The men’s theoretical finances reacted accordingly: Savings rates dropped 42 percent when men believed there were less women and the men were also willing to borrow 84 percent more monthly for their lifestyles.

According to researchers, the men were unaware of sex ratios having any affect on their behavior.

“Economics tells us that humans make decisions by carefully thinking through our choices; that we’re not like animals,” lead researcher Vladas Griskevicius said. “It turns out we have a lot in common with other animals. We see that there are more men than women in our environment and it automatically changes our desires, our behaviors, and our entire psychology.”

Don’t worry men, you’re not alone: The study also found that women behave differently when there are more men around. No, they don’t spend more…they expect more when they’re being courted.

So men use money to pretend they have some intrinsic social merits and women are money grubbing wenches in certain social situations? No way. Up is up! Black is black! Dogs and cats, living in mild intolerance!

A Scarcity of Women Leads Men to Spend More, Save Less [University of Minnesota via Business Insider]

What Rebecca Black might look like as a millionaire. Or Mr. Peanut.

-About $20,000 for being a YouTube partner with a video clocking 30,000,000 views (she should get 68% of approximately $1 per 1,000 views, according to 2010 YouTube earnings reports);
-Around $0.70 per download of “Friday” on iTunes. Expectations are that the song has been downloaded on the music service anywhere from 200,000 to 2,000,000 times (the latter would put Black at an earnout of about $1.4 million).

Plus there may be licensing and endorsement opportunities (ill-advised though they may be). So even with splitting some of this check with the creeps over at Ark Music Factory, Black is definitely doing well for herself. A week of notoriety and shame for a cool mil? That’s a deal worth taking.

If I were some 14-year-old boy in Southern California, I’d get my ass over to the Black residence immediately with a boombox and trenchcoat. There’s a decent looking millionaire girl whose idea of clever lyrics involve reciting the words we associated with the rotations of our planet. Getting into her pants and swindling some of that cash would probably take nothing more than some smooth talk, your mom’s minivan, and a 1980s Casio electronic planner.

Mock Rebecca Black All You Want, She’s Laughing To The Bank [Forbes via Gawker]

Chew your fingernails no more, patient taxpayer — you can check the status of your refund on the IRS’ brand new mobile application! Predictably, it’s got a very fancy and very awesome name: “IRS2Go.”
Or not. Whatever, at least it’s easy to use.

First, taxpayers enter a Social Security number, which is masked and encrypted for security purposes. Next, taxpayers pick the filing status they used on their tax return. Finally, taxpayers enter the amount of the refund they expect from their 2010 tax return.

I downloaded it a few minutes ago and, frankly, it’s pretty awesome.

Not “Angry Birds” awesome or anything, but it’s a simple-to-use, lightweight application that takes about two seconds to download.

The app is what’d you expect too: bland, efficient and just cold/evil-feeling enough to make you wonder what the hell that helicopter is doing up in the sky.

“Bonuses” outside of tracking include the ability to follow the IRS on Twitter (those guys are so full of jokes), an optional sign-up for tax updates (go ahead and give the government your email address, by all means) and a contact page.

That last one’s actually pretty handy, because it has “Call” buttons that let you dial into the Internal Revenue Service hotlines with a press of your thumb.

As for the refund tracking itself, well, I haven’t filed my taxes so I’m not sure just how well it works by they’re looking for a social security number — encrypted security, hopefully better than whatever the hell Amazon is using — a filing status and a refund amount.

When I tried entering in my social, my status and a fictional amount, I just got a “you entered something incorrectly.” Of course, I haven’t filed my taxes yet (don’t worry, I’ve got a good three months!) so it would be impossible to track. But if you have filed your taxes and test out the app, let me know in the comments or on Twitter (@willbrinson) whether or not you had to be spot-on with the amount to get a tracker. Also worth noting is that there’s a lag of about 72 hours from when the IRS says they’ve received your taxes to your ability to track it. So don’t get your panties in a bunch if you mailed them yesterday and the government’s not listening to you.

Really, the only bad thing about the App is that it doesn’t have a better welcome screen. You know, something like this:

Via the OC Register

For more, visit CreditLoan.

