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My 82-year-old mother has been accusing family members of spying on her, listening in on her phone conversations and entering her home when she's not there, among other things, off and on for about 10 years. She told her doctor she won't talk with us. Is there anything we can do? Are there resources and/or free counseling services to help us work out issues with our mom so we can talk with her doctor? You can try to contact your mom's doctor to discuss her condition, particularly given that you're concerned she may be suffering from dementia and unable to properly care for herself.

More than 100,000 struggling homeowners could get help from a $2-billion program that California is launching, including about 25,000 borrowers who owe more than their properties are worth and could see their mortgages shrink. The Keep Your Home California program, which uses federal funds reserved for the 2008 rescue of the financial system, has the potential to make a sizable dent in California's foreclosure crisis and help the general housing market. State officials hope to fend off foreclosure for about 95,000 borrowers and provide moving assistance to about 6,500 people who do lose their homes.

Shari Redstone, taking control of a pet project, has joined with a private equity firm to acquire a Russian movie theater chain from her family-owned National Amusements Inc. Terms were not disclosed. The acquisition of the Rising Star Media circuit, which operates in Moscow and St. Petersburg, comes as National Amusements, run by Shari Redstone and her father, Sumner Redstone, has been selling theaters to help pay down debt. National Amusements recently reached a deal to sell 35 U.S. theaters, including the Bridge Cinema de Lux multiplex in Los Angeles, to Texas-based Rave Cinemas.

Of all the challenges individual investors face, one of the toughest is finding a good financial planner. As a generation of do-it-yourself investors grows older and their financial lives get more complex, many people are realizing they want a human touch. Though they're comfortable researching investments on the Internet, they want some level of guidance from a planner. "People say, 'Look, I know what I'm doing but I just had a kid' or 'I've gotten a bonus at work and money is now more important to me. It's more serious,'" said Jon Stein, founder of investment website Betterment.com.

Not everyone is celebrating the new high in the Dow Jones industrial average. After being mauled by two punishing bear markets in the last dozen years, millions of individual investors aren't sure how to feel. On Tuesday, the world's best-known market gauge vaulted 125.95 points to close at 14,253.77, nearly 90 points above its previous high-water mark in late 2007. Some small investors are dismayed at not loading up on equities when the market plunged in 2008 and early 2009.

PennyMac Financial Services Inc., the 5-year-old mortgage company founded by former Countrywide Financial Corp. President Stanford L. Kurland, plans to go public on the New York Stock Exchange.  PennyMac , which makes, buys, sells and services residential loans, intends to raise up to $287.5 million in a public offering, the Moorpark-based company said in a prospectus filed Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.  ...

In the early 1990s, executives of the now-defunct American Stock Exchange hatched a revolutionary idea: a hybrid mutual fund-type investment that would trade like a stock. But in an era when hot-handed mutual fund managers had rock-star status, the concept of the “exchange-traded fund,” or ETF - low-cost, pre-programmed portfolios designed to simply replicate a broad or narrow swath of the market - didn't get a lot of people's hearts pounding. Twenty years later, however, exchange-traded funds have ballooned into a $1.4-trillion industry in the U.S. and $2 trillion worldwide.

Dear Liz: We have a family member who recently was approved by Social Security for a complete disability claim. This person will never work again but has an outstanding student loan. The lender has a formal mechanism to apply for loan forgiveness, but is refusing to accept medical documentation of the disability. What appeal process is there and how can we force them to act? Do we need to retain legal counsel and incur additional expense to enforce a legal process and achieve loan forgiveness?

The misadventure of the Carnival Triumph cruise in the Gulf of Mexico has provoked several passenger lawsuits and a storm of bad publicity, including horror stories about overflowing toilets and long food lines. But if you think the debacle might lead to heavily discounted cruise rates this summer, think again. Demand for cruise vacations remains strong enough that industry experts predict no sizable fare cuts this summer and fall. However, Carnival Cruise Lines, operator of the ill-fated ship, is among firms offering deals.

Federal regulators have sued a purported gold-selling operation run by a Laguna Niguel man, accusing it of bilking investors out of millions of dollars. At least 80 people paid about $5.5 million to two Irvine companies headed by Ryan A. Nassbridges for gold and silver coins and bars and other precious metals, according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The buyers were told the firms would store the coins and bullion for them before selling it for a profit, the suit says.