Brother, can you spare a dime?

I'm still trying to figure out who will be helped by GMAC's decision to make potentially shakier car loans with federal bailout money.

Not me, obviously. As a job hunter, I don't think I even qualify for one of those late night TV loans that offer to finance anyone with a $250 weekly income and a pulse. But my inability to blow my unemployment check on a Hummer never seemed a tragically missed opportunity, either.

GMAC's decision to expand lending to anyone with a 621 or higher credit score adds something fewer than 27 percent of the nation's potential borrowers to the roughly 48 percent who might have qualified when a minimum 700 score was required, the FICO gnomes at Fair Isaac Co. suggest.

Real life is trickier, according to some of the trends I've been watching. Various industry sources report that while fewer loan applications are approved -- about 64 percent currently compared to 83 percent a year ago -- applicants with lower scores get hit the hardest. Fewer than one in four applications are being accepted now from borrowers with scores below 620, compared to about two out of three last fall. That makes sense. No one wins when repos happen.

So how do you avoid a jam if you need a loan and unemployment is eroding your credit score?

Think preemptively.

An upcoming issue of Kiplinger's Personal Finance outlines some of the new lending changes to keep in mind. Lining up a home equity line of credit or some other line before you need it will help. But tap it only when you really, really need to, because without steady income, that money may be much harder to repay than you imagine.

Until then, talk with some lenders. Even in a tough economy, there are some who may be willing to take a chance if your repayment history is good, you can show you've got really good job prospects ahead, or if you have something to offer as collateral.

Staying sane, slim (I wish) and solvent

Experts say - and those of us going through it, know - that it is important to get into and stay in shape while you job hunt.

You know why. A morning walk or run is a good time to clear your head for the day. You want to look as good as you can at your next job interview. And regular exercise is a proven stress cutter plus its cheaper than tapping COBRA benefits.

So how do you afford to stay healthy? Gym memberships, for which you can pay $50 to $200 up front plus $30 to $50 a month after that, will eat the heart out of an unemployment check. Kansas City area YMCAs were waiving $150 sign-up fees this weekend, but still run almost $90 a month for a couple. (They will consider scholarships if you are really strapped for cash.)

Rigging up your own home gym doesn't seem realistic either. Those TV ads hawking multi-thousand dollar gym sets can be pretty mum about how long those monthly payments really stretch.

We have choices, though. Experts at the Mayo Clinic calculate you can do just as well by shelling out less than one month of gym membership costs for a jump rope, some hand-held weights and some resistance tubing. Just use your imagination and look for ways to insert more physical activity into your daily routine. Blogger Jennifer G on Brighthub.com suggests getting your small children into the act too. They are going to keep you hopping anyway.

Looking around for exercise programs on TV or low cost programs in your community will help stretch your resources further, say posters on Ehow.com. Fitness guru and former Navy SEAL Stew Smith insists you can get really ripped for not a lot of money.

Maybe, maybe not. But for starters, I'm going to take another look at that $4 jump rope I saw in Target's sporting goods section.

Not even New Year's and one resolution is shot

I blinked. We bought a flat screen.

Retailers want so badly to get last minute Christmas shoppers into their stores that many have cut prices back to day-after-Thanksgiving levels. Our new TV cost about half of what we were expecting to pay before my job was eliminated in September.

We are not alone. Retailers across the country are reporting dismal traffic, cautious shoppers and really steep price cuts. They don't appear to know what, if anything will work.

But something is changing. I used to scratch my head during the dot-com bust and other recessions we've been through because the parking lots at Nordstrom's and similar upscale stores always seemed full, no matter what.

Now it's as if people are stretching money-saving shopping tips beyond the holidays. This emerging frugality isn't entirely about money. Former Kansas City resident Jennifer Maxwell wrote personally of other reasons for lightening up in a recent Baltimore Examiner op-ed piece.

Some personal finance bloggers I read, at My Open Wallet, My Two Dollars and Five Cent Nickel among others, recently are taking this a step further and talking of curbing Christmas shopping to increase charitable contributions instead. Selfishly, this is a potentially good idea for anyone strapped for cash, because the donations may mean bigger tax deductions too.

I don't know if these are trends yet or not. But when in 1890, Massachusetts department store owner James Edgar first put on a Santa suit to entertain customers and their children, no one knew if that would turn into anything either.

Happy holidays, everyone.

And you thought Christmas came quickly

Heads up, job hunters. We have one more thing we need to do very soon.

Make a quick dry run through next spring's tax return to see if we need to make any special tax moves before the year ends a week from Thursday. Yippee. I know.

But there are some new tax changes to consider that Congress made while we may have been distracted by challenges such as replacing lost income. Both the Internal Revenue Service and contributors to major newsletters such as Kiplinger.com can catch us up on the basics. Check for changes that may affect anyone who bought or sold a house, paid mortgage interest or went through a foreclosure this year.