A stash of cash landed in the trash when a woman in Israel dumped her mother’s mattress not knowing it was stuffed with the equivalent of about one million dollars.

Israeli media reported that the 40-year-old woman showed up at a garbage dump in a panic on Tuesday, looking for the valuable bedding.

She had bought a new mattress for her mother and, wanting the gift to be a surprise, threw away the old one. She then found out the decades-old mattress contained her mother’s life savings.

Workers are helping her search the garbage, but have found no sign of the cash so far.

And people said that with banks failing across the globe, it’d be safer to put your money in a mattress. Looks like, once again, financial experts are proven to be dolts. Or that it was more foolish propaganda by the puppetmasters at Big Mattress. Either way, someone deserves a knee to the groin.

I don’t think you can really blame the daughter. She probably saw the mattress being all lumpy from tens of thousands of singles being shoved in there and was like, “Well, this can’t be a comfortable night’s sleep!” It’s probably not her fault for failing to realize that her mother is a borderline retard who collects money in a hidden place like teens do with pornography.

[via]

Too subtle?

Jason writes, “My wife just sent me an email saying that she payed ‘too early’ (before the new statement was generated) and got charged a ‘Late Fee’ of $29!”

This reminds me of one of those willpower things where you can’t pay someone back money too early or they’ll spend it like a crackhead. Or when people are like, “Oh no, I couldn’t possibly eat another cookie! Get them away from me!” It’s like, how about you just not eat one? That’s basically the same as saying, “Get your girlfriend out of here man or I might hit her in the head with a brick and rape her. I just can’t help myself!” So yeah, don’t leave your girlfriend alone in a bank. All I’m saying.

[via]

An eastern Missouri family expects they’ll be able to stay in their home built inside a cave after accepting an offer of a private mortgage contract. Curt Sleeper said Tuesday that a New Jersey-based business offered a 15-year loan with a low interest rate that should allow the family to keep their home in Festus, about 30 miles south of St. Louis.
“We’re excited about it.” To celebrate: “We’re throwing a party at a friend’s cave,” he said.

Curt and Deborah Sleeper fell in love with the unique geography of an old mining cave in 2004 and figured out how to build a house inside of it. But they were having trouble making a large payment that was coming due on the property, prompting them to put their home up for auction on eBay.

They no longer plan to auction the home through the Web site, but Sleeper says the house will remain there until paperwork is completed on the loan.

Jon Demarest, owner of Logical Source Inc., confirmed that his the Fairfield, N.J.-based archiving and medical record company offered the Sleepers a mortgage.

“I was intrigued by it,” Demarest said. “Someone who has put that much into it shouldn’t lose it.”

The Sleepers built their cave home with the help of friends. A gray timber frame exterior was constructed in the 37-foot-tall opening of the cave. Thirty-seven sliding glass doors also are used as windows throughout the three-story, three-bedroom home, allowing natural light throughout the finished sections of the home.

You know who lives in caves? Batman and terrorists. So since this family isn’t rolling around and saving my ass from getting raped by the Joker, I’m inclined to think they’re the latter.

Though holy crap how f’ing obnoxious is that their f’ing cavehouse is nicer than any apartment I will ever rent or own in New York City? Though granted, I don’t really have to worry about some Cavern Monster waking me up in the middle of the night and f’ing my nostrils. Not since I broke up with my ex, at least.

[source]

According to the Bank of America, the official bank of the NFL, its NFL partnerships and product tie-tins “generate significant revenue streams.” The bank said it was legally required to fulfill its contract to be an NFL sponsor and that its NFL product sales had already increased since the Experience began Jan. 24.

The bank refused to tell ABC News how much it is spending as an NFL corporate sponsor, but insiders have put the figure at close to $10 million. The NFL Experience was on top of that and was inked last summer, according to the bank.

Schatz said that deal or no deal, the event sponsorship should have been abdicated once the bank took billions in bailout funds.

