Marketplace Money for Friday, September 10, 2010

The Beatles should've given us a leg up and told us what money can buy: Happiness -- to a certain degree. A study shows that folks who earn around $75,000 think they have a pretty good life, compared to those who earn less.

Tess Vigeland talks to Assistant Professor Elizabeth Dunn who believes you can buy happiness, to a certain degree, if you spend your money right.

Tess Vigeland and Marketplace Money's Senior Producer Deb Clark go through your letters to stories you heard on Marketplace Money.

Host Tess Vigeland and Kathy Kristof, personal finance columnist for CBS Moneywatch takes on listener's money questions. In the show this week, and economist has trouble figuring out the answer to a home refinance riddle, a 14-year-old girl learns the basics of savings and an amateur wine maker wonders if there's a cheap way to start a new vineyard.

In Memphis, Marketplace's Jeremy Hobson found that for struggling homeowners, the difference is as simple as black and white.

It's harder than ever to get a job now, even if you've got all kinds of degrees and experience. But the challenge increases when all of that experience was in another country.

Tess Vigeland went around the Marketplace office to see how the married staffers and their better halves deal with the household finances.

Tess Vigeland talks to John Kestner, a grad student at the MIT Media Lab, about his "proverbial wallets" concept, which attempts to take the abstract, digitized way many people spend money into