This series is brought to you by TurboTax Federal Free Edition. Mike: So, Logan, I heard that after we left the bar last night, I went home to go to bed, and you went back to your neighborhood in Brooklyn and got more drinks?

Logan: Well, that is almost true. I went back to our friend Adam's neighborhood and got one more drink, and also some macaroni and cheese, yes. That happened.

Mike: Oh.

Logan: I'm guessing that you're interested in this fact because you think there are other things I could have spent that $26 on! ($6 for the drink, $10 for the mac and cheese, and [...]

There's something sort of patriotic about the fact that I'll be memorializing the aughts well into this brave new year with a sizable debt to Bank of America. Like our great nation, I spent the last ten years getting stung and overcompensating, acting indecisive and entitled, living way beyond my means. And now I am paying. With interest! My credit card statements are so textbook "Don't" they deserve a reality show: a trip to Japan for the wedding of a couple I'd never met; $500 worth of phone calls from what was supposed to be a budget trip to the Dominican Republic; shitty new Ikea furniture to replace shitty broken [...]

Today begins NCAA basketball's "March Madness." The tournament's eventual champions will get to bask in the national spotlight until the next cruise-ship disaster/naked Congressman/shark attack/GOP primary/baseball season/chain-restaurant review by a flyover-state newspaper happens. And sure, winning a basketball title is worth bragging about. But we all know the real champion is the institution of higher education that can charge the most tuition and still have enough would-be students to be able to send out rejection letters every year. For a second year, here's the NCAA bracket by tuition, using the college information resource Peterson's. (Where available, in-state tuition was used.) Who will be the champs this [...]

Who read Warren Buffett's homework assignment to the U.S. today, in the Times? Because I am suspicious, I always think: "How does publication of this benefit the world's best investor?" Let us translate what he is saying.

According to at least one math-doer, Americans have a total of $826.5 billion in "revolving credit"-largely credit cards. The current estimated total of outstanding student loans, both federal and private? $829.785 billion.

There are several metrics one uses to determine the success of a new venture on the web. Page views, user retention, and brand awareness are three of the most common, but there is a lesser known, and harder to quantify, indicator that suggests a new website is coming into its own: crazy emails from random strangers.

While many startups will receive their fair share of odd inbox effluvia once they've begun to attract attention, it is only sites with a serious potential for growth that attract the high-quality bizarro queries from correspondents with nonsensical sender addresses. I am happy to inform those of you who care about the health [...]