SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- EBay Inc. reported Wednesday a third-quarter net loss of more than $936 million -- a rare plunge into the red for the e-commerce juggernaut caused by charges to its Skype telecommunications division.

But San Jose-based eBay still easily exceeded Wall Street's expectations for the quarter ended Sept. 30, thanks to record revenue of $1.89 billion, up 30 percent from the year-ago quarter.

Executives credited record revenue at the PayPal electronic payment division, and brisk sales outside of the United States and at ticket broker StubHub.com.

Early this month, eBay announced it would take a $900 million write-down in the value of Skype. That impairment charge essentially acknowledged that eBay executives drastically overvalued the $2.6 billion Skype acquisition, completed in October 2005. EBay also paid certain Skype shareholders $530 million to settle future obligations.

Including the Skype charges, eBay lost $936.6 million, or 69 cents per share. In the year-ago quarter, it

Being young and financially irresponsible is great fun, but being old and broke stinks.

Still, that doesn't mean you have to become a shut-in and put every spare cent into your retirement plan. Tuck away a little bit on a regular basis and you can party when you're 19 and 99.

The turbulent 20s, that sometimes pleasurable, often painful transition from carefree adolescence to responsible adulthood, is admittedly a difficult time for anyone to focus on saving for retirement.

"It's tough to start talking too many numbers with young people because a lot of times they're also overwhelmed -- it's their first job, their first real paycheck, their first apartment, their first time dealing with health insurance," says Derek Avdul, financial consultant and author of "Real Life 101: The Workbook."

"When you have all these variables going on and they're trying to be grown-ups, retirement just takes a

NEW YORK (AP) -- Despite losses from souring home loans and tough-to-sell corporate debt, JPMorgan Chase & Co. managed to beat Wall Street's expectations and eke out a 2 percent profit rise in the third quarter.

The nation's third-largest bank sees a rocky road ahead for the lending business, and gave few details about how it's going to weather the fourth quarter. But executives said they have the pieces in place to navigate it properly -- and investors appeared confident, too, sending the bank's shares up more than 2 percent.

The New York-headquartered bank reported a profit despite marking down $1.3 billion on leveraged loans; $339 million in debt obligations backed by collateral, including subprime mortgages; and $186 million in mortgages it has issued and that are in the pipeline. It also padded its provisions -- essentially, its emergency fund for loan losses -- by about $2 billion.

The bank's results, which brought its investment banking income down 70 percent from a year ago and retail financial services income down 14 percent, were nothing spectacular compared to the double-digit