Welcome to this week's edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance.
As a summary of each piece, I'm listing each author's reason for submitting the post to the carnival (for those that submitted one) and/or a bit of the post itself as a summary -- so you readers know what to expect before you get to the post.
With that said, here we go:
- Don't Miss These Tax Breaks - Since we’re gearing up for tax season, I thought I’d write up an article on tax breaks that I recently ran across.
- Missing Some 1099 Forms - Don't worry if you're missing some of your 1099 forms for your tax return, you don't actually need them.
- An Interview with Jonathan Clements Part 2 - This is Part 2 of an interview with Jonathan Clements.
- Our Allowance System - Awhile back we decided that the time was right to institute an allowance system at our house.
- Russell's Investment Manager's Outlook Survey - Russell conducts an annual survey of the investment managers to guage the market sentiment and direction. The post contains the summary of the results from this survey.
- A Good Investment for Young Professionals? - Is buying foreclosures at a discount the way to make all a Young Professionals money dreams come true or would it end up being a money pit in the end?
- Travel Advisory - Planning a trip overseas, and want to bump up your life insurance? Well, maybe you can, and maybe you can't. We explore some "hidden issues."
- Cost Effectiveness - Just how cost-effective is it, in the long run, to spend $100 on Valentine's Day gifts for your sweetie?
- Frugal Females Found - Stories of three women who died surprise millionaires and bequeth large sums to different organizations.
- Are Realtors going to become extinct? - This article considers Zillow.com and its impact on the Real Estate Community.
- Saving Make it Automatic - Lifted in concept from the Automatic Millionaire, however does discuss HOW to do it, and has an amusing story about a former co-worker as well.
- Resolution Check Up - It's time to check up on your financial New Year's Resolutions.
- Re-baits - Some more nasty tricks used against would-be rebate-getters -- and how they're being handled.
- Use A Credit Card To Pay Taxes - Credit card comapnies are coming out with promotions trying to encourage you to pay your taxes with a credit card. Even with the extra bonuses, it's rarely a good idea to do so.
- The Plan - How You Should Invest Your Money - This is my short and sweet guide to personal saving and investing, originally written for a relative who wanted to know what they should do about saving and investing.
- Friday's Money Lesson #4 - I'm in the process of building a house. Over the past five months, I've learned that this is the one purchase where multiple people will have their hands in my cookie jar.
- What If the Death Tax Were an Income Tax? - What if, instead of paying estate taxes after dying, people paid additional income taxes during their life instead? Political Calculations does the math!
- Emotions Fuel Spending - The post reflects on how our feelings about money express themselves in our spending habits - and what we can do to better understand our spending urges
- Intro to 401k Part 2 - Jason talks about the Roth 401(k) and provides simple advice on building a successful 401(k) portfolio.
- Interest Rate is everything in Banking - Learn 2 kind of interest calculation in banking - APR (Annual Interest Rate) and APY (Annual Percentage Yield).
- Deep Thoughts on Emerging Markets - The article discusses a recent study that showed more than half of all economic activity in 2005 occurred in the "developing" world and recommends looking into exploring these areas as an investment option to further diverisification.
- Car Financing - This post looks at how loan incentives and terms can be modeled using Excel to determine which offers the best value, or if cash should be used.
- Free $5 and cool new payment system - I've recently come accross a new paypal style payment system that works by sending cell phone messages. The more people who use this, the more usefull it is going to be.
- Berkshire Hathaway’s Recent Shopping - George at Fat Pitch Financials takes a close look at what superinvestor Warren Buffett has been investing in this past quarter.
- Board games are cheap entertainment! - Think about how much money we spend on movies, TV, internet, and the like yet we’ve neglected a relatively cheap form of entertainment – board games!
- Is Wealth Bad? - Many people believe that the ambitious pursuit of wealth is evil and greedy. I believe that wealth creation is inherently good and improves our society.
- Tip For Ending Personal Debt (With Steve Martin!) - Every once in a while we have to lighten things up around here at SMT. Steve Martin was the guest host of Saturday Night Live last week, and did a fantastic skit on personal finance — click on the arrow to watch it here.
- Frugalities, Reducing Consumption - In order to cut down your use of other products you need to first find out the minimum amount you need to get the job done.
- Employee Stock Purchase Plans - A look at Employee Stock Purchase Plans and why you should be taking advantage of them.
- Reverse Carnival of Money Mistakes - A group of articles that show that even people who blog about personal finance are human and have made many mistakes. Sometimes people can learn from others' mistakes more easily than just being told what's the right thing to do.
- Gambler Wins Small - 200 Days at the track. $234 net income. One victory in Tax Court. Time for a career change?
- Trade Deficits and Surpluses Are Ridiculous and Outdated - Trade deficits and surpluses are a measure of the health of an economy. A measure whose best before date passed a few centuries ago, back in the days of mercantilism. Deficits and surpluses tell us nothing of how individuals are doing, to name only one problem with them.
- How to Save for Big Ticket Items - Here is a simple way to save for those big purchases.
- Risks of Prosper.com - For those who haven't heard yet, Prosper.com is a person-to-person lending website that connects borrowers and lenders.
- Mortgage Loan Rate Locks - One of the most true sayings in the mortgage business is, “If you can’t lock it right now, it’s not real.”
- Canadian Parties' Tax Policies - The popular conception of each party's tax platforms, presented in a humorous way.
- Entrepreneur's Journey - Another way of looking at finances.
- Time Management - Time is money.
