Those of you who travel in the US have now become accustomed to a steady decline in airline service. Expectations are so low that we barely notice things that would shock many in other countries (and we are often only reminded when we go abroad on another airline). One inconvenience we have been loth to put up with, however, is checking our luggage. We all remember a time when this wasn’t necessary, yet now it has become a permanent feature (NB: JetBlue and Southwest are two exceptions, who still don’t charge for checked luggage, bless their hearts). So might it be cheaper to plan ahead and ship the luggage rather than check it? Luckily, our friends at Airfarewatchdog have saved us the effort by compiling a chart of their own, which you can find here.

Of course, it isn’t comprehensive, but by scanning it you can see that, if you have lighter pieces of luggage, it still tends to be worth checking it in. If, however, you have overweight or oddly shaped luggage, it might be worth shipping after all. There are some exceptions, though. Like if you’re flying from Chicago to Orlando you will pretty much always want to ship your luggage.

Curious about whether it is worth shipping your luggage? Check with USPS, Fedex or UPS and compare to what your flight charges you.

The price of new college textbooks keeps rising and this forces students to spend thousands annually on their education. When the amount a student can spend is limited (as is the case with most college students) this becomes a titanic obstacle. Students are constantly suffering due to this, which therefore drains their energy from their studies.

With government representatives and faculty chairmen in endless discussions, a solution to this crisis involving college textbooks is still nowhere in sight. As students nationwide are saving up and search for ways to find enough money to pay for their college textbooks, the parties that have promised to put an end to this crisis of unrelenting college textbook price inflation are never any closer to reaching a compromise. Students, seeing the way matters are going with the school boards and the government, have tried to get things under control and help each other by organizing various programs and campaigns intending to bring down the prices of mandatory college textbooks and other study materials.

Student campaigners mainly condemn textbook publishers for causing and maintaining this situation, their primary allegations include exaggerated prices and the unnecessary release of new editions. Student campaigners even accuse publishers of attempting to bring the used textbook market to a halt through these frequent updates. But all this was laid in vain as the authorities only ignored the students. The American Association of publishers has challenged the students’ scheme, reproving them of embellishing the proportions of the situation and stating that the mean annual expenditure for college textbooks doesn’t exceed $625. The approximate made by students was for $900.

The publishers then tried to save their skins by blaming the colleges for the inflation of the prices of college textbooks; they say that it’s the lecturers that request up-to-date iterations of college textbooks. Colleges denied this, adding straw to the fire. Faculty chairmen stated that it’s not necessary to request annual updated versions of college textbooks for fields that haven’t had major changes for years; fields such as calculus and simple chemistry. This fended off the textbook publisher fingers that were pointed at faculty leaders.

As a result of this, most parties are throwing allegations blindly at each other with the actual motives of the venture blurred in their minds. The number of authorities that are doing anything to help the situation is pathetically low. Higher education institutes, for example; Princeton university, have taken an effective, but temporary initiative aimed at reducing the prices of college textbooks. They will start selling college textbooks in downloadable PDF format for 70% of the price of an equivalent print edition. Several other institutions have taken this as an example and adopted this method while also developing schemes such as textbook lending, renting, exchanging and buyback programs.

So what would happen if we were to combine these two phenomena? This is the idea behind Prize-Linked Savings (PLS): You deposit money into your savings account and, rather than receiving small interest payments, the total amount of interest of everyone will be awarded to one or a few lucky winners. This can work for savers if the slim possibility of a huge winning outweighs the surefire knowledge of a small interest payment. In the worst case scenario, you lose no money. The best case involves winning the lottery. Sound great? Well to us too. Unfortunately, it might be a while before we see this in countries like the United States.

Most lotteries are state run, and the government holds onto those revenues (and the monopoly it has on the lotteries which provide it) quite tightly. Remember that governments tend to collect, on average, 40% of all money spent on lotteries. With $58 Billion being spent each year on the lottery, that’s quite a lot of revenue.

That is the only argument stopping this new phenomenon from taking hold but, sadly, it is a strong one. Savings accounts tend to be privately owned, while lotteries are state run, and the state can decide what goes for private companies. If it involves $58 Billion in revenues, the state will hold onto it dearly.

Having said that, PLS has been tried in a few places. One such example is Michigan, where thanks to its Save to Win experiment, 11,000 people opened new savings accounts, and out of these 44% earned less than $40,000 per year. Can we find an NGO or two to promote this in other cities?

