Virginia’s most famous native son? Thomas Jefferson. Hawai’i’s most famous? This 800-pounder, who did manage to live to 38. And had a wife and a kid, if you can believe that.

If you’re the kind of cultured Northeasterner who finds nothing funnier than making fun of people from, say, Alabama and how stupid they are, spend a couple of days in Hawai’i and see how quickly you reassess your hierarchy of dumb.

Adam Carolla was right. Hawai’ians are stupid for several reasons, a major one being that the islands are only so big. And so isolated. The unavoidable inbreeding puts the royal houses of Europe to shame. Also, the Hawai’ian alphabet has only 12 letters, making it impossible to articulate any abstract or higher-level thoughts.

Here’s an example of how dumb Hawai’ians are. The Hawai’ian word for “half” is hapa, which is obviously a corruption of the English word. There’s no f sound in Hawai’ian, so they went with the closest substitute they had available, p. Every Hawai’ian word has to end in a vowel, hence hapa. Now…

The islands were discovered around 600. Captain Cook didn’t show up until 1778. These people went 1200 years (and presumably would have gone longer) without anyone ever saying, “I just split this thing in two, and now I need a name for each piece.”

For those of you in the rest of the world, who can read, we present yet another edition of the Carnival of Wealth. Personal finance wisdom (and occasionally, what only Hawai’ians might consider wisdom) from our favorite bloggers. Shall we?

Madison du Paix at My Dollar Plan submitted her post 3 seconds after last week’s carnival went live, and seeing as we no longer have a formal deadline, it’s only fair that she go first. Madison writes about the (groan) “fiscal cliff”, the most preposterous scaremongering story to hit our national consciousness since Orson Welles convinced some dullards that Martians were colonizing our planet. (Remarkably, some of the dullards lived on the Mainland.) There was no “cliff”, metaphorical or otherwise, that our economy was going to go over. Although it was preposterous that our elected superiors gave us barely 2 days’ notice as to what our 2013 tax rates would be. Said superiors will continue to spend money we not only don’t have but will never have the creditworthiness to borrow. They’ll continue to raise taxes. Our economy will remain stagnant. But boy, that Sophisticate-in-Chief is a charmer. And our incoming House members and Senators? So enlightened and diverse! More ladies (and Buddhists, and bisexuals) than ever! Remember, their identities and personae are far more important than what they’re pitching.

Oh yeah, Madison’s post. She summarizes – quite beautifully – what the fiscal cliff deal means for our taxes.

The Control Your Cash Woman of the Year makes her awaited return to these parts. When the year began, Paula Pant of Afford Anything and her boyfriend wanted to see if they could live on one income. Not because she wanted to sit at home and eat bonbons while crafting tea cozies to sell on Etsy, but because she wanted to take one of their incomes (hers) and invest every farthing of it. Paula did – well, the two of them did – and she gives the results.

This is why we named her our Woman of the Year, and why the balloting was not close. Paula does not come from exorbitant means. Yet she’s in her 20s and is not only deriving much of her income from investments, she’s doing it while living a rich and fascinating life. She’s visited more countries than all of you combined. She has the freedom most of you dream of only in theory, and will spend all day justifying why it’s impossible to achieve in practice. Yet she’s doing it and will continue to.

Even more remarkably, she’s not one of these obsessive cheapskates who vacations exclusively in adjacent counties and collects notable rocks while doing so. She doesn’t merely have freedom, she capitalizes on it. We should all live like Paula. But no, keep slaving away at that job you hate in the hopes that a few years down the road, you can get promoted and commit even more of your finite existence to said job.

Suba Iyer from Wealth Informatics? Where has she been? (Note her name – well, her maiden name – at the top of our main page.) Today we found out that she’s spent…$95,000 on rent for the last 5 years. The definitive spicy meatball. In some places that kind of money will buy you a decent house, not all of them Detroit neighborhoods. She negotiated a lower monthly obligation, which isn’t quite as good as buying, but it’s far better than paying too much rent.

Free Money Finance has case studies of 2 people who quit their jobs and lived to prosper. (Here are a couple more.)