Meantime, those of still between jobs have some additional issues to deal with. You know some of the ugly ones. Unemployment benefits and severance packages are both taxable. But if unemployment benefits were your only income this year, you may qualify for a bigger tax refund through the earned income tax credit program too.

Any work you did, say, as a consultant or freelancer during your job hunt is taxable too, as self employment income. And the bite may be bigger than you expect. If you made more than a few hundred dollars, you may owe Social Security, Medicare and some other payroll taxes too.

There is a bright side, though. Job hunters have more opportunities for potential tax deductions than the still-working. Itemizers can deduct most out-of-pocket job hunting expenses that exceed 2 percent of their adjusted gross incomes. And those pain-in-the-rear big COBRA payments to maintain health coverage become potentially deductible when they exceed 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income.

Finally, if you think you will want extra help with your taxes because of your job change this time around, start scouting now. Tax professionals will only get busier as April approaches.

You know the recession is serious when....

The Internal Revenue Service said Tuesday that it will speed up some of the paperwork distressed homeowners need to refinance or sell their homes. It’s the first of what may be several IRS changes made to help troubled taxpayers through the current recession, said Doug Shulman, the service’s commissioner.

Specifically, IRS is speeding up its currently 30-day process by which it removes tax liens against a home that normally would deter a potential buyer or cause a lender to decline a refinancing request. The service similarly is speeding up paperwork for subordinating a lien by giving the lender’s stake in a refinancing higher priority than any overdue taxes the lien is designed to catch.

How much faster the process will go hasn’t been determined, but Fred Schindler, IRS’ collections policy director, told a telephone press conference that some applications could be turned around in as little as two weeks.

Also, removing or relaxing the liens won’t help a cash strapped taxpayer reduce their tax debt, Schindler said. IRS simply will attach the lien to other property, cars, wages or other assets. IRS estimates there currently are about 1 million outstanding tax liens attached to real and personal property in the U.S.

Shulman said at the press conference that the IRS also is looking at its offers-in-compromise programs, installment payment plans and loan refinance options for ways to potentially help distressed taxpayers.

Those potential relief actions aren’t ready to be announced yet, “but we want to do what we can under the constraints of law and common sense,” Shulman said.

Finding cheap heats

Job hunting – and blogging – tend to leave you with lots of little chunks of spare time around the house.

I used some of mine a few weeks ago to tape insulation around the furnace ducts in my basement. That is every bit as interesting as it sounds and I hadn’t planned to write about it until I woke up this morning and discovered the Baja Minnesota wind chills of my boyhood had reached Kansas City. Duct tape works.

So how do you stay warm in weather like this? Bloggers on the My Two Dollars and Get Rich Slowly personal finance websites tell what works for them in even colder parts of the country than Kansas City.

Think sweaters, plugging drafts and space heaters in the short term. Hard-core upper Midwesterners at midwestweekends.com suggest thinking Fargo chic in your clothing selections. The U.S. Energy Dept., among others, offers longer range stuff you can do to save money or stay warmer for less if you are looking for longer-lasting answers. Energy even offers a handy online calculator to project your potential savings, right down to your own zip code.

And if nothing else works, volunteer to help out at a homeless shelter. Depending on how the bailout goes, it may be handy to know how to keep warm if you are sleeping in your car too.

No good deed goes unpunished?

U.S. households actually reduced debt, 0.8 percent, in the third quarter, which is the first time that has ever happened in more than 50 years the Federal Reserve has been clocking that figure.

Now maybe we find out if no good deeds really do go unpunished. The statistical Seismic tick is getting increasingly many analysts debating whether the economy is headed into a period of deflation. That’s when no one buys anything while waiting for prices to drop further in order to stretch thin resources further.

That’s really bad news in an economy that has counted on our borrowing and spending to drive two-thirds of the economy.

At the kitchen table level, we already know deflation, which basically is postponing buying anything we don’t absolutely need until the price comes down or we really have the money after we’ve covered more pressing needs.

At our house, for example, we’re still looking at ads for the new flat screen we once planned to buy for Christmas to replace our conked-out Zenith. But we probably won’t buy it unless prices drop even lower than on Black Friday sales after Thanksgiving. Even then, we might cut out more of our cable service instead, which would resolve the TV question and save even more money.

Economists know we all should have been living within our collective means long ago. Now some worry that too much newly found fiscal virtue may actually prolong the pain we are in now. We don’t buy. Merchants slash prices. Manufacturers cut payroll to lower costs. Competitors and suppliers cut too. And suddenly, our paychecks are lost or smaller too.

No one yet knows why we collectively swore off borrowing last quarter. There is some debate whether lenders forced us by clamping down hard or that most of us have decided en masse to not spend any more than absolutely necessary until we know how things work out. But what do we want the answer to be?