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Real estate agents at a New York-based broker are showing their company pride — and getting an extra 15 percent in commission — by having their company's logo tattooed onto their bodies.

Thirty-seven men and women at Rapid Realty have gotten the green-and-black "Double R" tattoos so far, the company's CEO and founder, Anthony Lolli, told Inman News.

Related: Celebrity Tattoos Gone Wrong

"They wear it like a badge of honor," said Lolli, who is also a real estate agent in their South Park Slope office. "They get a lot of respect from the other agents with the amount of commitment that they have."

There are other benefits as well: "Talk about marketing — they're walking billboards!" he tweeted.

Learn more about this interesting story after the jump.

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Russian artist Sergey Balovin discovered that he could live without money by accident.

When he moved to China in 2010, "I didn't know almost anybody in Shanghai," he told Yahoo! Shine in an email. He speaks mostly Russian, a little English, and no Chinese at all, he explained, and was making good money selling expressionist landscape paintings. When a neighbor agreed to give him her easel in exchange for a hand-drawn portrait, he realized that other people might be willing to make similar trades.

"I gave the announcement on a Russian Shanghai forum," he said. "I said, 'I am ready to draw portraits and exchange them for things useful in my home.' A few weeks later, I had a few dozen of new friends and everything that is necessary for everyday life."

Learn more about Sergey's story after the jump.

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Bea Johnson, environmental lifestyle blogger and author of Zero Waste Home, says her family of four's household garbage output plateaued about three years ago and has stayed the same ever since: one quart per year. That's not a typo. During a phone interview, I ask her what's in her "waste jar" for 2013, and she paused briefly as she rummaged through the few debris. "A laminated fishing license, a few bits of plastic from an electrical repair, a piece of cable from my son's bike, and a lollipop stick — probably someone gave it to my son and he couldn't refuse; I understand." That's three months of garbage. It would include butter wrappers, too, the one food item Johnson buys in packaging, since she found it was too expensive and impractical to make, but she's saving them for an art project.

The average American produces over 1,000 pounds of garbage a year, and 10 years ago, Johnson; her husband, Scott; and their two young sons were blithely dragging their overflowing 64-gallon trash cans to the curb in front of their sprawling suburban home just like everyone else. "As life rolled by effortlessly and afforded my Barbie-like platinum-blonde hair, artificial tan, injected lips, and Botoxed forehead," she writes, "we seemed to have it all."

Read on to learn how this eco-friendly family is leading by example.

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In 1950, the most common job for women in the United States was "secretary." With fewer careers open to women back then, it doesn't come as much of a surprise that secretarial work was a popular option.

Related: Can Women Have It All? What 4 Top Career Women Say

But the most-common job for women these days? It's still "secretary"—in spite of the fact that more women are earning graduate degrees than men, are rising through the management ranks, and are starting their own businesses in record numbers.

Read on to find out why women are entering and/or reentering the workforce as secretaries.

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The US economy may be on the mend, but that hasn't stopped it from influencing a generation in an unexpected way: for the first time ever, an annual survey of college freshman has found that first-year students are more focused on their job prospects than their party plans.

According to the "2012 Freshman Norms report," conducted by UCLA's Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) each year since 1966, only 33 percent of college freshman reported drinking beer in 2012, down from 35.4 percent in 2011 and far lower than the 73.7 percent who were knocking back drinks in 1982, when many of their own parents were in college.

Read on to find out if college freshmen are more focused on potential jobs than partying.

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Young people are racking up far more credit card debt than their parents ever did, a new study shows, and economic experts are worrying that Generation Y — people born in the early 1980s — will end up dying without ever paying off their credit card bills.

Related: A 5-Step Plan to Paying Off Your Credit Cards

"Credit is more readily available now, and there have been changes in interest rates and less stigma attached to having credit-card debt, which may all make younger people today more willing to go into debt," Ohio State University economics professor Lucia Dunn, a co-author of the study, told Business News Daily.

The research, which Dunn co-authored with Capital One Financial credit manager Sarah Jiang, was published in the January issue of the journal Economic Inquiry. It suggests that, not only are Millennials using more credit than previous generations, they're paying it off far more slowly as well.

Keep reading to find out if we will ever be debt-free.

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With women graduating from college and entering the workforce in unprecedented numbers, they're discovering that they still need help learning to navigate one of the trickiest aspects of their careers: working with other women.

Related: 6 Times You Should Be a Mean Girl

"Women to women relationships are naturally intense," Kathi Elster and Katherine Crowley write in the introduction to their new book, "Mean Girls at Work: How to Stay Professional When Things Get Personal." "While it’s natural to assume that most women support other women and want them to succeed, it’s not always the case. In fact, studies show that many women believe it is their female associates who are most threatened by the prospect of a woman in power."

