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J.K. Rowling contemplated suicide before her rise to success: Desperate consumers around the world sometimes take desperate (and fatal) measures...
Don't give up before the miracle, Part I: The billionaire author said she had suicidal thoughts in her mid-20s, when she was a single mother and struggling to establish a literary career. "Mid-20s life circumstances were poor and I really plummeted," Rowling said. Read more...
Need inspiration to stay alive one more day? J.K. roared back because she had a dream, a vision of what could happen if she kept hanging in there. Many of today's successes have kept their wits about them long enough to dig out of their versions of hell: Here's a few for your review...
Don't give up before the miracle, Part II: Frank Capra's holiday movie "It's A Wonderful Life," starring Jimmy Stewart,  delivers an incredible message of hope for those in financial hell, 366-days-a-year. Being buried in debt is tough. Buried in debt with family to take care of is even worse. But being buried in debt and unable to take care of your family with debt collectors calling and threatening you is a very, very dark place to be. I know, because I've been there.
And like J.K. Rowling and George Bailey, Jimmy Stewart's "It's A Wonderful Life" character, I thought long-and-hard about taking the most desperate and permanent measure of suicide: With more consumers in deeper debt than any other time in the history of the United States, the future's looking pretty bleak for millions of Americans. Read my story, and how close I came to making the biggest mistake of my about-to-be-shortened life in the first chapter of my bestseller Back Off! here.
Remember, bad times never last forever...nor do the good times. A reminder of how quickly wealth can evaporate is brought  to you by The Jacksons: Stiffed by their superstar brother Michael and plagued by decades of bad fiscal decisions, the once-mighty Jackson family is barely scraping by, with one brother stocking groceries, another repairing cars and others living at home with mom while hoping for sister Janet's next handout.
They have fallen far from their days as sequin-studded stage stars who could rake in seven-figure paydays for a single performance.
What a mess...click here to read the rest of the story.
Yeowwch! Maybe they should've stuck with Botox instead! Obviously these two decided on a more permanent  fix for those gosh-darn real estate-induced worry lines. "Shoot and run" is the newest form of (cosmetic) crime: Some thieves aim for cash and cars. One woman wanted to look pretty enough to steal a new face.
Scottsdale (AZ) police are looking for the Botox Bandit, a woman who scammed a downtown Scottsdale spa for $1,400 in Botox-like injections. Quit yer scowling and read more...
The newest form of marital infidelity? Financial promiscuity! Sex may be the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word "infidelity," but there are other types of "unfaithful or disloyal acts," other ways spouses cheat on each other.
A major one is money. In the wake of the revelations regarding former New York governor Eliot Spitzer's trysts with high-dollar  call girls, couples — especially women — were giving their own relationships the once-over.
In online chats and call-in radio programs, the discussions followed a common theme: "What would I do if that happened to me? Surely I would have had a clue it was coming. And anyway, how could he spend serious money on an affair or a prostitute — or on anything else, for that matter — without my knowing?" Zip up and read the rest of the story...
Oh sure, she might look happy now, but I guarantee you she's gonna be pretty twisted-off after she reads this story!
 At Megastores, Hagglers Find Prices Are Flexible: Shoppers are discovering an upside to the down economy. They are getting price breaks by reviving an age-old retail strategy: haggling.
A bargaining culture once confined largely to car showrooms and jewelry stores is taking root in major stores like Best Buy, Circuit City and Home Depot, as well as mom-and-pop operations.  Savvy consumers, empowered by the Internet and encouraged by a slowing economy, are finding that they can dicker on prices, not just on clearance items or big-ticket products like televisions but also on lower-cost goods like cameras, audio speakers, couches, rugs and even clothing. The change is not particularly overt, and most store policies on bargaining are informal.
Some major retailers, however, are quietly telling their salespeople that negotiating is acceptable. “We want to work with the customer, and if that happens to mean negotiating a price, then we’re willing to look at that,” said Kathryn Gallagher, a spokeswoman for Home Depot. In the last year, she said, the store has adopted an “entrepreneurial spirit” campaign to give salespeople and managers more latitude on prices in order to retain customers. Save some dough and read the rest of the story before you go shoppin'...
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