College students will spend over $600 on dorm room essentials, school supplies, clothes and electronics before stepping onto campus this fall ... and that doesn't even count tuition, room and board or late night pizza orders. Students (and anyone else) can earn cash back when they do their shopping via shortcuts.com new CASH BACK program (www.shortcuts.com/cashback) for back-to-school shopping. Most stores offer between 3% to 6% cash back on purchases – and if you're buying things you need anyway, it's a win-win and a great route to go.


This way come Fall, you'll get a check in the mail right before you're about to run out of money at school and call home. Cash rewards can be earned at 1200 different stores, including big names like Nordstrom, Macys, Target, Best Buy, Bed Bath & Beyond and lots more.

Am picking my eldest son up from camp this weekend (big milestone, he was there for a week) & bringing my daughter to another camp. Multiple stops & some serious mileage ... The newly relaunched MAPQUEST let me easily add multiple stops. Am now set to drive in a near perfect triangle this weekend ...

Now that the Federal First Time Home Buyer Tax Credit has expired, consumers are scrambling for information and incentives. They exist if you know where to look and how to qualify, but the process can be daunting. AOL Real Estate, in participation with Bank of America Home Loans, is hosting an online discussion with real estate experts answering consumers' burning questions about home buying in today's market. Be sure to log on here, June 23rd at 7:30pm to watch.

Hefty fees for checking bags on major airlines are becoming a stark reality for air travelers, but there are ways to avoid the fees by packing smarter and lighter and by knowing the rules and your options by airline. AOL Travel recently ran a feature on Avoiding Check In Fees and offers the following tips:

If you have trouble remembering all your passwords or keep weak ones, so you can remember ... ID Vault may be of value. It lets you select ONE password to securely log into ALL of the sites you use. The cost = $4.99 per month. When it comes to things like banking, lowering the risk of using a forged site and compromising your identity could be invaluable.

Clipping grocery coupons from the newspaper already seems antiquated and the Internet has really opened up the playing field for coupon use. With the decline of newspaper readership and the growth in mobile phone use – retailers and marketers are gravitating toward distributing coupons in digital form. It's a trend that's catching on. You can register your grocery store loyalty card (81% of us already have one in our wallets – even men!) on websites -- like www.Shortcuts.com -- that let you ADD coupons directly to the card. It's called DIRECT TO CARD and the savings are electronically transferred to the card (essentially "assigned" to the card number). One of the biggest player in this area is Shortcuts.com. When you check out at the store, you'll get all the same savings you normally would for being a loyal customer PLUS the extra savings you've added to the card via Shortcuts. It's as if you've turbo-charged your card with extra savings.

The sister-in-law of a dear friend of mine started this new site for personalized baby and toddler items .... makaboo. One of my new favorite baby gifts to give is this extra comfy monogrammed fleece ... there are lots of great color combinations.

Clever of the new KitchenDaily.com site to post an article re: what to do with leftover Easter eggs. Am hoping to get creative with eggs this holiday season and it is a shame to waste them. Here are some of their suggestions on things you can do with your Easter eggs after you've dyed and enjoyed them .... Not Your Usual Egg Salad Sandwich sounds good to me.

Create. Be Heard. Get Paid. Has nice ring to it & is a progressive new approach to journalism .... Am personally recommending it to talented friends & family and hope you'll also take advantage of this brand new opportunity if you've worked, or have always wanted to work, as a writer or photographer.

When you SIgn Up for Seed, you can view an updated list of available assignments. It's as if you've got a seat at the newsroom assignment desk (see: How it Works).

For example, they'll pay $25 for three surprising eco-friendly shots. If you're a photo buff, it's worth a shot.

The writing assignments give a word count, deadline – sometimes hours/sometimes weeks – and a price, anywhere from $10 for a quick piece to $300 for something more expansive.

You have to do the work up-front and there's no guarantee your work will be accepted by the network editors, but Seed has an online "Academy" loaded with tips and examples of content that pulls in an audience, so you can apply some of the same techniques.

Added bonus: It's a great way to get discovered, build a portfolio of published work and followers.

For more information & to get a better feel, check out the Seed blog.

I generally find Restoration Hardware quality to be top-notch. And, if you think ahead to next holiday season, they have some terrific decorations for 50% off. Am a fan of spelling out meaningful words ... JOY, NOEL, etc.... on mantles, hanging as ornaments, etc.

Even if you have wrapped up your holiday shopping, there's still one one last minute gift worth considering ... Nonprofit organization Heifer International, founded in 1944, provides livestock and environmentally sound agricultural training to improve the lives of families in over 50 countries. And, if you've lost shopping and shipping days given the snow storm, this idea just might move to the top pf your list ...


For $120, on Heifer.org, you can purchase a dairy goat for a family in need – or contribute as little as $10.00 toward the purchase -- essentially you buy a share. While the idea may sound a little out of the ordinary ... you gift/donation can help a struggling family receive up to a gallon of milk from the animal every single day. That's more than enough milk not only to drink, but to use to make cheese, butter or yogurt, plus to sell whatever is left and buy much-needed clothes, school supplies and medicine.

Your gift of a cow, goat or other farm animals arrives after Heifer project partners have been extensively trained in sustainable farming, basic veterinary skills, and values-based community support systems that assure your donation is successfully helping those you intend to help. Heifer helps rural villages, urban neighbors, U.S. small family farmers, women's groups in developing countries, orphanages, and those recovering from natural disasters succeed in becoming self-reliant, achieving basic housing, education and health care.

When you give the gift of a flock of chickens ($20), a Goat ($110), a Water Buffalo ($250), a dairy cow ($500) or any other animal through heifer.org, you have the option of giving on behalf of someone else. Heifer.org's beautiful honor cards can be sent to the recipient and explain the gift you made in their name. Heifer honor cards can be sent by mail, email, or as an animated e-card. It's a unique & thoughtful last-minute gift.

Today on stations nationwide, we're talking about the last minute shopping & shipping push ... WalletPop has an enormously helpful list of shipping deadlines.

Few things thrill me more than holiday cards (though, have been off my game in recent years). This year, the folks from minted.com sent us some samples .... They're GORGEOUS. If you order by Nov. 9 they'll throw in free shipping if you use offer code FREESHIPNOV.

Am particularly fond of the "vintage" & "yearline" options ...

Holiday Photo Cards, Christmas Photo Cards & Photo Cards at Minted

The holidays are full of heartwarming tales about good deeds. AOL and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital® have partnered to bring you Nice One -- a collection of our favorite true stories. You can also read about the lifesaving work taking place at St. Jude, how you can participate in the St. Jude Thanks and Giving® campaign and the many ways you can donate if these stories leave you feeling inspired. They can't not;)

They also have an online store a

nd - of course - you can give to St Jude through their charitable retail partners, just look for the Thanks & Giving magnifying glass at participating retailers.

The web is THE source for mapping out your Black Friday shopping game plan. WalletPop.com & GottaDeal.com are already publishing and linking to "door-buster" deals for dozens of major retailers. The sites manage to gain access to advance copies of Black Friday ad circulars. The ads are scanned and the deals posted. Some retailers intentionally "leak" their ads to the sites to build a little extra buzz. It's working!

The editors on these deal-hunting sites invest a ton of time checking prices from store to store and site-to-site, posting the best deals – often with coupon codes & printable coupons to save you even more. You can search the deals by store name or category: electronics, apparel, sporting goods, etc

If you don't find the deals you're after over the long weekend, there's always Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving, to look forward to. More to come on that ...

In the meantime, find out how your gameplan stacks up with others by taking this quick, fun BLACK FRIDAY POLL.