Carnival of Personal Finance

Welcome to the 55th edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance. Before we jump in, I just want to say a few words. First of all, if you’re new to Raising4Boys, then welcome! This site is a joint venture between my wife and myself (in case you don’t know, I also run a personal finance site called FiveCentNickel). Feel free to poke around the archives and explore what we have to offer. If you like what you see, you might be interested in subscribing to our RSS Feed. And in case you’re new to blog carnivals in general, I’ll just say this: carnivals are self-selected compilations of the best weblog articles on a particular topic from the previous week or so. With that said, let’s get to it…

FreeMoneyFinance contributed “Six Career Secrets You Won’t Learn in School” — Tips on how to maximize your most valuable asset.

Searchlight Crusade contributed “What Are Points and How Do They Work?” — I got a search hit for that and, amazingly enough after 150+ articles, I’ve never dealt with this subject head on. So here goes.

Frugal Underground contributed “A New Service Makes it Easier to Find a Bargain on a Used Car” — A first-hand account of buying a new vehicle using a great new website.

Pocket Change contributed “Bathroom Reading on the Cheap” — I recently got new subscriptions to W, Vanity Fair, Wired, and Elle. I had originally planned on ordering them either by signing up through those annoying little subscriptions cards tucked in every magazine or through Amazon. That is, until I did a little research…

Mad Kane’s Notables contributed “Swift Intrusions,” an amusing limerick (unless you’re a diehard fan of the current White House administration) about SWIFT banking records and privacy.

InsureBlog contributed “Just One More Reason” — There are obvious reasons (and consequences) why driving drunk is a very bad idea. But there are some not-so-obvious problems, too, which directly affect the pocketbook, and for a long time.

Exiting the Nest contributed “How to Listen to Music for Free (legally!)” — Listening to music can cut into a budget a lot. Here are are some ideas for listening to music for free (legally)

My 1st Million at 33 contributed “I am Glad That I Lost 40% in my First Investing Year” — When I first started investing in 1998, I started out by day trading stocks. I didn’t have much. The majority of my investing capital came from my parents. I had about $30,000 which was also the majority of my entire networth. Life was in the fast lane, day trading stocks in and out.

Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge contributed “Money, A Memoir: Book Review” — Imagine moving yourself and your toddler to a foreign country, only to land and be told by your spouse that they want a divorce. You’ve got your passport, your kid’s passport, $3000.00 cash, a 13-hour flight and a sense of despair to bring you back to the States.

Guru Focus contributed “Relax, a Volatile Stock Market is Your Dearest Friend” — Most people never forget their first love. I’ll never forget my first trading profit! But the $600 (1970 dollars) I pocketed on Royal Dutch Petroleum was not nearly as significant as the conceptual realization it signaled! I was amazed that someone would pay me that much more for my stock than the newspaper said it was worth just a few weeks earlier! What had changed? What had happened to make the stock go up, and why had it been down in the first place? Without ever needing to know the answers, I’ve been trading RD for thirty-six years!

The Small Business Buzz contributed “Reducing Taxable Income Through Retirement Funds” — Taxes stink. Ah, but as citizens of this wonderful country we must pay our dues for services. Most business owners know that the more you make the more you are taxed.

Money & Investing Dogberry Patch contributed “ID Theft: More Hype Than Harm” — Business Week Online has an interesting story on whether the ID theft scare is actually hype by the media rather than an actual threat with harm being done. The conclusion of the article is what caught my attention.

Wenchypoo’s Warehouse contributed “Ebony Hall, I Saved Your Financial Life Today” —

Pocket Change contributed “Bathroom Reading on the Cheap” — I recently got new subscriptions to W, Vanity Fair, Wired, and Elle. I had originally planned on ordering them either by signing up through those annoying little subscriptions cards tucked in every magazine or through Amazon. That is, until I did a little research and saw that people were getting yearly subscriptions for $3-8 through magazine discount sites instead of the traditional $15+ range.

Getting Out of Debt contributed “Blogging Ads: Another Way To Reduce Your Debt,” which highlights a new blog advertising system that might be useful for generating a bit of side income for debt reduction.

Jeff Howard contributed “Small Business Tax Deductions” — I want to move away from some of the investing banter of late and into some taxation issues. Today I want to address some lesser known small business tax deductions that may aid you if you are the owner of your own small business.

“D”igital Breakfast contributed “Foreclosure Investing – A Look at New Jersey & Neural Nets” — I have compiled over a years worth of NJ foreclosure data and posted some recent NOD’s across the state in the last month. Then I tried to run a neural net cluster analysis through it. Guess what happens?

