Carnival of Personal Finance #45
Sunday, April 23rd, 2006Some of you might wonder why the carnival is being hosted here rather than at the original Million Dollar Goal. Well, the answer is that the folks at Blogger apparently decided that my personal finance blog was a “misuse of their service”, and I am therefore, currently unable to update my site. Let this serve as a warning to those of you using Blogger, you are completely at their mercy.
With that said, on to this week’s carnival! In another attempt to try something just a little different, I am not including the post’s author or blog in the description. I have attempted to organize the posts into categories and if you see a topic that interests you, check it out, and hopefully you’ll discover some new and interesting blogs.
Investing:
The Week Ahead: Your Financial Road Map for April 24-28, 2006 - A roundup of financial events, economic indicator releases, Treasury auctions and select earnings reports for the coming week with minimal extraneous comment.
Magic Formula Ranking Using Portfolio123 - An attempt to recreate the Joel Greenblatt’s Magic Formula using Portfolio123.
Rowe Price Retirement 2045 Fund, Better than the Rest? - After having looked into Vanguard’s Target Retirement 2045 Fund and Fidelity’s Freedom 2040 Fund, I am now going to examine the T. Rowe Price’s Retirement 2045 Fund.
Foreclosure Investing - A Look At Essex County - I decided to analyze how many notice of defaults (foreclosures) were filled since June 2005 in Essex County, NJ. See a trend?
Secular Bear Market? - Is your portfolio really in a bear market? Think again.
Good Shareholder letters - Shareholder letters are good to read. Their commentary on the market and their investment philosophy gives investors an idea of how and why they invest the way they do.
Taxes:
A short reminder of why we need tax reform. - Do you know what percentage of your income (on average) is going
to taxes this year?
IRS error in your favor - Tax refunds can certainly help you balance your personal budget. But sometimes, refunds aren’t exactly what you expected.
My 1st encounter with AMT tax - If you have never paid AMT or Alternative Minimum Tax, you may not be familiar with the intricacy of the other tax system.
IRS Error in Your Favor - A Tennessee woman checked her bank balance only to find that she had erroneously received a $25,289 tax refund when she was expecting just $4,800.
Career:
10 Stupid Mistakes Made by the Newly Self-Employed - Having been a non-employee for about 14 years now, I’ve made my share of stupid business mistakes. .
To Thine Own Self Be True - Loyalty to the same company for one’s entire working life is a concept that has almost faded out of being, as has company commitment to providing life-long employment.
Work@Home Scam: Case Study Pt 1 - This is a two parter. Many people get caught in the scams around the ‘net, so I thought I would critique one as a way to NOT improve your finances.
Are All MBAs Created Equal? - Before you decide to run out and get an MBA from just any old school, consider this. Does it matter where an MBA comes from?
Tips:
Tip: Scan those bills - Maybe keeping paper copies of all your bills is not the only way to ensure you have a good archive?
Balance Your Checkbook - Easy to do, but most people don’t do it - and this greatly increases the risk that you’ll end up paying fees from your bank.
Indie Mission: 5 Easy Steps to Ensure Your Computer Is Your Friend, Not Your Enemy - Online banking, shopping, and investing can make conducting monetary transactions incredibly convenient: Log in to your checking account. Transfer funds to savings and transfer another sum to your brokerage account; Log on to the brokerage account and execute a limit buy. When you’re out there doing your money business on the internet, have you taken every precaution to ensure your account information and access to your computer is locked down? When you leave your home, do you lock the doors?
Books Worth Reading - Some personal finance and general financial knowledge books that I think are just great.
Loans:
The FHA Modernization Act - A way to fight Predatory Lending.
Signing Off Loan Conditions - Some of this stuff gets pretty technical, but a good explanation should be easily understandable in plain english.
Don’t Forget to Consolidate Your Student Loans - This article outlines how and why everyone with student loans needs to consolidate them before the deadline of July 1st, 2006. There are tips to lower your interest rate and tips on things not to do concerning your student loans.
The Personal Side:
Yours mine and ours or All together now? - My Fiancee and I don’t agree on whether or not we should combine our accounts and finances. It’s open for debate.
Financial Goals - I am posting my financial goals here, so that you folks can help keep me accountable for them.
Financial Voyeurism - A discussion of my reasons for keeping my finances personal.
Retirement Planning:
Monte Carlo Your Finances - I urge you to stop by their website, download the calculator, and start looking at your numbers.
7 Factors that affect how you going to retire - Knowing what 7 factors that will affect how you going to retire is very important in in financial planning.