The ever-mysterious Dividend Growth Investor gives his response to the “fiscal cliff”. He feels that such ephemeral concerns are meaningless when his holding period is, and we quote, “forever”. Man, he’s not kidding about preferring dividends over appreciation. Again, D.G. Investor gives his handy capsules of some of the obscure companies that he invests in:

The Coca-Cola Company (KO), a beverage company, engages in the manufacture, marketing, and sale of nonalcoholic beverages worldwide.

From PKamp3 at DQYDJ.net (that’s Don’t Quit Your Day Job, ICYDK) comes a fantastic recurring feature: he and the rest of his brain trust use option prices to determine where the S&P 500 is going to end up. Last time, their predictions failed egregiously. But like Thomas Edison figuring out ways not to create an incandescent light bulb, the DQYDJ team has taken its failure and made something of it.

Jake Thompson at Becoming Your Own Bank is relentless, if nothing else. Long story short, his site is a commercial for the family business – not just life insurance, but whole life insurance, which is the worst kind. His post does give us an opportunity to offer up some handy grammar tips:

• Possessives take an apostrophe, plurals don’t.
• “Buy” is a synonym for “purchase”. “By” is something different.
• “Peace of mind” is an idiom meaning contentment, satisfaction. “Piece of mind” is an Iron Maiden album (and they were well aware of the homonym when they gave it that title, thanks.) Seriously, you have difficulty with this?

Also, while Jake’s post is undated, there’s a comment on it that’s dated 4 months ago. So thanks for giving us something timely, Ace. And even though we long ago lambasted the family patriarch’s book on whole life insurance, which is written even more ineptly than this whale patty of a blog post, the Thompsons still submit to the CoW. Good for them. Kids, banging your head against a wall repeatedly is crucial to your success in the real world. Especially if you supplement it with whole life insurance.

Let’s shower and rinse after that, and welcome Neal Frankle of Wealth Pilgrim back to the CoW. Neal received an all-encompassing and unbelievably general question from a reader – essentially, “How do I invest?” Obviously that requires a long and detailed answer which includes its own set of questions, but  Neal manages to be both succinct and helpful in his response.

From Michael at Kitces.com, an analysis of more of the doublespeak and obscurantism surrounding the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012. If you’re retired, you can make a Qualified Charitable Distribution from an IRA. Remember, you’re not doing this to guarantee your place in heaven, but rather to limit any tax bite. One problem – the law wasn’t passed until after the 2012 tax year ended. What’s better than a Congress that not only doesn’t let its citizens know the tax schedule for the upcoming year, but keeps the previous year’s hidden too? Michael concludes that QCDs are largely a waste of time anyway, and that if you really want to give to charity and not the IRS, you should donate stocks that appreciated. Once again, Michael does some brilliant and vital if depressing work about what our taxes are going to look like over the next few lean years.

Andrew at 101 Centavos has an outlook similar to ours on the absurdity of the fiscal cliff.  Andrew did the filthy but vital work of digging to see which companies and industries your elected representatives have chosen to be the winners and losers this time out. Wind energy gets yet another chance to pretend to be profitable, government ward General Electric gets to defer taxes. Andrew explains it in his inimitable way:

Calling the office of national politicians, also a pointless exercise for an individual peasant voter. Like leveling up in a video game, it’s a short-term false accomplishment. There, got my “voice” heard.

Trent Lott was a Republican. John Breaux, a Democrat. And yet here they are hand-in-hand, working for the same lobbying outfit. Might even shower together at the same gym, for all we know.

Andrew doesn’t just complain, though. He tells ordinary, non-connected folk what they can do to minimize the damage and be less poor in the coming years, which is the pusillanimous 21st century version of what used to be the American Dream.

You people could’ve nominated Ron Paul for the presidency, the one guy with enough guts to point out the rapidly falling sky. But no, he’s crazy.

Yes. Teacher Man at Young & Thrifty asks if you should get a Costco membership. We did this 3 years ago, but the lessons still apply. Teacher Man lists some disadvantages to shopping at Costco, one of which isn’t valid at all:

You really can’t walk out of there without spending at least $75 to $100

(He means “at least $75”, or possibly “at least $100”, but he can’t mean both.)

You’re not supposed to walk out of there without spending at least $75. (Or $100.) It’s called bulk shopping. Your humble bloggers dropped $206 at the nearby Costco today in fact, and can now go the next 6 weeks without buying eggs, or mahi mahi, or chicken, or bacon, or cat litter. And of course, the thrilling conclusion:

Readers, do you think Costco is worth it or not?