Nevertheless, it might help to have more efficient markets. In this case, more specialized. Our two examples involved old clothing and an old video game. Well, now there are markets precisely for these two categories. Storkbrokers.com is a website where you can sell your baby’s old clothing (and possibly other items of your young kids to be featured soon), while Gazelle.com is a place where you can sell your old electronics. Both allow you to sell to other users, although Gazelle offers to buy it from you for a cheap price as well.

We have also been notified that a new website called Keepio will be able to do both. This may seem like a step away from the specialization, but it deals with many of the other inefficiencies of eBay, namely the extraneous charges, the chaotic website, the inability to keep track of your total inventory, as well as the inability to advertise each sale on Facebook and Twitter.

All in all, it looks like our analysis may need a revision in the near future.

We will therefore start listing sites for freelancers, designers and other services in our Resources section.

Here are some of the main ones you should know about:

General Freelancers:

Elance: whether you want a proofreader, programmer, designer, or pretty much anything else, elance probably has it. You can post the work you need done, and the “elancers” will bid for it.

Odesk: Same concept as Elance, but also allows you to have random screenshots of your freelancers computer screen taken, to make sure they’re working while on the clock.

Freelancer.com: Same concept again

Designs:

99designs.com: State what you need and what you’re offering for it, and wait for the designs to come rolling in. You pay only for the design you choose.

Logotournament.com: This is exactly what it sounds like. A more specialized version of 99designs.com.

Not sure about this whole Cloud concept? Read this.

Chances are you have a good idea what the mortgage amount will be, but have no idea what your monthly payments will come out to. Or perhaps you’re currently making your mortgage payments, but you realize you have no idea where that dollar amount you’re paying comes from, or you’re not sure the intermediate numbers make sense.

In order to help you, we at Dumbagent have created yet another calculator; this time it’s a Mortgage Calculator, which will be available under our Resources section.

Enjoy!

Along these lines, we are re-posting an earlier article, featuring Ababon’s Is it Worth it Program, which will solve all your problems, today! (Ok ok, so perhaps not all your problems. In any case, you should still give it a chance. You can find a link to the original post, along with its discussion, here).

If anyone is wondering whether to go for that Master’s degree, MBA, CPA, CFA, etc. you’ve probably put quite a bit of thought into it. You might be making a passable salary now, but you know you could be making a much more attractive one with a few more letters added to your name. On the other hand, these letters cost money, time not earning any money, and/or the foregone salary itself. So will it really be worth it?

Even if you are already taking courses or attending graduate school, should you simply be springing for the job that pays the most once you’re done? Will you be able to afford that slightly lower paying job that’s located in your favorite neighborhood and always seems filled with smiling people? How do you decide which job you can afford? You’ve just spent all that money and time on those letters; how do you know if this job will be worth it? Here is an easy method for figuring all of this out – concocted and developed by Anthony Ababon. Just open it, fill out the part in Yellow, and it will tell you whether or not your decision will pay off within the next 10 years and/or the next 20 years. We could ask him to give us more years’ worth of results, but let’s see if there is any demand for it first. Also, if you would like to ask Anthony any questions, you can do so by leaving a comment below.

Enjoy!

Ababon’s “Is It Worth It?” Program

Invisible Hand is a program that can be downloaded and remains, true to its name, invisible most of the time. Only when shopping, and if the same product you are looking at is available cheaper elsewhere, a bar will appear on top of the browser saying so. It will also have a link directing you to the cheaper product (actually, the same product available cheaper).

So, yes, all you economic-minded people might be disappointed with its lack of theory. But those of you who want to save money (the other 99% of the population) will find it very useful. Economists can take solace at the fact that it is another example of the Invisible Hand at work.

Unfortunately, it is only available for Firefox browsers so far.

This download will be available in our Resources page.

• GetHuman : If you’re tired of calling customer service only to have a recording ask you to press this and that and then put you on hold, just follow these steps to reach a human, for pretty much every company.

• How to Clean Anything : From Golf club grips to tree sap, a list of how to clean anything. It isn’t completely exhaustive yet, but it’s growing, and you can submit your own articles and tips via e-mail.

• E-pinions : User-generated opinions on millions of products out there for sale. Feel free to submit your own as well.

Airfarewatchdog.com is a slightly different variation, in that all the deals on this site are user-generated. However, before being posted, Airfarewatchdog checks to make sure seats are available at the advertised prices. This also has the added advantage of featuring deals from Jetblue and Southwest, which normally aren’t featured on the external reservation sites.

The deals are also time-sensitive and great for travel on short notice. Unfortunately, the site is still heavily geared towards the users in the United States. Let’s hope they expand shortly.

We will be featuring Airfarewatchdog.com in our Resources page for easy access.