Taking a road trip home for the holidays this year? Be sure to go easy on the gas pedal, particularly if your travels take you up or down the East Coast. According to stats from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the I-95 corridor between the southeast and New England includes five of the 10 U.S. states carrying the highest fines for speeding--Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, Maryland and New Hampshire. All hit up speeders for a maximum of $500 or more for a first offense. Judges in Carolina and Georgia, not to mention 16 other states, have the discretion to add jail time.

Checklist as your teenager heads off to college: Don't forget to: a) pay the tuition; b) have the safe-sex talk; c) have the drinking-and-driving talk; and d) buy your student a house or condo. Pardon the whiplash on that last one, but the fact is, many parents who are financially able to do so are choosing to invest in real estate close to campus for their college-bound offspring. In many cases, it's preferable to shelling out dormitory fees or apartment rent. Statistician Walter Molony of the National Association of Realtors, or NAR, estimates there are about 3 million campus houses and condos in America today, properties that were purchased primarily for the owners' college-bound students. That represents about 8 percent of the nation's 37.4 million investment properties, but excludes 6.8 million vacation homes, which don't tend to be near college campuses.

The average total cost of a private four-year college rose to $32,307 for the current school year, but the rate of increase has slowed compared to public school prices, according to a report released Monday. Excluding room and board costs, average published tuition fees at a private four-year college in 2007-08 climbed 6.3 percent year over year to $23,712, according to the College Board, a non-profit association of more than 5,200 schools, colleges and universities.

A new federal law increases college financial aid for families who qualify, offers grants to students who plan to teach and helps struggling graduates repay their student loans. Need-based aid. Pell Grants, awarded to students with financial need, climb to a maximum of $5,400 per year over the next five years (the current maximum is $4,310). The interest rate on subsidized Stafford loans (also need-based) drops to 3.4% over the next four years, half the current rate. The rate on unsubsidized Staffords remains at 6.8%.

The front-running Democratic presidential candidates are pushing a simple idea they say will make college loans more affordable: cutting out the middlemen. And the middlemen -- primarily, commercial banks and lenders -- are none too pleased. This month, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton issued her plan to make college more affordable through a range of proposals, from creating a new tuition tax credit to simplifying the aid application process. Buried at the bottom of her plan is perhaps the most radical step: A pitch to eliminate the Federal Family Education Loan Program, which gives subsidies to commercial lenders such as Sallie Mae to distribute federal loans to students.

Colleges are moving to eliminate -- or at least ease -- student debt as pressure builds in Washington for them to spend more from their endowments to help families afford the rising cost of school. This month, Williams College announced that it will eliminate loans from all financial-aid packages beginning next school year and replace them with grants. Amherst College recently announced a similar initiative. And Davidson College in Davidson, N.C., began this fall replacing loans with grants and student employment.

You've been with your firm five years and haven't been promoted in three. It's not the economy. It's not your industry. You've sadly concluded: It's you. Co-workers are skyrocketing. You're landlocked on the same perch.

Manage enough employees and you'll face individuals with personality disorders. The way you respond can either promote calm or provoke turmoil. "We all have diverse personalities," said Laurence Miller, a clinical business psychologist in Boca Raton, Fla. "But when personality traits turn into personality disorders, you have a problem." Author of "From Difficult to Disturbed," Miller describes the most difficult people to manage as "personality stealth bombs." The severity of their dysfunctional personality may not manifest itself at first, but it eventually grates on everyone on the team.

All too often, studies seem to show workers being dissatisfied and fed up. A Conference Board survey earlier this year, for example, showed that less than half of all Americans say they are satisfied with their jobs, down from 61% 20 years ago. And the numbers were even more striking among the newest entrants to the workforce. Less than 39% of workers under the age of 25 said they are satisfied with their employment situation.

Getting to the corner office was once just a matter of paying your dues and following a narrowly defined route. Want to become a chief executive? You had better put in time as the president or chief operating officer. Dream of becoming chief financial officer? It's best to have vice-president of finance on your resume first. If only it were still that easy.