Carnival of Personal Finance – Edition 130

Welcome to the Carnvial of Personal Finance!

Make sure you check out the intro video below for some highlights of the carnival:

As you might be able to tell, this was my first web recording so it could use some work. Fortunately, I’ve been blogging longer than I’ve been webcasting so the written content on this site is much more polished, don’t believe me, subscribe here and I’ll prove it to you! Enjoy the carnival!

Financial Reflection & Planning

My Dollar Plan gives us an End of Year Tax Planning and Finance Checklist. As the end of the year approaches, it’s time to think about any last minute tax strategies. At the same time, I have a checklist of things to prepare for the upcoming year. It’s more efficient to do them at the same time as many of the strategies impact calculations for next year.

Chief Family Officer from Chief Family Officer presents My best financial move this year: The Infrequent Bills Account.

Harrison from Journey To Financial Freedom presents 5 Financial Goals That You can Set for Your Life, and says, “Besides shopping and holiday planning, there is actually a process that we cannot miss out. It is Goal Setting for the coming up 2008. You can set any goals for 2008 but I would like to remind you to set a financial goal for yourself so that you can take some serious actions for your personal finance.”

Frugal Living

Peter from Plan Your Escape presents My Money Saving Tip: Computers   Games, and says, “Some frugal advice from a full-time-frugal part-time-gamer.”

The Frugal Way of Living gives us 11 steps on How to Create a Frugal Budget.

Dan from Money Myths presents Frugality as a Retirement Plan, and says, “Spending for retirement has replaced saving for retirement on my list of priorities. Here’s why you should consider frugality your best tool in preparing for retirement.”

Life Edit talks about stores like Costco in Buy Better in Bulk.

Saving Money

GTE from Getting To Enough presents 2 Ways to Save that Shouldn’t Work, and says, “This post describes two ways that seem like they shouldn’t help us to save more…but they do.”

Broke Grad Student from Broke Grad Student presents 6 Outrageous Fees (and How to Avoid Them).

Lynnae from beingfrugal.net presents How Google Calendar Saves Me Money, and says, “Entering expiration dates for major coupons on Google calendar ensures that you won’t forget to use the coupon on a needed purchase.”

Kacie from Sense to Save presents How much does that recipe cost?, and says, “It’s important to know what your meals are costing. I show how you can easily calculate a recipe’s cost, so that you know where your grocery budget is going.”

Making Money

Hustler from Hustlermoneyblog presents Side income: Learn to ebay hot items.

Pat shows how to earn money by publishing and selling your ebook on Amazon with Publish an Ebook in Amazon’s Kindle Book Store.

Shaun Connell shares Five Lifestyle Tips I Wish I Knew When I Started.

Debt

Maggie compares getting rid of debt and getting rid of fat as she talkes about Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace in Financial and Physical Peace.

A story of how finally getting free of credit card debt, Family – Can’t Live With ‘Em…Unless It Helps Debt.

Millionaire Mommy Next Door presents Debt Reduction Calculators, Planners and Resources, and says, “Large selection of useful online debt-reduction tools and resources aimed at helping you tackle your debt successfully.”

Credit Cards

Heidi from BankerGirl presents Confessions of a Credit Card Junkie, and says, “Working on eliminating unsecured debt from my life. This article is about a step in my journey. “

jim from Blueprint for Financial Prosperity presents Consolidating Citi Credit Card Accounts.

Travel Finance

Trave Europe asks Will 50 Dollars a Day Get You To Stay the Night?

LocoMono takes a SMART approach to My $500 Travel Budget Challenge. 

Paul has a series about saving on travel, Travel Troubles.

plonkee from plonkee money presents 7 tips to manage your cash when traveling, and says, “How to manage your cash when traveling.”

College

mbhunter from Mighty Bargain Hunter says, “There’s no reason to strap yourself paying for your children’s college experience. Just let them pay for it themselves!” Worried about paying for college? Then don’t!,

Real Estate

Dan Melson from Searchlight Crusade presents Buying Without An Agent – My Own Experience.

