Gold futures climbed to a new high Thursday, giving another nudge to the gold rush on Main Street as some people scramble to turn in their old jewelry for cash.

Both mindless eating and mindless spending rely on our subconscious need to follow scripts to pace our consumption. Community plays a huge role in regulating our financial destiny - either a path of savings that builds real wealth or a path of spending that leads to impoverishment.

A weekly listing of property transfers and building permits in and around Charlottesville.

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Grapes brought cash receipts of $10.5 million for Virginia producers in 2008, up from $8 million in 2007

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A weekly listing of property transfers and building permits in and around Charlottesville.

Dieting and budgeting face similar hurdles in the American lifestyle. Some of us live to eat; others eat to live. Attempting to reduce our spending is every bit as challenging as trying to slim our waistlines. Some shop to live; others live to shop.

Dominion Virginia Power customers would get back more than $400 million from the company under an agreement the state’s largest utility has reached with the state attorney general’s office and a group of large ratepayers.

A weekly listing of property transfers and building permits in and around Charlottesville.

Retirement planning is even more crucial for women than for men. Although most women are married, 85 percent outlive their husbands and are alone during their last years.

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Workers in Albemarle County are helping to keep military and commercial ships around the world afloat and outfitted with the latest technology.

Unemployment in the Charlottesville metropolitan area remained at 5.5 percent in September while the rate in the city itself dropped by seven-tenths of a percent, according to Virginia Employment Commission figures.

University of Virginia President John T. Casteen III will deliver the keynote address at the annual dinner meeting of the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce on Nov. 18.

The recession hasn’t been so scary for Halloween stores. In fact, they’re finding better haunts in the graveyards of failed retailers.

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Exactly a year ago I encouraged you to avoid another lost decade in the markets. I recommended a specific balanced portfolio that today is beating the S&P 500 by 9.4 percent.

They’re well trained, well paid, ready to join and may even bring a passel of jobs for local residents along with them.

First-year graduate students at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business Administration are giving mixed reviews of the Kindle DX, an electronic book reader that they’re testing this school year.

It’s an experiment that has made back-to-school a little easier on the back: Amazon.com gave more than 200 hundred college students its Kindle e-reading device this fall, loaded with digital versions of their textbooks.