Real Estate:
Two new authentic websites that allow you to monitor the value of your home - This post gives an insight to two new, popular and authentic websites which uses state-of-art algorithms to evaluate the value of our homes immediately for FREE and without any user registration.
Remodeling your home? Check this out - Get your own materials for building and you could save a lot of money when contracting house work.
Frugality:
Don’t Touch that Thermostat! - Keeping your thermostat lower in the winter will save you money and boost your immune system.
Save Money Grocery Shopping - Stacking Coupons - To truly save with coupons, you need to do more than just clip them. You need to learn to “stack” them.
Misc:
10 Terms and Phrases to be Wary of - What ever happened to the concept of improving one’s skills to make a better living?
RANT: You are NOT your car! - This post is about our identity. Are we the sum of the the things we own?
HSBC Direct Review - A full review of the HSBC Direct Online Savings Account.
The (expensive) Little Blue Pill - All those nice lifestyle drugs drive up the cost of Chevies, and your own health insurance.
Reveling in High Gas and Oil Prices - How I’m capitalizing on the energy woes at the pump. You won’t see ME driving around looking for cheap gas!
NAFTA’s Impact on Canadian Wages and GDP: Research Commentary - The next part in my series on NAFTA’s impact on Canada. This discusses earlier research on Canadian GDP, wages and remuneration since NAFTA, offering an explanation and insight into the research findings.
The Man Pays - Who pays on the first date and other financial dilemmas with the societal roles.
Creating Wealth - from paperclips - Kyle Macdonald started with one red paper clip, and a dream of getting a home of his own.
April 23rd, 2006 at 9:46 pm
Weird. Will this url be your permanent solution? Are you moving the site, or hoping to get back on blogger? Regardless, nice job with the Carnival.
April 23rd, 2006 at 10:05 pm
Weekly Reading…
It’s time again for the weekly round-up of reading from different carnivals and festivals for those looking for some more good reading:
Personal Finance: Million Dollar Goal
……
April 23rd, 2006 at 11:20 pm
Thanks for hosting!
April 23rd, 2006 at 11:32 pm
[...] For those looking for the latest Carnival of Personal Finance, it is now up at Million Dollar Goal. The Carnival returns home next week. Bloggers, feel free to submit your articles early. Here’s more info on the Carnival of Personal Finance. [...]
April 24th, 2006 at 4:51 am
[...] Is hosted this week at Million Dollar Goal, who unfortunately lost access to his blogger account. [...]
April 24th, 2006 at 5:50 am
Clint,
Great job, thanks for hosting!
Tom
April 24th, 2006 at 6:29 am
Ditch Blogger ASAP. The same thing that’s happening to you happened to me and it took forever to get things straightened out… only to have it happen again a short time later.
April 24th, 2006 at 7:31 am
Carnivalized!…
……
April 24th, 2006 at 8:06 am
[...] This week’s Carinival of Personal Finance is hosted by MillionDollarGoal on a new server. Stop by and check it out. [link] [...]
April 24th, 2006 at 8:08 am
Nice job. I’m not sure I *like* the format, but I definitely *appreciate* that you’re thinking “outside the box” with it.
Thanx for hosting, and good luck with your Blogger woes.
April 24th, 2006 at 9:00 am
[...] is up at Million Dollar Goal. Posted by Dane on April 24, 2006 | 0 Comments In Blogs, Financing Email This Post Possibly Related Entries Carnival of Personal FinanceCarnival of Personal FinanceCarnivalof Personal FinanceCarnival of Personal Finance #12Carnival of Personal Finance # 13Carnival of Personal FinanceCarnival of Personal Finance #9Carnival of Personal Finance #10Carnival of Personal Finance # 16Carnival of Personal Finance #21 Comments [...]
April 24th, 2006 at 9:07 am
Great work. Thanks for hosting the carnival and all your hardwork in selecting the posts. Also, the new format is great and we do like your honest powers of observation and new ideas.
Wishing you all the best in every aspect of your life.
Cheers,
FIRE Finance
April 24th, 2006 at 10:36 am
Hi, Million Dollar Goal,
Thanks for hosting. I am sorry to hear about your experience with Blogger. If you don’t mind, you can put your website at my DreamHost account for free. I believe I have at least another hosting spot with my current plan, and I have only used 1% of the available disk space. I just pre-paid for two years, so at least you can get two years for free. Hopefully by that time, my website is sel-sufficient, in which case, I won’t mind paying 100% or majority of the hosting cost for you and me. Just send me an email if you are interested.