BEIT from Building Equity in Toronto presents On housing prices in the Greater Toronto Area.

Single Ma from Single Ma’s Fabulous Financials presents Renting in the City Doesn’t Have to be Expensive.

The Baglady presents Who really wins in a mortgage rate freeze?.

Gather Little by Little presents How to make paying your year end property taxes painless. 

fathersez presents Agricultural Investment – is it for you?, and says, “Our looking to start a farm business, got us into an agricultural investment. This is our first experience and forecasted returns appear low. However, it looks like more can be done to make the investment more attractive.”

Personal Financier covers the Important Hidden Psychological Aspects of Rent vs. Buy Comparisons.

J from Not One Cent presents SEC NRSRO Causes Asset Mispricing?.

Two Wise Acres put together a collection of online real estate investor resources for home valuation, property management, and productivity,
 65+ Online Tools and Resources for Real Estate Investors.

Insurance

Henry Stern from InsureBlog presents How to get insurance in Sweden, and says, “So you’re an American entrepreneur who lives in Sweden, and you find yourself pregnant. Here is a story of the challenges you face looking for insurance if you want to give birth back home.”

Career

Silicon Valley Blogger from The Digerati Life presents How Do You Plan To Get Ahead? Ways To Increase Your Income.

Economy

Currency Trading offer some hope for the US dollar with How to Save the Dollar: Thoughts From 10 Experts.

Money Mistakes

David from My Two Dollars presents Money Mistake Monday – The Grass Is Always Greener Syndrome.

Tezza shares The Smartest And Dumbest Decisions I’ve Made With Money. Since I’m in my late twenties I’ve hardly scratched the surface of smart and dumb financial decisions. My only hope is that as age creeps on my smarter financial decisions out weigh the dumb ones. But alas with youthful enthusiasm I’ve taken a few pot shots at trying to run my life into the financial ditch and I’ve managed to collect myself together to string along some good financial decisions in my later life. Hopefully, you have the time to learn from my mistakes and make wiser choices.

The Financial blogger from The Financial Blogger presents My Favourite Money Mistake, and says, “The funniest part about taking your time and energy managing your personal finance is that you become more inclined to make money mistakes. The idea behind all this is fairly simple; the more you know about finance, the more you want to make things by yourself. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I thought it could be interesting to write about how I dilapidated ten thousand dollars a few years ago.

Money Management

Kevin shares Teach Your Children The Four Basics of Smart Money Management. When we teach our children how to be smart with money it helps protect their future. They are more likely to have a stable lifestyle, a stronger marriage, financial independence, and a comfortable retirement.

Single Guy Money talks about Big Changes in a Short Time.

Paula from Queercents presents Finances Troubling You? Admit the Truth, and says, “So much of the agony we can experience in our financial world has to do with telling ourselves stories”.

Big Cajun Man gives The Quarterly Status Report Wrap Up and says “The best way to make sure that your financial plan is being followed is by putting out a quarterly personal finance status report”.

Adfecto Abundantia presents Help! My Spouse Hates Personal Finance, and says, “This is how we deal with the topic of our marital balance sheet since my wife hates numbers, math, and budgets.”

Laura from Green Panda Treehouse presents Time & Money Managment: One Size Does Not Fit All , and says, “Sometimes advice doesn’t apply to your situation. You have to make the analysis yourself and see it fits your circumstances.”

Prosper

FMF from Free Money Finance presents Is Prosper.com a Good Way to Earn Money? and says, “Is Prosper.com a good investment?”

Dan at Everyday Finance from Everyday Finance presents Prosper.com: A Model of Financial Innovation, and says, “A robust and engaging assessment of one of the most significant financial innovations of this decade.”