Related: 5 Things You Didn't Know You Could Negotiate

Not all mean girls are intentionally mean, Crowley, a psychotherapist, points out. "We’ve come up with seven categories of mean girls in our book because we’ve learned that some women are intentionally mean, while others just say and do things that other women find offensive," she told Yahoo! Shine. "The intentionally mean girls are easier to spot because you get the feeling that they don’t like you and that they want to take you down a notch."

Learn how to keep your personal and professional life separate with a few more tips from Elster and Crowley.

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Minutes after polls on the West Coast had closed Tuesday night -- and even before votes in Florida, Ohio, and Virginia had been counted — news outlets declared President Barack Obama the winner of the 2012 election.

Related: Did Women Help Obama Win the Election?

"Today we congratulate President Obama on his re-election," Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, the executive director and co-founder of MomsRising, said in a statement. "We're ready to move forward with him to ensure that we close the gender wage gap, to see health care reform fully implemented so that all our families get the health care they need, and to secure earned sick days for all workers."

Read on to learn what Obama's re-election means for women and families.

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Bad hair days can make us depressed, so it may come as no surprise that some women are addicted to blow-outs. In New York City, ladies spend thousands of dollars a year for sleek, shiny hair and perfectly tamed curls. Gabby Fraenkel, 23, told The New York Post, "I've been getting three to four blow-outs a week for as long as I can remember." Fraenkel's biweekly salon blow-outs are $40 a pop, and she pays $65 for house calls. Annually, that adds up to around $7,500, or 15 percent of her $50,000 salary. "[It's] something I do for 'me' to feel good inside and out," she told the Post.

Kate Middleton spends $12,000 a year on blow-outs

Lauren Pressman, 32, prefers the $20 blow-outs at Yani Hair Salon on Manhattan's Upper East Side. "I can't remember the last time I washed my hair," Pressman told the Post. "I've been here every week twice a week for five years." Though her salon visits over the past five years have cost her $10,000, she thinks they're worth it. "It's definitely an addiction: all the compliments and looking good, it spoils you," she admits. "I've never had a guy compliment my shoes, but a million guys have complimented my hair."

Jennifer Aniston Named Spokesperson, Co-Owner For Living Proof Hair Brand

Read on to learn how to nail a professional blow-out at home.

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Experts say that one sure way to save money is to shop your closet; most people own more trendy clothes than they realize, and old favorites often come back in style. That's what Rebecca Smithers realized when she rediscovered an old favorite buried in the back of her closet.

PICTURES: Celebrities at Fashion Week

It was a handmade cable-knit sweater that she hadn't worn in years. Her mother had made it about 16 years before, and wearing it felt like meeting up with "an old and very special friend."

That sweater, and the reappearance of other old favorites, inspired Smithers to see if she could spend an entire year without buying new clothes. A consumer affairs correspondent for the British newspaper The Guardian, she decided to document her fashion-free New Year's resolution.

Read on to see if Rebecca has been able to resist the urge to shop.

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We try to stick to our shopping lists. We keep an eye out for sales, clip coupons, study the store circulars, and even go so far as to leave the credit cards at home in order to avoid impulse buying. And yet, most shoppers end up buying more than they bargained for—and that's exactly what retailers want them to do.

Related: How to save money at Target

"Every single detail of your shopping experience—the placement of every shelf, box, sign, and restroom; the background music; color of paint on the wall; words the staff use to greet you—is a precisely orchestrated merchant-customer dance designed to achieve maximum sales results," writes Dayana Yochim at the finance and investing site The Motley Fool.

Related: 5 retail mind games that make you spend more

Customers have figured out the end-cap trick—the one where stores feature higher-priced goods on the ends of the aisles, where they're easy to see, and fill the back and center of the store with the everyday items people really went there to buy. And we all know to ignore the "impulse purchases" placed near the cash registers. So retailers have redoubled their efforts.

Read on to see 10 ways retailers get us to spend more money.

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Nowadays, people barely read their automobile manual, let alone tinker with their engine. Audra Fordin, the owner of Great Bear Auto and Body Shop in Queens, NY, tells Shine that you can save hundreds of dollars a year by tackling basic repairs yourself. "There are a ton of things you can fix — from wipers, to fuses, to headlights — with $10 and a screw driver instead of a trip to the garage."

Related: 10 Painless Tricks to Save Money Every Day

Fordin, a fourth-generation mechanic, learned her trade by her father's side. "My dad was a workaholic," she laughs. "I was a little girl who wanted to hang with Daddy. In order to do that, I had to work." Fordin is spreading the knowledge. A mom of three, she works with the Girl Scouts and runs workshops and an instructional website, Women Auto Know. "It's always easier to be ripped off when you are uneducated," she warns. "With education comes confidence. You won't be messed with as easily."

