personal finance

The prospect of mortgage debt forgiveness will entice hundreds of thousands of homeowners into picking up the phone to play the home-preservation game of "Let's Make a Deal," beginning this fall.

More states may soon offer home loan refinancing programs similar to those already available from the federal government and at least nine states. The existing programs are limited in scope, but give some homeowners another option to avoid foreclosure.

Dear Debt Adviser,

If my credit card is under the limit, and the periodic-rate finance charges put me over my limit, can the credit card company tack on an additional over-the-limit fee? I don't see how that is legal if it's not an actual purchase. -- Michelle

Dear Michelle,

The turbulent financial market is causing people to shake up their financial portfolios, dump underperforming stocks, adjust retirement funds, sell homes and investment properties.

Mortgages are still available, despite talk of a credit crunch.

Financial resources for college freshmen:

- "Dollars & Sense," an online program sponsored by the California Society of CPAs, is packed with money management skills for college students, including saving, investing and avoiding credit card debt. www.calcpa.org

Academics. Social life. Roommate drama. Food. (Lots of food).

Amid all that's crammed inside the cranium of a college freshman, there's one priority that's often overlooked: Money.

As in how to save it, spend it, budget it.

Many students - and their parents - are getting a first taste of financial independence.

SALT LAKE CITY -- After decades as teachers, Ruby and Lee Hammel thought they had their retirement years adequately covered.

They have a retirement fund, Social Security and a small sum socked away in two IRA accounts -- and those IRAs are what Ruby Hammel is worried about. They have both lost money over the past six months.

Dear Debt Adviser,

How are judgments against a debtor enforced? Can an unsecured creditor take my pension? Can that unsecured creditor take my house? -- Tony

Dear Tony,

Judgments! The term is so ... judgmental.

Flipping the radio dial as he drove one day, Allen Johnson stopped at the voice of a radical -- a get-out-of-debt radical.

Johnson listened as financial writer Dave Ramsey espoused practices that could all but get a man stoned in an American shopping mall.

Ramsey is a consumerism blasphemer, saying if you can't pay cash for something then you can't afford it.