By KATHLEEN PENDER, San Francisco Chronicle

The Internal Revenue Service's decision to distribute economic stimulus payments based on the last two digits of Social Security numbers got me wondering: How does the government assign these numbers? Is there anything you can tell about a person from his or her number? And in using the last two digits, is the IRS favoring one group over another?

Given the financial crisis, it's no surprise that I continue to get questions from readers about the safety of their bank deposits.Q: I'm looking for high-yielding certificates of deposit, and some small banks I've never heard of are offering the highest rates. Should I trust them?

Morningstar recently released its annual list of the five best and five worst 529 college savings plans. Past favorites Utah Educational Savings and Nebraska College Savings dropped out of the top five, not because they got worse, but because other plans got better.

The credit crisis is spreading to college loans as more lenders drop out of the business. More than two dozen nonbank lenders have stopped making college loans and three large banks followed suit.Of the thousands that remain, some are reducing or eliminating discounts on the popular federally backed loans and raising rates or getting stricter on private loans.

As the economy weakens and home equity loans become harder to get, more people might be tempted to raid their retirement plans for living expenses or debt repayment.What they might not realize is how harsh the tax consequences will be.

Interest in green investing has blossomed, thanks largely to Al Gore's 2006 documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," and soaring oil prices, which have fueled a sharp rise in alternative-energy stocks.Many green funds are full of solar, wind and water energy companies. But you'll also find companies such as Google, Apple, IBM and Johnson & Johnson.

Here are details of the new economic stimulus plan, along with answers to questions about it from readers.Under HR5140, the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008, most working people will get $600 if they are single or $1,200 if they file a joint return, assuming they paid at least that much in federal income tax in 2007.

Thud!That's the sound of yields falling on conservative short-term investments in the wake of the Federal Reserve's steep interest rate cuts.Ouch!

Face it. The odds of a recession have grown. What should you do to prepare?"Two things you don't want to do is buy a second house and figure out how to sell the current one later or quit your job and figure out how to get another one later," says Jeff Lancaster, a principal with money management firm Bingham, Osborn & Scarborough.

There are few things more valuable than your health, but should you invest in exercise equipment, a gym membership or gizmos advertised on infomercials that promise to melt away pounds in a few minutes a day?