“The Super Bowl is a big deal, but it’s a bigger deal that Bank of America is being bailed out by the America taxpayers,” [watchdog group president Tom] Schatz said. “This is an exceptional year and it’s a time to say we’re not going to do business as usual. We’re going to say no, we’re going to show some restraint, and we’re going to cut back on something that really isn’t absolutely necessary.”

On first glance I could see how this would piss a lot of people off since not only did banks prove they run their business about as effectively as a retarded chimp, but also other bailout recipients such as GM pulled out of their Super Bowl commitments. But still, it could be a lot worse. At least there wasn’t the previously planned Bank of America Hookers and Cocaine for the Sponsors Tent or The First Annual Bill Belichick Takes a Hot Wing Shit on a Pile of Government Bonds Halftime Show Sponsored by Bank of America. The latter of which would be extra silly since not only would they have had to buy the government bonds and Bill Belichick’s endorsement, but also the hot wings. Sure two of those alone might have made fiscal sense but dammit, not all three.

I’m kind of on Bank of America’s side for this one. Yeah, maybe it’s not brilliant spending $10 mil on a sponsorship at this time but at least they’re trying something to get customers beyond shrugging their shoulders and asking the government for more money. Bank of America could be buying sandwiches for poor kids and politicians would be calling for a public castration followed by a flogging with dildos. Which, while entertaining, won’t generate much revenue.

[source]

“In a move meant to ensure that the public has access to their money from banks, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has introduced a new family of banknotes which will gradually come into circulation, starting with the Z$10 trillion,” Zimbabwe’s state-run Herald newspaper quotes a bank statement as saying.

[via]

Police say a central Pennsylvania couple did not call the bank when a $1,772.50 deposit showed up in their account as $177,250. Authorities say 50-year-old Randy Pratt and 36-year-old Melissa Marie Pratt of Bloomsburg took out the money, quit their jobs and moved to Florida.

The two were arraigned Tuesday and jailed in lieu of $100,000 bail. District Judge Donna Coombe says a public defender and a conflicts lawyer are being assigned.

Police say Melissa Pratt deposited the check at FNB Bank last summer. When the big balance showed up, investigators say, the two wrote checks to another account, bought a new vehicle and were buying a house in the Orlando area when the mistake was traced.

It’s a tough spot to be in, particularly when you completely lack ethics like me or the Pratts. I’d be reluctant to give the money back because, hey, it’s money, but at the same time, I’d prefer not to get raped violently in jail over the next ten years because I got caught having spent all of the bank’s money on blow and more sturdy dollar bills to snort the blow with. I’ve never used cocaine but I just assume you’ve got to live the lifestyle.

Also f the female Pratt for selling her husband down the river like that. “Oh he gets big checks all the time, I’m sure it’s cool because he would have said something otherwise,” was basically the gist of what she said. You know what she’d have gotten out of that money after that crap? A knee right in the vagina. Would it hurt a woman? I don’t know man but after I lost that money, experimentation is all I can hope for.

[source]

From the Flickr page:

The attached picture was taken at Country Club bar on Saturday 24th November 2007.
The patron had been to his bank and was supplied with the only notes they had – $500 ‘s !!
A beer at Country Club is now Z$1 Million so there are 4 piles of 250,000 in 500′s.
Just to remind those of you who are no longer here, we lost 3 zero’s in August 2006. So the beer actually costs Z$1 Billion of the money you knew.

That’s pretty horrific. At the same time though, it would be pretty awesome to go to a McDonald’s and be able to pay with stacks of money in a briefcase as though you were making a drug buy in a movie. Which I don’t do nearly enough in real life.

This really just serves to back my idea for a currency. Now, some people in my economics class said I’m crazy. But I think the way our financial system is currently set up is illogical, as proven during the .com craze in which companies with no tangible value were said to be worth billions. We need something substantive, something really. That’s why I believe that handjobs should be our primary currency. With handjobs, everyone across the globe would be equal. Sure, some would be better than others, but that’s what capitalism is all about. So you’ve got your handjobs for small purchases, blowjobs for big ones, and various forms of penetration for huge ones. You haven’t lived until you’ve bought a house for rough anal sex, believe me. Anyway, that’s what I am…an idea man.

[source]