looking at the screen and snap your card as you’re using it. Next thing you know, I’m ordering things online—on your dime.

2. That red flag tells the mail carrier—and me—that you have outgoing mail. And that can mean credit card numbers and checks I can reproduce.

3. Check your bank and credit card balances at least once a week. I can do a lot of damage in the 30 days between statements.

4. In Europe, credit cards have an embedded chip and require a PIN, which makes them a lot harder to hack. Here, I can duplicate the magnetic stripe technology with a $50 machine.

5. If a bill doesn’t show up when it’s supposed to, don’t breathe a sigh of relief. Start to wonder if your mail has been stolen.

6. That’s me driving through your neighborhood at 3 a.m. on trash day. I fill my trunk with bags of garbage from different houses, then sort later.

7. You throw away the darnedest things—preapproved credit card applications, old bills, expired credit cards, checking account deposit slips, and crumpled-up job or loan applications with all your personal information.

8. If you see something that looks like it doesn’t belong on the ATM or sticks out from the card slot, walk away. That’s the skimmer I attached to capture your card information and PIN.

9. Why don’t more of you call 888-5-OPTOUT to stop banks from sending you preapproved credit offers? You’re making it way too easy for me.

10. I use your credit cards all the time, and I never get asked for ID. A helpful hint: I’d never use a credit card with a picture on it.

11. I can call the electric company, pose as you, and say, “Hey, I thought I paid this bill. I can’t remember—did I use my Visa or MasterCard? Can you read me back that number?” I have to be in character, but it’s unbelievable what they’ll tell me.

12. Thanks for using your debit card instead of your credit card. Hackers are constantly breaking into retail databases, and debit cards give me direct access to your banking account.

13. Love that new credit card that showed up in your mailbox. If I can’t talk someone at your bank into activating it (and I usually can), I write down the number and put it back. After you’ve activated the card, I start using it.

Kiplinger has released its yearly rankings of the best value colleges in the United States for 2009-2010. The best value school in America is University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, but the list is filled with California schools. Each school is ranked on the student/faculty ratio, the percentage of students who graduate in 4 years, the percentage of students who graduate in 6 years, total in-state and out-of-state costs, how many students receive some sort of aid from the college, and the average amount of debt for graduates.
UC San Diego is the best value college in California with a student/faculty ratio of 19. 83% of students attending receive some financial assistance and 84.3% of students graduate in 6 years. The only State University to make it on the list is Cal Poly, which falls at number 50 on the full list of 100 schools. One of the big pluses of Cal Poly is that the average debt for graduates is $0.
To check out the full list, click here. In these tough economic times, it pays off to get the best deal for your money.