Supply of homes for sale growing, but not everywhere

Can't find the house of your dreams at a price you like? Turn the corner and keep on looking. According to data from ZipRealty, the number of homes on the market in April was up 7 percent over March. That's nearly double the normal amount homes available for sale.

In places like San Francisco, Washington, Orange County, California and Seattle, housing inventories are up as much as 19 percent.

Of course, the problem really isn't the number of homes being listed for sale. The problem is that homes already on the market haven't been selling.

Although home prices have been declining, sellers are still reluctant to cut prices to a level that will motivate buyers to put in an offer. Meanwhile, developers who are sitting on acres of land and a pile of unsold homes, continue to cut prices and pump up the extras in order to move their product.

How to buy Your Next Digital Camera

When I bought my Nikon FM2 just after high school, I would've bet even money that this would be my camera for life. It took fabulous, professional-grade photos, wasn't all that heavy, and looked really cool.

Twenty years later, I dropped it and no one was ever able to fix it. Lucky for me, digital cameras were on the scene, and the newest generation comes really close to duplicating what I had with my Nikon FM2.

If you're in the market to buy a new camera, you'll want to think about more than just the size, shape and weight.

For less than $500, you can buy a digital camera with 10 megapixels and a high-zoom digital lens. Other neat features include facial recognition software, image stabilization, cheap one-gigabyte memory cards, longer-life batteries, and in-camera editing.

Some cameras even offer a GPS system that will imprint your photos will the location, in addition to the date and time you captured the image.

Just don't forget to say "cheese."

Mortgage Fraud Rises 30 percent

Although the number of homes sold is dropping, the number of mortgage fraud cases reported is rising, according to the annual mortgage fraud report from the Mortgage Asset Research Institute.

While it's possible this level of fraud existed in previous year, the clash of rising interest rates and stagnating or sinking home values, has caused more cases of mortgage fraud to come to light.

According to the report, the most common type of fraud last year involved stated income loans, where the borrower simply tells the lender how much he earned and no one checks. Or, in some cases, the lender simply put down how much the borrower needed to be earning in order to afford the loan.

Which is how some borrowers earning less than $50,000 a year were approved for $750,000 mortgages.

Georgia, which has been at the top of the list for mortgage fraud over the past few years, has fallen to fourth place. In 2006, Florida topped the MARI Fraud index, followed by California, and Michigan.

What happens to the airline and travel industries if it doesn't have the cash to pay its workers?

I'm doing a lot of traveling these days. In fact, over the past 3 weeks, I've crossed the country, from Los Angeles to Hilton Head to Philadelphia and back again. Soon, I'll go to Boston to drop off my sons at overnight camp.

I'm flying to all these destinations on very reasonable fares. I love the great deals I'm finding and it makes me want to fly even more.

But I'm worried about what's going to happen to the travel industry if airlines can't pay a good enough salary to attract enough people to fill jobs.

Airplanes can't fly themselves. Years ago, airlines used to pay a healthy wage loaded with benefits. Union negotiations were tough, but airline jobs were coveted.

Nowadays, baggage handlers start at $8.75 per hour, about half of what you'd earn working at Costco, without the same level of benefits.

If the airline jobs don't get filled, expect longer delays, more lost baggage and an unpleasant experience flying rather unfriendly skies.

SmartMoney Magazine Says You Need $5 million to Be Rich

The June issue of SmartMoney magazine claims it'll teach you how to make $5 million dollars.

Wow! $5 million bucks is a lot of money. But that's what you need to join America's wealthiest 1 percent. Having a million bucks in your retirement account just won't do the trick.

Reading the story -- which, by the way, didn't make me feel as though I could earn $5 million – I was reminded of a cover story I wrote for Worth Magazine more than a dozen years ago.

The story was called "Scraping by on $100,000 per year," and I profiled families that were having a tough time making ends meet. Getting folks to go on the record complaining that $100,000 wasn't enough back then was tough. No one wanted to sound like they were whining.

Today, some folks earning twice that can't make ends meet. The funny thing is, most people spend everything they earn, whether it's $50,000 a year or $5 million a year.