If consumer advocates get their way, deconstructing that monthly cellphone bill could become a lot easier.

Comments are filing in to the Federal Communications Commission’s request for input on simplifying wireless bills.

The deadline comes amid a thicket of consumer-focused fee news, from credit cards to overdraft fees. Consumer advocates are arguing for more transparency in billing, both when shopping around for plans and for existing mobile subscribers.

Filing comment Tuesday is BillShrink.com, a site that analyzes the fine print of credit card bills and user profiles to find the cheapest cellphone plan. The average consumer overspends $300 a month on her cellphone plan a year, Schwark Satyavolu, BillShrink’s co-founder and president, said. In the last five months, the site has found $800 million in potential savings on cellphone plans.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

It’s not just kids who are Googling “unemployment.” Grandma and Grandpa are looking for jobs online too.

Nearly 3.6 million people age 65 and older visited career-development Web sites in January, according to a Nielsen Online report released Thursday.

The majority of job site visitors–18.7 million–are still between the ages of 35 and 49. But people 65 and older were the fastest growing group by far, up 41 percent from the same time a year prior.

Chuck Schilling, research director at Nielsen Online, says the figures represent a “desire to stay employed longer” in order to “sock away more retirement savings.”

Read the rest of this post

While I noted earlier his reduced estimates for both Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG), Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster today actually cut estimates on 33 Internet and online content companies, citing “the significant deterioration in the economic and consumer spending outlook.”

Munster says he expects the U.S. savings rate to increase significantly over the next few years, following 25 years of increasing leverage and a declining savings rate. The good news is that will allow households to rebuild savings, home equity and investment portfolios. The bad news is that it means less consumer spending.

“Nearly all drivers of consumer spending, including employment, employee earnings, consumer credit, household wealth and consumers’ propensity to save, are all moving in a direction to drive spending lower over the near-term,” he writes in a note.

Read the rest of this post