Stock Market Beat contributed “Sell Side Comes to Investing Epiphany” — The worse the data points get, the more bullish we become, and we think that the key lesson of the last six months is that the value of data point investing in semiconductor stocks has now been eliminated. Markets are amazingly efficient at arbitraging excess profit opportunities away, and we’ve seen it in semiconductor stocks before. Ten years ago all one had to do was correctly call the inflection point in industry revenue growth, and the stocks would follow.

It’s Just Money contributed “How Accurate is Zillow?” — The goal was to put realtors out of business, just as travel agents have become scarce. Is Zillow accurate enough to change the market in this way?

The Mother Load contributed “Sam’s Club Click ‘N Pull Review” — Did you know that Sam’s Club offers a shopping feature where you can do all of your shopping online and simply come and pick up your order?

Money and Values contributed “Calculating an “Hourly Wage” – Does it Matter?” — There are a lot of suggestions about evaluating whether doing such-and-such is worth your effort, typically by calculating out the equivalent of an hourly wage and comparing it to what you make on the job. My problem with this is that it’s way oversimplified.

StockTradingGuy contributed “Great Panics in U.S. History Part 1: The Panic of 1819” — While the recent dip in the U.S. stock market over the past month is most likely a correction or a normal bear market, it has piked my interest in some of the great panics in U.S. history. Over the next week or so I am going to take a look at the great panics that have rocked the U.S. markets, starting with the first major panic, the Panic of 1819.

Money@Families.com contributed “Do It Yourself as a Savings Strategy” — One way to save significant amounts of money is to do it yourself. When you think of doing it yourself, the image of someone doing large-scale home improvements probably comes to mind. That is only one kind of do it yourselfer, however.

Financial Options contributed “The Week Ahead: Your Financial Road Map for July 3 to 7, 2006,” which is a rundown of what you can in expect in the (duh!) week ahead.

QueerCents contributed “Long Weekends” — Many will be heading our early today… after all, it’s a long weekend for most of us. Po Bronson at Time recently penned a commentary about Americans and their inability to relax. He believes that we have begun to prefer brief snippets of what he calls “stolen time” to the long stretches of authorized vacation.

Blogging Away Debt contributed “Hospitals – Gotta Watch them Like a Hawk” — Although hospitals can help your health, they may not help your finances. Overcharges seem to be very common, and something everyone should be concerned about.

Quicken Tips contributed “Using Classes in Quicken to Further Breakdown Expenses” — If you use Quicken to track your finances and have expenses spanning over a few different users, classes can be a great way to track expenses by user. Here’s a tutorial on how to use them.

Journey To Financial Freedom contributed “6 Simple Steps to be Rich for Everyone That I Learned From my Rich Customers” — Some basic steps that most of the rich took that make them became so different financially.

My Financial Awareness contributed “Young & Broke – Lessons for Your Children’s College Education” — Lessons we learn later in life that can be used for your child’s education.

Roth & Company Tax Update contributed “Know Your Payroll Service” — The payroll service kept the payroll tax money they were supposed to remit to the IRS. Now the employer is holding the bag.

Financial Reflections contributed “On Tips and Fees” — An article on hidden fees and the different ways companies try to squeeze extra money out of consumers.

Pragmatic Finance contributed “Using Discover Card’s Get More Program to Save 5% Seasonally” — I discuss Discover’s 5% Get More program to get cashback on more categories of purchases.

My Quo contributed “A Dollar is not a Dollar” — People have a habit of spending money in small amounts and justifying the cost by using the “it’s only a dollar” rationale. Well I have news for you. A dollar is NOT a dollar.

MyMoneyBlog contributed “One Guy’s Thoughts on Housing Prices” — I’m sick and tired of the media frenzy. Based on purely NON-scientific evidence, I think that four major things have made the prices rise to fast in recent memory: low interest rates, dual-income families, relaxed mortgage lending policies, and parental support.

The Mortgage Reports Blog contributed “A Downpayment is not a Cushion” — To categorize a downpayment as “a cushion” against falling real estate prices is a farce. It’s not a cushion — it’s a potential loss.

Money Matador contributed “The Essence of e-Books: How to Get Rich on eBay” — After buying and reading two “get rich on eBay” e-books I am a bit discouraged. In order to save you money and time, I have made an executive summary.

Bad Credit Car Tips contributed “Bad Credit Car Tips” — If you know you do not have the best of credit, there are a few things to remember. Do not go with the intention of buying the most expensive car. Realize that you have to start somewhere, get an affordable car and work your way up, after re-establishing your credit.

Debt Free contributed “Pay Off Your Mortgage Early?” — Interest. It’s great when you get it, not so great when you have to pay it. You’ll spend more on mortgage interest your than almost anything else in your lifetime, except taxes and possibly food.

Thanks to all who contributed. And please be sure to get your entries in to The Real Returns, who will serve as next week’s host.