(groan)

Have a Roth IRA and a traditional one? Michael at Financial Ramblings says that’s the way to go, arguing that if you contribute to a Roth up to the amount where you don’t have to pay any taxes on withdrawals ($19,500 in his example), and put the remainder of your contributions in a traditional IRA, you’ll lower your tax liability as much as possible.

Needs editing, but here’s another debut CoW entry – this one from James at Free in 10 Years. James offers data to buttress the argument that impulse buying is a legitimate phenomenon. Did you know people buy more convertibles when it’s unseasonably warm? And more 4-wheel drive vehicles when it’s snowy? James also recommends that you “plan purchases in advance”, which is a much better idea than planning them retroactively.

Charles Davis at Wallet Hub explains how mortgage points work, and does so clearly and concisely. If you’re not familiar, mortgage points are a means for saving money by paying up front instead of deferring over decades. Pay 1% of your mortgage balance immediately, and it might knock ¼ or ½ of a percentage, uh, …point off your interest rate. Despite their confusing name, mortgage points are useful to both borrowers and lenders. Charles illustrates how mortgage points work in more detail than we have time for here.

Finally, Liana Arnold from Card Hub has returned from her brief incapacitation to give us the credit card landscape report. Which is…? Glad you asked. She shows how annual percentage rates, introductory rates etc. have moved over the past 3 months. The data are fascinating (reward bonuses have increased 15%?) and go back several years.

Thanks again for reading. Buy our book. Check us out on Investopedia. And don’t do drugs. Aloha.

Hard to believe this is the same little girl from The Sonny & Cher Show

You don’t have to be a non-Catholic to hate Notre Dame; specifically, its football program. The most smug, unctuous, detestable team in all of sports. Fans of the Montreal Canadiens, New York Yankees, Dallas Cowboys and Duke basketball combined can’t touch the endless sanctimony and tales of past glory spouted by Notre Dame alumni. 90 years ago Knute Rockne figured out that you could use the forward pass to beat Army, and ever since then anyone even remotely associated with the school has lived vicariously through its exploits. “Play like a champion”, as if the other >100 teams in major college football make it a point of playing like also-rans.

“We’re so special, joining a conference is beneath us. We get our very own major broadcast TV network. We have the most maddening fight song in all of college football.” Notre Dame hasn’t had an objectively good season since beating Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl, 19 years and 6 coaches ago, but still, wake up the damn echoes. This is a school that refused to accept bowl invitations until 1969, because what about those precious student-athletes and their economics tutorials? Oh, and did you know that Notre Dame has won more national titles and had more All-Americans than any other school? Spend 3 seconds in the presence of an alumnus and you will. Furthermore, there’s a reason

(Can’t finish paragraph because that stupid song refuses to exit your head once it’s in there. SEND THE VOLLEY/CHEER ON HIGH/SHAKE DOWN THE THUNDER FROM THE SKY)

The worst part about Notre Dame? They’ve left us no choice but to cheer for Alabama and that vertically substandard hypocrite coach of theirs tonight. (Sigh) Roll Tide, and damn you all to hell.

Welcome to another Carnival of Wealth, the only personal finance blog carnival that isn’t just a cut-and-pasted laundry list of submitted articles presented without comment, creativity, editing, or standards. If you enjoy “reading” that kind of junk instead, here’s a sample (with a devilishly clever pun in the blog’s title, no less.) If you prefer something good, keep reading. Without further lament, here’s this week’s extravaganza:

Okay, here’s an example of the kind of boring and uninspired post that serves as comedy fodder if nothing else. From Christopher at This, That and the MBA,

The old saying goes that debt has its way of creeping up on us without us really even knowing it and this post will be about how to manage debt.  Now a days we are so quick to pull out our credit card or debit card to make a purchase.  To manage debt we need to really look close at what we are spending our money on and really track it.

Christopher allegedly has an advanced degree, and definitely has a flair for the obvious. Did you know that to manage debt, you have to look at what you’re spending money on? How did we never mention that on Control Your Cash before? Sorry about the negligence. Bonus: This post includes a 3-paragraph section without a comma, which is not easy to do. Christopher also wants you to start an emergency fund, the first and most inane tool in the personal finance blogger starter kit. We can’t wait to see more derivative posts from Christopher in the coming weeks.

