When you subscribe to a credit report service and pull your own credit report, that is noted on your report as a "soft pull". Now if you do enough soft pulls, they will eventually "bump off" off the "hard pulls" since the agencies only keep track of a certain number of total pulls.

Why should you care? Well, hard pulls, which are recorded every time you apply for a credit card or a loan, stay on your credit report for 24 months and can lower your FICO credit score by anywhere from 5 to 20 points. Soft pulls, however, do not affect your score. That means you can bump up your credit score by replacing hard pulls.

From my hard-core investigation (okay, five minutes worth of google searches), it looks like this only works with TransUnion and Equifax reports.

Now "rollovers" can only be claimed when you buy the ticket directly from the airline and not from web sites like Travelocity, Expedia, or Orbitz. Airlines that offer vouchers for the full price difference include:

Other airlines will offer vouchers or cash after deducting change fees. Since airfares can change several times a day and most of us don't have time to monitor websites continuously until we fly, it's no wonder that airlines actually issue very few vouchers.

That's where Yapta.com comes in. It helps customers get rollover refunds by tracking fares on specific flights after you buy a ticket, then alerting you if the price drops. (Actually, you can use Yapta to track fares on specific flights before you buy a ticket, too). Neat, huh? It's free to use and works for a ton of domestic airlines (AirTran, Alaska, American, America West, ATA, Continental, Delta, Frontier, JetBlue, United, and US Airways). With 275 people using Yapta as beta testers, the average voucher was about $85.

Related websites include Farecast.com and Farecompare.com. The first site shows ticket price forecasts, giving out "buy" and "wait" recommendations on airfares. The second site lets you look at historical prices to help you decide if fares might drop in the future. These are great sites, but I really like Yapta because it allows me to purchase tickets right away without having to worry about paying too much or playing the guessing game of when fares might drop. It's price protection that speeds up the whole process.

Oh yeah, how does Yapta make money? After all, the service is free for customers. Actually, I'm not sure, but I think it's trying to get money from the airlines by saying that it may spur sales at higher price levels and build customer loyalty by the issuance of vouchers. Good luck to them.

If you use Yapta, remember you must act quickly. Some fares only drop for a few hours before bouncing back up again.

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Still, if you want to find out if you can qualify for local deals, check out BankingMyWay.com. It's free. Just type in your ZIP code to look for deals. You can also search for internet deals, too.

For example, I found out I could get 7.00% on a $1,000, 12-month CD special that Patelco Credit Union is offering for new members. Not bad!

Anyway, here's a fun story about one man's journey across the U.S. to deliver a dime worth $1.9 million from one rich person to another rich person with nothing better to spend his money on.

In short, you make money by borrowing the money at 0% interest with a balance transfer check, park the money in a high yield money market account until the introductory period expires, then pay back the credit card company, pocketing the interest.

The WSJ found Ira Stoller of Butler, N.J. who says he makes about $1,300 to $1,400 a year this way. "It's not a get-rich-quick scheme, but it sure does pay for vacations," says the 71-year-old salesman. Assuming he's earning 5% interest on those balance transfer funds, Ira apparently manages to borrow about $26,000 - $28,000 at a time from credit card companies. But I've got Ira beat - right now, I've got about $42,000 working for me - $22,000 courtesy of Citibank and $20,000 generously on loan from Chase, all at 0%.

Credit card companies have caught on, of course, and now it's harder to find a balance transfer that doesn't impose a fee, usually 3%, on the transfer. The key is that they often cap the fee or sometimes you can get them to waive the fee. For example, Citibank waived the fee and Chase capped it at $75 for my two offers. Since I'll make a few hundred bucks in interest, even after taxes, it still makes sense to pay the $75 fee.

The WSJ says only a small number of their cardholders play this game but that credit card companies are making it tougher. For example, interest-free balance transfers time periods are being reduced from twelve to six months and tacking on fees. Previously, such fees were often waived or capped at $50 to $75. But recently, Bank of America and Chase eliminated their transfer-fee caps on many offers, while Citibank raised its maximum fee to $250. Dammit!

"We've been aware of the phenomenon," says a spokesman for Citibank, a unit of Citigroup Inc. A spokeswoman for Bank of America Corp. says the interest-rate trick was "not at all part of the decision to go to uncapped balance transfers," which is obviously a lie.

The good news is that competition among card issuers for new customers is so intense that companies can't afford to do away with the generous offers altogether. American Express Co., Citibank, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America, for example, say they still offer no-fee, 0% balance transfers to selected customers.

The Chase offer below is 0% APR for 12 months with a $75 balance transfer fee. So if you invest the money at 5% and clear 3% return after taxes, you'll need to transfer about $6,000 to clear about $100.

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This has happened before. Before 1965, dimes, quarters, half-dollars, and dollar coins all had 90% silver content. That's why it's fairly common to find 1965 dimes and quarters in your change but it's next to impossible to find 1964 or older versions of those coins - I've only found two and I've been on the lookout for 20 years. (The trick is to listen to your change - a silver quarter sounds a lot different than those of today). The value of 1964 and older silver coins is over 10 times the face value, in part because of the silver content and in part because people hoard them.