- Stupid CEO Tricks and Other Resume Busters - But there is a more subtle form of 'lying' and everybody does it. It's a gray area but can make or break your being hired. It is known as 'resume polishing' and somewhat of an art and a savvy boss can catch you in a lie, or embellishment, every time.
- Big decisions and sleep - Working from your home, working with basically you as your very own boss and employee could be quite stressful sometimes. Especially when concerns at home (especially if you have children already) have been piling up and require your attention at the same time that you have projects. Some of the decisions you might need to make could affect your career and/or your domestic life. When these times come, what do you do?
- NCN podcast - Episode 5
Thanks for visiting the Carnival of Personal Finance! If you want to know a bit more about Free Money Finance, see my posts of the week for last week.
Thanks for hosting!
Posted by: Flexo | February 20, 2006 at 09:10 AM
I wrote this in my post at my site but thought it was appropriate to post here too:
The Carnival of Personal Finance is up at Free Money Finance. For those of you who want to get to the good stuff or don’t have any interest in what’s going on among personal finance blogs, you can skip the next few paragraphs while I go into a small rant. I have no idea if others feel this way and I’m sure if they did, they would probably refrain from saying anything because the last thing they would want to do is offend some of the top personal finance writers when a mention from one of them could do their site a lot of good. I’m in a slightly different position in not having to worry about that plus I feel that for the most part I’m on pretty good terms with each of them as individuals. That being said, I have an issue (even if I am the only one) with carnivals and the Money Blog Network.
Now before anyone gets the idea that I’m complaining out of jealousy, let me state when they were forming their network and there was a bit of moaning, I clearly stated that they had every right to form the network and if I had been in a similar position, I would have leveraged it just as they did. Let me also say that I have no problem with the placement of my submission. In fact, I think it was placed higher than it probably should have been. I also have no problem with them promoting each other sites among each other, but I do feel it is wrong when they favor each other in carnivals that are supposed to be for everyone. There seems to be an agreement when one of the members of this group holds a carnival, they place each other’s posts at the top regardless of the quality (or whatever other factor they decide to use in posting the entries).
All of the members are obviously quality writers and are regarded as among the top personal finance writers because of that, but quite frankly two of the three top posts were mediocre at best and had obviously been placed there because of group affiliation and not quality. It is my hope that they change their agreement so that they let the carnival be what is is supposed to be (a place to share quality articles as opposed to a place to promote their network) and clearly state how they decided to break up the entries in the future (okay, rant over).
Posted by: personal finance advice | February 20, 2006 at 09:59 AM
Here are my thoughts on this comment:
1. As carnival host, I can put up the carnival however I like. I can choose which posts to put where, which ones to include, which ones to exclude, etc. That's what being the host is about. Different people have different ways of doing it (by theme, by date, etc.) and if you're in a carnival, you have to deal with it. They're the host and they put in all the work, and they decide ALL the details.
2. I usually go out of my way to include everyone in carnivals. Even the posts that were late, weren't EXACTLY personal finance (but close enough), and incomplete in their submission were/are included (forcing me to hunt down trackback URLs, etc.). If anything, I think I'm as fair as anyone.
3. I ALWAYS post a link to EVERY carnival I'm in to drive traffic to that site in return for their hosting. I know you didn't bring up this issue, but it should be stated since you seem to be good at criticizing and not very good at recognizing community participation (which, after all, is your alleged issue).
4. You need to get over it.
5. I'm done talking about this subject.
Posted by: FMF | February 20, 2006 at 11:40 AM
I'm sorry I offended you for mentioning something that I see is unfair. Again, I have no problems with your group, just with what I see is favoring your group at the top whenever one of you hosts the carnival. Maybe I'm the only one that feels this way...it's my opinion and I felt I should mention it.
I agree the host does have discretion in posting how he feel fit and there is nothing that I can do if you all decide to continue to post this way with each other. And as you said "Different people have different ways of doing it (by theme, by date, etc.)" - but these themes don't usually mean favoring a few over the rest. The criteria usually applies to everyone.
I also know that you do an excellent job of including everyone in your carnivals and that you link back to them. I commend you for this. If you had read my full post, you would have seen that I've been struggling with the best way to do this and I chastised myself for not doing a good job of it (even before your carnival went up).
I'm completely over it. I said my piece and said I hoped that all of you would take the time to reflect and decide to change this pact you've made in relation to the carnivals. That's all I asked
Posted by: personal finance advice | February 20, 2006 at 12:41 PM
Sadly I got this sent in a little to late, but here is the post from Aridni. It teaches you about calculating your net worth.
http://aridni.com/2006/02/weekend-homework-where-do-you-stand/
Posted by: Todd at Aridni | February 20, 2006 at 05:02 PM
FMF,
First, thanks for doing the work to put this together.
Second, (at risk of getting blacklisted) I agree on many points with Jeffery. Granted that you have the right to put a carnival together any way you like. However, the link cartel that the MBN guys have going is a bit off-putting and I think slightly disingenuous. It is done for the benefit of the member blogs, not the readers. If you're fine with that, fine. It is favoritism, but it is your prerogative.
Third, why shy away from a dialog on this? (points 4 and 5 in your response) Five great blogs have entered into a semi-silent agreement to favor and assist each other over all others. It is a defensible action, but one that seems far shadier because it has been kept silent.
I am perplexed at 1) your response to Jeffery's comment and 2) your retributive action of deleting him from your blog roll.
Posted by: retireat30 | February 21, 2006 at 02:53 PM