Retailers to use free shipping to lure shoppers for the holiday.

This coming holiday shopping season in the midst of a recession, has all the markings of a buyer's market. Economic experts have been busy all summer watching consumers spending and almost all signs point to some unease when it comes to people opening up their wallets. Well aware of that, retailers from the brick and mortar with an online presence to the ones with online only presence, are gearing up to make sure they don't miss the opportunity to grab their share of the dollars spent online.
To reach that goal, many retailers are reverting to free shipping as their secret weapon.
Already standard with some online retailers like Zappos.com and Shoebuy.com, free shipping is starting to become spread across the board. Retailers giants like Target, who has offered free shipping around the holidays, is starting the offer two weeks earlier this year, starting in November 1st and applying it to twice as many items as in years past, according to the Wall Street Journal.
For its part, Wal-Mart which is locked in an epic battle with Amazon.com, is using it as a knock out punch, even applying it to the already heavily discounted books that it is selling online.
Last but not least, shoppers can expect the number of retailers taking part in the annual Free Shipping Day organized by Freeshipping.org and held on Dec 17, to double from the 250 stores that took part last year;
and the event this year is set to draw first time participants like Toys "R" US.

For more, see WSJ.com.

Cake Financial is an easy to use automated financial service.

If there was a better time for someone to pay closer attention to their own finances, that time is now. But the recession and the financial crisis that have preceded it, can make it harder for a lot of people to afford, or even to just trust another human being with advices on how to handle their investments. That's where comes in Cake Financial, a San Francisco based small company which is offering an automated financial service written in plain English and with the aim to provide users, a custom design mutual-fund portfolio.
Priced at $99 a year, "the service, is designed to be simple, clear, relatively quick using easy to understand graphics and a step by step approach", according to the Wall Street Journal.
Cake Premium, which is the name of the service , works by automatically importing users retirement investment and 401(k) account information from a pool of 65 major investments companies, analyzes and categorizes his or her holdings, and then proposes how best to reallocate them.
It is important to note that Cake Financial is not a licensed adviser or broker and doesn't conduct any transaction on your behalf. It provides the practical advices and if you want to follow through with them, you'll have to go somewhere else to conduct the actual transaction.
For people interested in testing the service, Cake Financial is offering a free 30-day trial at Cake Financial.com.

For more, see WSJ.com