Related: Tricks Restaurants Use to Get You to Spend More Money

Here are her top money-saving tips:

1. Changing your coolant on time can save you at least a thousand dollars in repairs over the course of your car's lifetime. It helps keep your car cool in the Summer and warm in the Winter. If you ignore the coolant, your engine can overheat. Fordin says it's worth the couple hundred of dollars it will cost to drain the entire system of coolant every few years before replacing it with new fluid. Consult your manual to see the exact timing for your car.

Continue reading to get more tips on how to repair your car without breaking the bank.

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Coolhaus co-founder and CEO Natasha Case turned her recession woes into something sweet. She jumped full-time into her hobby of making gourmet ice cream sandwiches after her job at Disney dried up. "I didn't look back. . . . I just sort of went for it."

Case approached her friend Freya Estreller, who was then working in real estate development for a private equity fund, with the idea of launching an ice cream truck business. After talking it through and running the numbers, Estreller was on board. She recalls thinking, "Let's give it a shot! Let's reinvent the ice cream cone."

Not everyone was so enthused. The women's parents were skeptical. They had invested time and money into supporting the development of their daughters' professional careers. Case had been in architecture school for seven years before getting the job at Disney. "My parents were concerned. . . . They kind of had a little intervention with me. Like, 'What are you doing?'" she recalls.

The two were undaunted and located a $2,700 used mail truck on Craigslist. It was 2009 and the early days of Los Angeles's famous food truck scene. One catch: the truck didn't actually run, so they towed it to Estreller's mother's house, where it sat until they could raise the money for renovation and repairs.

Keep reading the inspiring Coolhaus story.

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Sure, it's fun to get all dreamy about having a wedding of Kim Kardashian-proportions. But since most of us won't be wearing a dress that equals several salaries or handing out thousand-dollar baskets of organic soap at the door, it's probably best to (eventually) wisen up about how to plan your own day, your own way. Shine spoke to veteran professional wedding planner Laura Patterson of The Ideal Day in Chicago about how to host an A-list wedding on a budget.

She shared these five insider tips.

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When I started working at my main job, I was younger than some of the interns, and perpetually worried about being taken seriously. So I made sure to dress a little more formally than I had to, kept my long hair up in a severe-looking bun, and was extra-careful about my work. But still, if I had a dollar for every time an older coworker asked me to copy, collate, or fetch something for them that first year, my 401(k) would be a whole lot bigger than it is now.

I remember a coworker, back in the mid-1990s, who told me that I reminded him of all the women who wouldn't date him when he was in college and treated me accordingly. Others asked me how I'd managed to get hired so young (no, nepotism was not involved, though hard work and luck and good advice were). I'd cringe a bit whenever someone asked me how old I was, not because it was an inappropriate question (though it is) but because I hated the way anything I suggested, said, or did after that would be judged and downgraded.

Excelle has a list of 12 things you should never say to your younger and older coworkers, and while I found myself nodding along in sympathy as I clicked through their advice, I think there are a few that I'd like to add. Keep reading to check them out.

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Our friends at Lucky just brought up an issue we’re all too familiar with: Buying Under the Influence (BUIs). Have you ever stumbled into a store after a few cocktails and handed over your credit card a little too readily? Or come home from a night out and made some drunk impulse purchases online? I have. Alcohol lowers your spending inhibitions! So I’ve come up with some five helpful tips to avoid a BUI.

1. Don’t drink near your favorite shops. Is there a cute bar next to a trendy new boutique you can’t resist? Skip it. In college I worked at Urban Outfitters, and every night ladies would walk in smelling of booze and hit the fitting rooms with a pile of clothes. I pitied their wallets, because most of them were too lazy to make returns.

2. Don’t day drink. Brunch often leads to mimosas, which often lead to impulse shopping. Enjoy your breakfast juice without spiking it.

3. Avoid late-night infomercials. You never knew you needed a Cami Secret or a knife that could cut through all your shoes, but those TV spots are so darn convincing! See also: HSN and QVC.

4. Restrict your online use after drinking. In the same way you might regret an embarrassing Facebook comment the next day, you’ll hang your head in shame after buying your entire Wish List from an online store. Wine and the Internet don't mix.

5. Have a support system. Drunk buddies can be enablers, but if you limit your alcohol intake and your friends do, too, you might be able to window-shop without actually spending money.

Now, readers, fess up! Have you ever suffered from a BUI? What have you purchased under the influence, and did you regret it?

— Joanna Douglas

Related links:
Women spend over eight years of their lives shopping
Why drunk dialing is a bad idea . . . (VIDEO)
Drunken grocery shopping: The next big thing at Whole Foods