You have the cutest little 401(k)

This isn’t just an economic downturn. It’s an opportunity to talk about your finances with your significant other. Experts say couples are being “shocked into talking” about their finances. And in some cases, they’re shocked into throwing $200 shoes at each other.

Still, it’s a good idea to open up about finances. Nothing spices up your pillow talk like Roth IRAs and home equity loans.

If your talks don’t go well, there is an alternative: Melt down those gold wedding bands for cash. Cash4Gold.com, which ran a memorable Super Bowl ad, is one business doing well in the slumping economy. One drawback: A lot of people are complaining that the company only pays a fraction of what your gold is worth.

Great. If only we heard about this before taking a pair of pliers to our molars.

Safe searching: Ask.com is teaming up with an Internet security company to show how risky your search results are.

The service is obviously still in beta mode. Make an innocent search for “Nigerian prince,” “porn star” or “Cash4Gold” and you get a bunch of distracting lights and sirens.

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FILE — The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau logo is seen through a window at the CFPB offices in Washington on Sept. 23, 2019. Employees of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were instructed to cease “all supervision and examination activity” and “all stakeholder engagement,” effectively stopping the agency’s operations, in an email from the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, on Saturday, Feb. 8, 2025. (Ting Shen/The New York Times)
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