Linda Stern

Banking online? Watch your statement like a hawk. Nearly 2 million people had their checking accounts raided in the past year, and most of them were paying bills and shopping online, according to Gartner, Inc.

Forget organic catnip and PuchiBag carriers. Today's well-accessorized pet is carrying health insurance. Besotted owners are expected to spend $8.3 billion this year to keep their pets healthy, and more of them are trying to cut costs with health insurance.

Here's a gift for grads: the rate on student loans will drop to a record low on July 1. New grads will get the best deal, a rate of 2.77 percent, if they consolidate their loans within six months of graduating.

Crossing the pond this summer? at about $1.20 for every euro, that 190 hotel room in Paris is going to cost you at least $228. Here's how to get the best exchange rate:-Use only banks or American Express offices for changing your money, and avoid booths at airports, hotels and tourist attractions.-Pay for purchases with a credit card, but not just any card, since extra fees are common.

Those state-run 529 college-savings plans are all fine and dandy until you discover your state has been offering lousy investment choices for the money you set aside to educate your young genius.

Got $50? Get the investment habit. Even though most mutual-fund companies have been shutting out the little guys, a few solid firms still welcome newbies who commit to making once-a-month investments of at least half a hundred.

When you're cleaning up, you want to get rid of stuff in a hurry, not wait weeks for your classified ad to bear fruit. Some new Web-based tips:Give it away at Freecycle.org, a loose national alliance dedicated to the maxim that one person's junk is another's treasure.

Getting hot is getting easier, thanks to "Hot Spot in a Box," an off-the-shelf Wi-Fi product marketed to small-business owners. Available at stores like Best Buy, the product includes service from Boingo Wireless, a southern California Wi-Fi firm, and a router from Linksys, a division of Cisco.

Ask Gordon Vadis how business is and he'll tell you, of course, "It's "hopping." His firm, the Bug Company of Ham Lake, Minn., ships roughly 2.5 million crickets a week to pet stores, which sell them as bait and as food for lizards.

"Press 3 if you feel like using the F word." We're not there yet, but a University of Southern California professor is working on a business-oriented voice-mail system that will identify irate callers and move them to human operators.

Larry Fischel and Lorrie Gilbert of Takoma Park, Md., have vacationed in Europe more than a dozen times. This summer, they decided to bag the Continent and take their two daughters to Costa Rica.

TECHNOLOGY How I Spent My VacationBy Sandy Lawrence Edry With summer-vacation season rapidly approaching, the time might be ripe to finally ditch your old clunky camera and buy that shiny digital one you've been coveting.

Tempted to try the market but afraid of losing your hard-earned cash? For a mere $19.95, you can play Mr. Big Shot, a stock-market simulator that's recreational, educational and only a little bit annoying.

It's easy to grab a short-term emergency loan by borrowing from your own Individual Retirement Account. As long as you replace the money in a new IRA account within 60 days, there's no harm, no foul, except maybe your bank charging you a penalty for the withdrawal.But now the Internal Revenue Service is cracking down on people who use IRAs as cash machines and miss that 60-day deadline.

What's worse than earning less than 1 percent interest on your savings? Losing money. That's what could happen to yield-chasers who have moved their rainy-day funds into investments like mortgage-backed mutual funds, Treasuries and real-estate funds.

Maybe they're not Jessica and Nick, but Monster and eBay think their companies make a perfect couple. Because small businesses are so important to their bottom lines, they've formed a "cross-pollinating marketing alliance" to capture more of the business.The partnership enables Monster to peddle its job-listing prowess to eBay's 430,000 small-business sellers, and tap into the $2 billion in buying power eBay says it saw from small business in 2003.

Ticket scammers, take notice. Futbol Club Barcelona, one of the most popular sports teams in the world, is using new bar-code and cell-phone scanning methods to make sure that season-ticket holders don't give away or resell their tickets.

Messy workers get fingerprints all over their PCs anyway. So why not put them to use? Gateway Inc. is now offering a built-in biometric fingerprint sensor on its latest laptop.

You bought the snacks; should you buy the stock? Low-carb mania is starting to affect the bottom lines of food companies, and some stock analysts are suggesting that investors look for portfolios with low glycemic loads. "High-carb content has been slowing growth," says David Adelman of Morgan Stanley, who has studied the impact of the Atkins and South Beach diets on food companies.

You're getting married, and you want everybody else to be as happy on your big day as you are. Share the love by turning your whole wedding into a charitable event.

Are you sick of that lame 0.5 percent return your money-market fund has been stuck at for months? You may do better if you use an auto company as a bank.Both Ford and GM have their own money-market funds offering about 2.5 percent interest and check-writing privileges. (GM just restricted its fund, but the limitations are still generous.) General Electric, another big consumer lender, has one, too.The upside is in the return.

Last week most anxious high schoolers found out whether they were accepted into the college of their choice. If your son or daughter got the fat envelope he or she was hoping for, there's probably been a big celebration in your house--not to mention a little more angst about tuition.

Graduating this spring? Shop for health insurance now, then worry about getting a job. The day you graduate you lose your eligibility for one of the cheapest plans around.

It's not the gas fumes that have you choking, it's the prices. A gallon of regular will set you back a near-record $1.72, and analysts are predicting prices that will top $2 just in time for the summer driving season.

Those early-stage individual investors known as angels are getting organized. It's part of the smarter investing style that's taken hold after the bubble burst.

Retail kiosks may be shrinking in size, but the kiosk business is getting huge. After a few years of so-so growth, worldwide kiosk sales hit $463.7 million last year, up more than 21 percent from 2002.

Here's a confession: I don't like going to stores. I'd be more than happy buying everything from toothpaste to my next car on the Internet. The best part is being able to sit at my computer and play retailers off each other.

Ever wonder why you seem to have more account statements than actual money? You're probably spreading it too thin. Almost half of Americans have too many retirement accounts, reports a new survey by American Express.

Want to retire early? So does everybody else. In the 1950s, the median retirement age was 67; now it's roughly 61, reports the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

If you had a buck for every retirement calculator on the Web, you wouldn't need any of them--you'd be rich enough to retire. Virtually every broker, fund company, insurance agent, financial planner and more than a few federal agencies have a planner on their sites.