My wife and I were quite happy to see Lost return to the air last night. We quite enjoyed the episode, even though my favorite characters weren’t involved at all (where are you, psychic Desmond?). Anyway, on with the personal finance posts.

When Times Get Tough, Financially Desperate Options Can Seem Attractive This is a very well written condemnation of payday loans and other such legalized loan sharking. The anecdotal quotes from various sources make this really come to life. (@ blog her)

Are You Paying To Work? When you start breaking down what work is truly costing you, you often find that your job isn’t really worth it. (@ irregular payments)

Beg, Borrow, Or Steal – But Mostly Borrow This is an interesting analysis of the arguments against minimum wage increases, but one sentence stood out at me: “Many small business owners support increases to the minimum wage on the grounds that it’s actually better business.” Undeniably, the better you pay your employees, the better they’ll perform, but how does that relate to a minimum wage increase? I’d even go so far as to say that raising the minimum wage hurts that logic – small business owners are much more likely to pay above minimum wage (and thus encourage workers to perform better) if the wage isn’t increased. It’s a pretty big logical jump in an otherwise interesting article. (@ pandagon)