Best luck blogging.
frugal@1stmillionat33.com
April 24th, 2006 at 12:07 pm
Monday Carnivals……
Despite some tech diff’s (Blogger apparently suspended his “main” blog) , Clint at Million Dollar Goal is hosting this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance.
He’s chosen an interesting, if unorthodox, format: instead of listing each blog and its …
April 24th, 2006 at 7:20 pm
The link to the post is “Two new authentic websites that allow you to monitor the value of your home” is at http://firefinance.blogspot.com/2006/04/research-two-new-authentic-websites.html
This is a tech glitch on the part of Blogger’s Server, we have no clue how the url to the post changed overnight. We do apologize about this inconvenience.
April 24th, 2006 at 7:32 pm
Links and Minifeatures…
RINO Sightings Recommended: Politburo Diktat, …
April 24th, 2006 at 8:36 pm
Nickel - This site won’t be the permanent solution, and I definitely wont be going back to Blogger.
frugal - Since I’ve been burned, I’ve decided to work out my own hosting solution for the future. Thank you for the offer, however, that was incredibly kind of you.
FIREFinance - I have fixed the link.
April 24th, 2006 at 9:28 pm
[...] Carnival of Personal Finance #45 at Million Dollar Goal, with some things to think about if you’re remodeling or building your home. [...]
April 25th, 2006 at 8:56 pm
[...] Carnival of Personal Finance hosted by Million Dollar Goal [...]
May 24th, 2006 at 2:47 am
[...] At last, on the new MillionDollarGoal: I didn’t leave any comments. Initially, I was really happy to see Clint back to the PF circle. But after spending almost an hour studying the writing style, site, and advertisement designs, I became convinced that this new MillionDollarGoal is not from Clint, who hosted the Carnival of Personal Finance #45. I must say that the owner of the new milliondollargoal.blogspot.com is quite business-savvy by inheriting a previously well-recognized web address. He even inherited all the old feeds in pfblogs.org. I don’t know if that is possible, but I think at least he should get a different feed at pfblogs.org. It is just tremendous amount of work to write every PF article. Building up all the web traffics is another gigantic task. Forgive me, the new MillionDollarGoal, that this week only, I can’t make myself to recognize your achievement as a PF blogger. In all fairness, I am not much better than you. And I do sincerely hope that your blog will be a good blog on its own. [...]
February 4th, 2007 at 5:37 am
[...] Monday Carnivals… Filed under: Insurance — admin @ 8:13 am Despite some tech diff’s (Blogger apparently suspended his “main” blog) , Clint at Million Dollar Goal is hosting this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance. He’s chosen an interesting, if unorthodox, format: instead of listing each blog and its submission, he put posts into categories, sans blog or author. The idea is that, if you find a post’s topic intriguing, you’ll click thru to see where it is. Which is what I did. We get a number of entrepreneurs here at IB; this post, at Frugal for Life, is the first in a two-part series on work-at-home scams, and how to avoid them. And this week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is up at the eponymously-named Entrepreneur’s blog. Scott, our host, sifted through over 50 submissions, organizing and ranking them according to topic (and his review). Our own Bob Vineyard’s post on High Deductible High Jinx was “Best in Category.” WooHoo! In keeping with the self-selected theme of entrepreneurship, take a moment to read Steve Pavlina’s post on the 10 Stupid Mistakes Made by the Newly Self-Employed. [...]
February 6th, 2007 at 10:19 am
[...] Monday Carnivals… Posted on April 24th, 2006 in Fetch Blogs by The_Prof (H G Stern, LUTCF) Despite some tech diff’s (Blogger apparently suspended his “main” blog) , Clint at Million Dollar Goal is hosting this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance. He’s chosen an interesting, if unorthodox, format: instead of listing each blog and its submission, he put posts into categories, sans blog or author. The idea is that, if you find a post’s topic intriguing, you’ll click thru to see where it is. Which is what I did. We get a number of entrepreneurs here at IB; this post, at Frugal for Life, is the first in a two-part series on work-at-home scams, and how to avoid them. And this week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is up at the eponymously-named Entrepreneur’s blog. Scott, our host, sifted through over 50 submissions, organizing and ranking them according to topic (and his review). Our own Bob Vineyard’s post on High Deductible High Jinx was “Best in Category.” WooHoo! In keeping with the self-selected theme of entrepreneurship, take a moment to read Steve Pavlina’s post on the 10 Stupid Mistakes Made by the Newly Self-Employed. [...]