Personal finance from around the Web:

• The House passed a bill that would permanently extend the estate tax, but it faces a tougher battle in the Senate. [Don't Mess With Taxes]

• Economists have mixed reactions to the jobs report, but at least one analyst sees the revisions as great news. [Economix, The Business Insider]

• Budget concerns making you feel more like Scrooge than Santa? Here are 135 tips to make your dollar go further this holiday season. [It's Your Money]

• One reason to quit throwing out all that junk fascinating mail your alma mater sends you: Your school affiliation could save you a bundle on things, including insurance and travel. [Wise Bread]

• E*Trade and Freddie Mac, we hardly knew ya. One blog lists the financial firms as among the 10 Brands that won't survive through 2010. [Wall Street 24/7]

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Personal finance from around the Web:

• According to First American Fund’s John Wenker, REITs are hot tamales, despite the commercial real estate market being a bust. [InvestmentNews]

• Stressed out about money? Your kids are stressed about it too, and it may be you that's making them panic. [Devil in the Details]

• One of the Twitter founders, Jack Dorsey, is offering a new product that lets you accept credit card payments with your iPhone. Cool, eh? [PC World]

• Start your holiday shopping early: Buy some good personal finance books for kids, teens and adults. [The Associated Press]

• With medical coverage costs rising, some are asking doctors if they can get a better price on their MRI’s and regular check-ups. Perhaps you can do the same. [The New York Times]

• The graduates of 2008 faced a tough job market, but what made it worse was the high level of debt they accrued while working toward their degrees. [The Quick and the Ed]

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My colleague Alexis Jeffries and I had fun reporting a recent story called "Five Ways To Pump Up Your Income," which ran in the December 2009 issue of MONEY.  Who couldn’t use some ideas right now on how to make more dough?

As Alexis recently blogged, many of the ideas we came up with didn’t make it into the final piece. But there’s an idea that did make it into the article — lending money to friends, families and strangers through so-called peer-to-peer networks — that had a surprising aspect that we didn’t cover in the piece. More

Personal finance from around the Web on Friday:

• Fixed-income king Bill Gross doesn't like earning 0.01% on his cash. But he does like utilities. [PIMCO]

• You may end up owing taxes next April because a little tax credit ended up being too big. One more reason to check your withholding. [Bucks]

• A convicted Long Island mortgage fraudster will be serving a month in jail for trying to rip off a 93-year-old retired barber.  Then she'll spend probation on the lecture circuit. [(New York) Daily News]

• A $350-a-night  luxury resort in Malaysia will give you a free night if you encounter more than one inch of rain in any 7 a.m to 7 p.m. period. Willing to hope for rain in exchange for free digs? [Savvy Sugar]

• Kellogg has warned of a waffle shortage through mid-2010. So naturally, someone on eBay is trying to sell a box of Eggos for $65. [The Washington Post]

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• New York may follow the practice of at least 20 other states and start publishing the names of its biggest tax delinquents online. [Economix]

• Yes, the price of gold has zoomed upward in 2009. But palladium's performance leaves gold in the dust. [The Big Picture]

• While Americans are generally supportive of a government-run "public option" insurance plan as part of a health care overhaul, their enthusiasm depends on how it's described to them. Republican and Democratic leaders appear to have figured this out already. [The Associated Press]

• President Obama is creating a task force, led by the Justice Department, to investigate and prosecute past financial crimes and to deter future fraud. [Reuters]

• A registered nurse who lost health coverage for herself and her family speculates that Thomas Jefferson would have regarded access to health care as "a self-evident right of individuals." [The (Panama City) News Herald]

Follow More Money on Twitter at http://twitter.com/moremoneyblog.

Five personal finance highlights from around the Web:

• FICO, the company that provides the nation's leading credit score, reveals how many points a consumer's credit rating will drop as a result of specific events. LIz Pulliam Weston sheds light on the impact of maxing out a card or making a late payment. [MSN Money]

• Will the McMansion buyers of the future want to live without theater roooms and butler's pantries? Luxury home builders think so. [The Wall Street Journal]

• '"I want to be rich" is not real a goal. And good financial planning requires clear, measurable goals. [The Boston Globe]

• Buffett: Investment opportunity is greater in the United States than abroad. The Oracle thinks the worst of the financial panic is behind us. [Reuters]

• Temporary conforming loan limits won't expire this year. The Federal Housing Finance Authority will extend the limit of $417,000 (up to $729,750 in high-cost areas) through 2010. [Washington Business Journal]

Follow More Money on Twitter at http://twitter.com/moremoneyblog.

Five personal finance highlights from around the Web:

• More credit card company shenanigans: One cardholder shares her experience with Citi: The bank will double her interest rate unless she transfers $5,000 of other debt onto her Citi credit card. [Consumerist]

• Thinking about regifting something this holiday season? Brad Tuttle has some rules on how to do it right. [It's Your Money]

• When it comes to car insurance, pricing is based on 10 factors that are out of your control. So it pays to shop around. [MintLife]

• Maybe you can time the market. A new study challenges the notion that it can't be done. [The Big Picture]

• Recent credit card reform has prompted the industry to enact the Safe Credit Revision Everyone Wins Undertaking, also known as S.C.R.E.W.U. Animator Mark Fiore explains it in the video below. [The Consumer Reporter]

Investing in ETFs just got a little cheaper.

