Priceline.com pioneered name-your-price bidding for airline tickets. You just type in how much you want to pay for a domestic or international airline ticket, along with the dates you want to go and come back, and PriceLine checks if any airline is willing to sell it to you for that amount.

Priceline claims to sell 1000 airline tickets a day this way, and has received notoriety for their pioneering invention. However, your faithful Guru has tried it twice, bidding for tickets to New Orleans, but failing to find an airline willing to fob them off on me both times, even though I chose a rate just under the cheapest I'd ever flown there. Be sure you bid a reasonable amount, though $1.00 might seem like overpaying for being herded like sheep, fed like Oliver Twist, and bounced like an NBA basketball during that New York to Los Angeles flight, your chances will increase if you offer, say, half to three-quarters the going rate.

And Priceline isn't stopping at airline tickets. They've also got what-do-you-wanna-pay service for cars where you'll choose the make, model, color, and options of the new car you want, where you'd be willing to pick it up, and how much you feel like paying. They've also got similar plans in the works for hotel rooms and, you guessed it, mortgages.

If you're in the market for a home loan, you will simply input the rate and terms you want for a home mortgage, and Priceline will check with a variety of lenders to see which, if any, are interested in making the loan. The weakness, of course, is that you will be limited to whatever number of lenders Priceline deals with. For a broader view of competing mortgages, try Bank Rate Monitor, which offers info on this subject the way Mark McGwire hits homers. Mortgage-Net is worth a look-see (especially the Top 10 Mistakes list), as is HomeShark and Realtor.com.