Nicholas and Mary Lagattuta bought a four-bedroom, 3.5-bath home at 405 N. Lincoln Ave. in Park Ridge from Alonzo and Laura Monk for $658,000 on Jan. 5.

The Monks bought the property for $782,500 in Jan. 2005. The 2,786-square-foot house was built in 2005 in the West Park Ridge/Chippewa Woods neighborhood.

Mr. Lagattuta is a partner and attorney at Lagattuta & DeGrazia PC in Schaumburg, where he specializes in criminal, divorce, personal injury and real estate. Prior to entering private practice, he served as a Cook County assistant states attorney.

He earned his bachelor’s in accounting and J.D. in 1982 from DePaul University.

Earlier in December, the Lagattutas sold a four-bedroom at 324 Lincoln Ave. i

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If you’re in the market for new eyeglasses, the affiliate manager from EyeBuyDirect just sent me an email that they are having a special ‘buy one, get one free’ sale today only. Not a bad deal when you consider that they have 160 pairs of glasses (with prescription lens) for under $30! Sale ends at midnight PST. More details at the link above.

If you haven’t purchased online before, I wrote a pretty extensive guide on how to buy glasses online that you might want to check out. It’s a lot simpler than you might think. After doing so myself, I would NEVER buy glasses at an optometrist – the prices are significantly different. Read more…

The check-in hall at Düsseldorf International Airport (DUS) will house the world’s first airport indoor ski jump as part of the 7th annual TravelSuperMart from February 6-7, 2010 – one week before the start of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Former British Olympic ski jumper Eddie “the Eagle” Edwards is scheduled to open the event.

Snowboarders and ski-freestylers will perform stunts and jumps of up to 30 feet on real snow on the 130-foot-long slope right in the departure area of the airport terminal. Wi

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The last 2 years have witnessed an accumulation of delinquent mortgage loans across America. The international economic stagnation has been pressuring Americans’ budgets. Surveys have concluded that around 4 million Americans spend more than 40% of their monthly income on mortgage loan payments. Accordingly, the standard of living of middle classed Americans was hardly hit in the past couple of years. Obama’s newly proposed bill is expected to offer federal debt assistance to mortgage holders to help them get out of the hole.As shocking as it might seem, statistics show that more than 6 million Americans are at the risk of foreclosure within the next year or two. Read more…

Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal finance book.

The title of this book pretty much sums it up.

One Year to an Organized Financial Life by Regina Leeds basically lays out a week-by-week plan for getting your financial house in order. The book is divided into twelve chapters (months), each containing four subsections (weeks in a month), and each of those sections details how to take control of a specific aspect of financial life.

The end result is something that feels very much like a detailed plan to follow.

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Industry experts are warning skiing enthusiasts not to skimp on their travel insurance of they are planning to head to the slopes over the coming months. Figures were compiled by the Ski Club of Great Britain recently, and officials from the group claim that more than one million people from Britain will be heading to the slopes in the months to come. However, the group also claims that worryingly nearly 50 percent of these people will fail to take out ski travel insurance.

The group also stated that out of the people that do take out ski travel insurance cover only around 25 percent will actually read the terms and conditions of the policy to check and see what is actually covered.

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This one should fire you up one way or the other. I’ve been in many a heated debate about this very topic before. So let’s have some fun with it. I’m going to come out and say it – I HATE GRADUATE DEGREES. My hatred for them can be boiled down into three main reasons:

1. I hate how much they cost.
2. I hate the implicit pressure that comes from corporate America for people to slave away to earn that piece of paper if they want to get promoted and have a future career in management (even though those with further hands on experience typically excel in comparison).
3. I hate that I have seen those in management positions with an MBA perform at levels far below their much less numerous sub-MBA peers. Seeming

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