At a press conference in New York City Monday, Charles Schwab unveiled eight new exchange-traded funds, the first of the brokerage's Schwab-branded ETFs. The big news: For these select ETFs, Schwab has waived the commission typically charged when you buy or sell shares of an ETF or stock. In other words, an investor could jump in and out of these ETFs several times a day (not that that strategy is a particular good one) and not pay a dime in transaction costs. More

If you held on to your fund portfolio through the market downturn, you have plenty of reason to smile this year. The average large-cap stock fund has rebounded some 23% so far this year.  And some have done far better — small growth funds are ahead 30%, while Latin America stock funds have zoomed nearly 50%.

And best of all, you will probably pay little or no taxes on those gains.

That’s the assessment of Tom Roseen, a senior research analyst at Lipper, who tracks mutual fund taxes. More

Legg Mason's Bill Miller

For a top-notch stock fund manager, there’s nothing worse than poor returns. But one thing comes close: great performance that everyone ignores.  As The Wall Street Journal reported recently, many ace stock-pickers are having trouble attracting investors, even as they rack up double-digit return.

Consider Harry Lange of Fidelity Magellan (FMAGX), who has guided his fund to a 31% gain so far in 2009—some 15 percentage points ahead of the Standard & Poor’s 500. But during the first nine months of this year, shareholders have yanked $1.8 billion from the fund. More

This is sure to make financial advisers cringe, or at least send me a few angry emails. German researchers have found that on the whole, investors who use a financial adviser tend to underperform do-it-yourselfers.

Professors from Goethe University Frankfurt gathered data from a large German brokerage firm that allowed its clients to either run their portfolios themselves or use an independent financial adviser. On the whole, the adviser-led clients did better. But the researchers found that clients with advisers tended to be older and wealthier than average. Once the professors controlled for age and wealth, they found that the clients with advisers did worse.
More

Money market funds have long been a refuge for investors seeking safety and liquidity. But ever since the market meltdown, money funds have been under siege. Last September Reserve Primary Fund, which had invested in suddenly worthless Lehman Brothers commercial paper, "broke the buck"—that is,  allowed its net asset value to fall below a $1 per share. That led to panic, as frightened investors began pulling their savings out of these funds. In the end, the federal government stepped in to offer a temporary guarantee for the $3.6 trillion in money fund assets.

The panic subsided—and the federal guarantee expires in two weeks—but the regulatory scrutiny is still underway. The Security and Exchange Commission has proposed money fund rule changes that include higher credit quality and shorter maturities. But the most controversial notion, which is not in the proposed rules but was offered up for public comment, is a so-called  floating NAV, which would mean that a fund's net asset value per share would be free to move up and down, instead of being pegged at $1 per share. More

There doesn’t seem to be much Washington can agree on these days. But I don't think I'm going to go out on a limb by saying that one issue with widespread bipartisan support is the need for Americans to save more for retirement. So you have to imagine there is going to be some quick hustling to avert an oncoming p.r. train wreck: the IRS soon may be forced to impose a lower maximum contribution limit for 401(k)s in 2010. Yes, Washington may tell us it is forcing us to save LESS next year. Not exactly what you want to center your mid-term election campaign on.

The culprit here is low inflation. The annual 401(k) contribution limit is set by comparing the Consumer Price Index (CPI)  for the third quarter of the preceding year to a base level. If the August and September CPI numbers come in as low as July, the Q3 inflation number plugged into the calculation could trigger a decline in the 2010 contribution limit. According to an analysis by Mercer’s Washington Resource Group the 2010 limit might drop from $16,500 to $16,000 for individuals younger than 50, and the catch up contribution for the 50+ cohort might decline from $5,500 to $5,000.

The IRS is scheduled to announce the 2010 limits on October 15. Even if the IRS regulation mandates a reduction in the contribution limit it would be a shocker if Congress doesn’t jump in with a fix.

But the unfortunate reality is that even if the limits were reduced it wouldn’t have much impact on Americans retirement savings. According to a Financial Engines survey of more than 550,000 401(k) accounts, only 7% of participants came within $500 of contributing the maximum allowed by the IRS or their plan limit. So for 93% of Americans this is a bit of a non-issue. (The fact that 93% of Americans should be saving more is an entirely different topic.)

IRAs don’t face the same low-inflation pickle. The formula for computing IRA limits uses the trailing 12-month CPI (through August) to set IRA limits and that stat is expected to show an increase. It won’t likely be enough to budge the IRA limits up for 2010, but will ensure the limits can remain at their 2009 level: $5,000 for individuals under 50; $6,000 if you are 50 or older.

Social Security payouts are where low-inflation is going to do real damage. For the first time since annual cost-of-living adjustments were mandated in 1975, it looks like there will be no COLA increase for 2010 Social Security benefits. In fact, the Obama Administration’s budget forecast assumes there will be no COLA increase in 2011 either. Yet Medicare Part B premiums are expected to rise. That means the net payments to Social Security beneficiaries will be declining in 2010 (and probably 2011.) Let’s see what Congress has to say about that.