Investing

Opportunities A Plenty presents 401k Rules – What You Need to Know About Withdrawal, Distribution, and Rollover

Pinyo from Moolanomy presents What Difference Does A Decade Make?, and says, “Shows that starting investing early make a huge difference”

The Dividend Guy asks How Many Dividends Stocks Should You Have in Your Portfolio?. There is a constant debate about how many individual stocks an investor should hold.  There are two camps as I see it – the 15 to 20 stocks and the whole market theory.

The Skilled Investor talks about the authority score, The Fund Authority Score – A Better Mutual Fund and ETF Rating System. With the Fund Authority Score system, individual investors can make concise and objective mutual fund and ETF comparisons. Fund Authority Scores are based on cost, performance, and other measures, which are correlated with better long term buy-and-hold investment results.

Mariam from Money Relations presents The hypocrisy of Warren Buffett?, and says, “Is Warren Buffett a hypocrite for not practicing what he preaches?”

Dividends4Life presents Dividend Investing With ETFs.

My Wealth Builder presents Protecting Our Savings Against A Recession

Kay from Don’t Mess With Taxes presents Aspirational investing, and says, “Are you counting on your investments making you rich one day? With the Living Large Index, folks who already are in the top tax bracket can help you get there, too.”

Ciaran McKeever from Chance Favors presents Managed Futures can be an integral part of your investment allocation.

Blain Reinkensmeyer from Stock Trading To Go presents Top 5 Gauranteed Ways to Lose Your Money Investing.

Other

JS from Smart Money Daily presents Six True Stories of people Who Found Cash and Turned it In. Would You Do the Same?, and says, Being smart with your money isn’t only about investing and budgeting. It’s also about getting to know your attitudes, beliefs and values around money. Not to judge them as right or wrong, so much as just to become familiar with where our choices are coming from. Most of us have considered the question “If you found a big bag of cash on the road, and no one was around to see, what would you do?””

Money Blue Books discusses how Personal Finance Blogging Is A Time Consuming But Rewarding Part Time Job.

LivingAlmostLarge from LivingAlmostLarge presents Wedding Registries – Cash Only?, and says, “Why are people only registering for cash? Is it wrong or tacky? Or completely appropriate you say? I find it rather tacky to blatantly ask for cash and a minimum amount.” 

Jim from Getting Ahead in Life presents The way you act today can affect the way you are tomorrow, and says, “One way to think about money, the now versus the later.”

Randall from Credit Withdrawal presents Marijuana and Mortgages, and says, “The article is a true-story about a neighbor that turned to farming marijuana to maintain his lifestyle. “

Erin from Working For Financial Freedom presents Kick Impulse Spending to the Curb – 10 Questions to Ask Yourself, and says, “tips on how to change your spending habits.”

paidtwice presents Measures of Financial Health: Then and Now.

junger from Online Savings Blog presents Online Banking and Shopping As Predicted in the 1960s.

Matthew Paulson from American Consumer News presents How to Call the Pope (And Other International Numbers) For Free. 

Penny Nickel from Money and Values presents Are You a Socially Responsible Consumer? and says “Almost 90% of Americans see themselves as socially responsible/conscious consumers”.

Quest For Four Pillars presents The Tipping Point, and says, “Four Pillars doesn’t like tipping (but does it anyways) and explains a better compensation system for service staff.”

PT from Prime Time Money presents Workout with Podfitness for FREE (30-Day Trial)

Financial Hack gives a valuable lesson on thinking outside the box with Lessons of the Square Watermelon.

Summary

Thanks for reading! If you’re interested in hosting the Carnival of Personal Finance on your site, you can apply here to hold it on your blog sometime in the next three months. Be sure to check out next weeks edition at Get Rich Slowly.

Ben Edwards, the founder of Money Smart Life, saved up enough to buy a Nintendo back when he was 12 years old. When he used the money to buy shares of Wal-Mart stock instead, he knew he wasn't like the other kids... His addiction to personal finance has paid off for his family and now he's helping you to afford the life that you want. Check him out on the web at Google Plus, Twitter and Facebook.

All posts by Ben Edwards