Nerds, Geeks, and all manner of Curious Cats listen up: The Secret Science Club is back and serving up two heaping scoops of knowledge for you baby birds on April 1st . This week’s topic? Mars.

When you eventually settle into your first place, you quickly realize that the floors don’t clean themselves and you could spend hours trying to figure out why your kitchen smells like socks. The solution? Hold your nose and tackle the problems head on. The only down side is that cleaning supplies tend to fall on the expensive end of the scale, and the bill can get a bit costly when you’re purchasing up a different spray bottle for each surface of your apartment.

As someone who’s been on both sides of the haggling scene, I’ve seen some hardcore hagglers stand firm and score some pretty sweet deals. On the other hand, I’ve seen the novice haggler walk away intimidated and empty handed. If done right and used in the appropriate places, haggling should increase your chances of getting a few dollars shaved off the bottom line of a price tag. The idea is to adopt the tried and true methods that have been proven to work. Keep reading for 5 tips on shoring up your haggling skills. And once you’re done? Take a trip to the flea market and see if you can’t put some of those skills to work.

When you gots to go, you gots to go. Unfortunately, the five boroughs aren’t very conducive to allowing one to seek relief when nature calls; public toilets are scarce and, let’s face it, they’re public toilets.

When the economy was in better shape, Starbucks was the rest stop for many people who were “under pressure”, but with the coffee houses scaling back, where does one turn? To the BlackBerry or iPhone, of course.

My traveling has slacked significantly since I moved to NYC. Along with having a terminal lack of freed up funds, it’s infinitely hard to find time off here. As if the expected 50 – 60 hour work weeks aren’t enough of a deterrent, bosses tend to oftentimes try to dictate when you are allowed to take time off. I guess indenturing yourself to them forty-seven weeks out of the year isn’t enough.

Unbeknownst to me, ING (the online based bank with the consistently good APY’s) has opened cafes in a bunch of major U.S. cities — complete with free wife and free personal finance seminars and webinars. Who knew!?

Investing can be an overwhelming and daunting task when you’re young and first starting out with your investments. But are young people today turned off by investing after seeing our parent’s nest eggs deteriorate in front of our eyes? Or do we live in a world so focused on the here and now, that planning for the distant future seems like a nonessential task.

Indie music fans the world over are currently in Austin Texas for SXSW Music, a celebration of all things loud, trashy, and beer-soaked. But if you’re one of the unfortunate New Yorkers who are unable to hop a plane, train, or automobile to the Lone Star State, don’t fret; L Magazine has your back. [More...]

The first annual Northside Festival will bring leather, eyeliner, and ball-crushingly tight skinny jeans to the twin ‘hoods of Greenpoint and Williamsburg from June 11 to June 14. Exact lineups are TBD, but there’s a focus on promoting the local flavor that the five boroughs have to offer. Four-day passes will go on sale “shortly” at a “ridiculously low price” so keep a glassy eyes on the official site for deets to come.

Investing in your retirement has never been more important than it is now. With the current state of the economy, there’s not much of a reason to have faith that you’re social security payments will provide much stability to you in your golden years. With the rising costs of living and pretty much everything else, social security contributions can’t and won’t keep up with inflation, and what may barely pay your bills now certainly won’t pay them when you’re 65.

SXSW Interactive 2009 is drawing to a close today, and the LifeStyler crew had a blast on all fronts. Between the informative panels, drinks, networking, drinks, parties, drinks, dinners, drinks and even more drinks, we ran into The Human MySpace and PR dynamo JahFurry, at the Hilton who gave us the low-down on a slick new iPhone application for the party set: Socialbomb’s Paparazzi.