Anyway, back to pennies. Why not collect the coins, melt them down for their metal value, and make some money? Well, in December the U.S. Mint, which closely follows the price of copper and nickel, made it illegal to melt pennies and nickels. Exporting coins for melting also is illegal. Travelers may legally carry up to $5 in 1- and 5-cent coins out of the U.S. That's right - if you're heading down to Mexico with more than 10 rolls of pennies to buy your tequila and firecrackers, be prepared to face up to five years in prison and up to $10,000 in fines.

Instead of building a smelt in your backyard to melt your pocket change, you could sell them to someone else. A $50 bag of 1981 pennies went for $87 on eBay today plus $15 for shipping - after all, a $50 bag of pennies weighs about 30 pounds.

I doubt most people are going to sort their change to pull out the 1981 and older pennies, though, unless copper prices really go up. After all, those CoinStar machines I see in the supermarket that charge 7 cents for every dollar to sort change are really popular.

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Anyway, here's a nifty tool called Rentometer to help you figure out what your neighbors pay in rent. Type in your address and rent and it brings up a google map with the rents in nearby places that have the same number of bedrooms. I don't know how accurate it is and it lumps together condos, single unit houses, and apartment complexes. The real value is that it provides a snapshot of the median rents in a given area. This way you can quickly find a location in your price range if you're thinking of moving.

Plus, if you check back once in a while, you can see if rents are rising and you're getting a good deal or if rents are falling and you need to approach your landlord for a decrease in the rent. You can also use What the Neighbors Pay website to do a similar sort of analysis.

Finally, just for people in San Francisco, you can use this neat tool to look at rents over time in "the city" - excuse me, "The City" - based on craigslist posts.

The goal is to lend a helping hand to those in need and to minimize waste by giving lightly used items a second life. With more than 4,000 "Freecycle communities" and 3.5 million users, it's caught on quickly.

To try it out, go to Freecycle.org and sign up for free. Then you'll receive email listings for free things and can start offloading things you want someone else to have.

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Best travel search engine: Kayak, which gathers fares from other airline websites and search engines like Orbitz and Travelocity. Kayak will also help you with rental cars and hotels.

Best discount travel site: Hotwire, which is the best source for bargain flights, according to Consumer Search. However, you won't know exactly what time or what airline you've agreed to fly until after your purchase.

Best international travel site: Mobissimo, which has the largest international supplier network. The site also includes a blog that tracks bargains on airfares and hotels.

Finally, Airfarewatchdog, helps you find the cheapest tickets offered directly by airlines.

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Normally, I would say to stay clear of E*Trade. I just hate their customer service and usually their bonus incentives to open accounts stink, like a $50 bonus when you fund a account with $25,000. But right now you can pick up an easy $25 with a deposit of only $1. Hey, maybe you'll actually like E*Trade.

This offer in itself is only $10, but log in to Chase account and look around for other offers like Privacyguard and Autoadvantage. They all come with trial periods, so you sign up, collect the cash, decide if you like the service or not, and are free to cancel if it's not right for you.

Me "I need to cancel my cable modem service. My bill is going up to $60/mo, so I'm going to switch to AT&T's DSL since it's cheaper."
Comcast Cable "I'm sorry to hear that ... blah blah blah ... we have great service ... blah blah blah ... how about a cable TV package ... blah blah blah ... cable modem is faster than DSL ... blah blah blah"
Me "Ok, so can we cancel that service?"
CC "What if I could lower the price?"
Me "That would be great!"
CC "How about $44/month for our 8 Mg service, which is twice as fast as your current service?"
Me "No, I'm not interested in faster service, I need help on the price. I think I'll just go with DSL."
CC "Wait, what about $33/month for our 6 Mg service, which is 50% faster than your current service?"
Me "How about $28.95/mo for my current service? That's what I paid last month."
CC "I'm sorry, that's just not available any more"
Me "Dang, ok let's go ahead and cancel then. That stinks because I like Comcast and it's a pain to switch services but I just don't want to pay that much to check my email from home."
CC "Can you hold on a minute? I might be able to do something else."

[Hold one minute, listen to elevator music].

CC "I can get you $24.99 for 6 months. Would that work?"
Me "Sure!"
CC "Actually, it's going to be for the upgraded 6 Mg service, too. It's supposed to be that price if you have cable TV as well but I was able to waive that requirement."
Me "That's great!"

When this current special expires in Oct 2007, we will have had the "introductory" offer (either $28.95/mo or $24.99/mo) on cable modem since Sep 2003.

When you book national chain hotel, don't call the hotel's toll-free reservations line - call the hotel in the place you're staying directly. They have more power to lower the price. Let them know you're not happy with the price you were quoted on the toll-free reservations line. If they won't knock down the price, trade up like getting a suite at the regular room rate, or discount at the hotel restaurant. Also, the best way to save money is while making the reservation, not while checking in.

If that still doesn't work, make a reservation, then call up the next day and say you need to cancel it because you've found a cheaper rate at a nearby hotel. This has worked for me on my last two hotel reservations.

You might try the same thing with rental cars, but this hasn't worked as well for me. I've only been able to get free upgrades to bigger cars but haven't been able to lower the price.