Ooh, another CoW rookie. This one’s a guest post from a “blog and marketing manager” at a bankruptcy site. She writes at Call Me What You Want, Even Cheap (and we thought Control Your Cash was too long a name for a website.) This post is about what to do after you’ve declared bankruptcy.

First, if you’ve declared bankruptcy, why are you reading our site? If this is your first time here, trust us, you’re not going to like it and it’s only going to get worse. Second, the post in question offers the kind of advice that we can’t help but goof on. It’s in our blood:

Take this opportunity to develop healthy financial habits, like spending less than you earn.

Coming up with a budget for your money can help you stick to your financial goals.

Strong saving habits can help you deal with unanticipated expenses.

Eat every day. This involves putting food in your mouth, chewing it, and then swallowing it. This will help you stay alive.

Pay [your credit card bill] in full each and every month. That way, you will be building your credit and showing that you are financially responsible at the same time.

Only one of those was fake, and it doesn’t matter which. Good Lord, would it kill you people to demonstrate just a little originality? We don’t ask for much. (Maybe that’s the problem.)

We’re showcasing home improvement projects now? Oh, why not…they’re a step up from what we’ve given you so far today. From Planting our Pennies, how to replace your outmoded fluorescent bulbs with rope lights. Now, every day in your kitchen can be Christmas.

Sometimes we try to save the best posts for the end. If we do that this week, no one will read to the end. So here comes Andrew at 101 Centavos to save the day. Again. He reminds us that while many consumer goods (computers, perishable grocery items) have dropped dramatically in price over the decades, others (health care, education) have gone in the other direction. But don’t read the comments, they’re mostly pseudo-political confirmation of the commenters’ own opinions.

PKamp3 at DQYDJ.net is another consistently magical submitter. This week he analyzes the “fiscal cliff” deal that the politicians you elected (yes, you, if you’re American) passed last week. They continue to kick the can down the road, and continue to think that an increase in spending that falls short of an arbitrarily set benchmark is somehow a decrease in spending. Americans don’t hate big government after all. Well, only when it’s contrasted with colossal government.

The “American Taxpayer Relief Act” is a triumph of naming over policy, unless raising long-term capital gains rates and increasing the highest marginal rate somehow count as relieving American taxpayers. Michael at Kitces.com machetes his way through the nonsense and explains what Congress’s latest public relations project means to you.

A machine shop in your garage? The process is called 3-D printing, and according to Darwin’s Money, it’s going to revolutionize society like nothing since the Segway. But don’t let the limiting word “printing” mislead you. Basically you create a blueprint on your computer, press a button, and an attached fabricator molds plastic, resin, or even metal into whatever it is you want to build. Darwin found a 3-D printing stock that’s quadrupled in value over the past year, and he’s not a man who invests haphazardly.

No clue where to start dividend investing? Dividend Growth Investor has you covered, with a primer for the neophyte.

Keep in mind, “dividend investing” as a concept is unnecessarily restrictive. The object of investing is to secure returns. Their form (capital appreciation, dividend payment, etc., all calculated after taxes) shouldn’t matter. But dividends do imply a level of stability in a company’s finances. A penny stock with a “potential for appreciation” (they said sarcastically) doesn’t have the wherewithal to give cash payments to its investors. Coca-Cola and IBM do. Oh, speaking of Coke:

The Coca-Cola Company (KO) is a beverage company, which owns or licenses and markets more than 500 nonalcoholic beverage brands, primarily sparkling beverages but also a variety of still beverages, such as waters, enhanced waters, juices and juice drinks, ready-to-drink teas and coffees, and energy and sports drinks.

Where would we be without Dividend Growth Investor’s handy capsules of what these giant multinationals do?

All life insurance is pretty much the same, right? Odysseas Papadimitriou at Wallet Blog says whether the answer’s yes or no, you can’t comparison shop for life insurance. Why not? Because you’d have to take a separate physical exam every time you apply, and by the time you got your second set of test results back, the first company’s offer might have changed. Odysseas suggests an obvious way around this, one which the industry might adopt in a few centuries.

Hey, fat people who bought gym memberships last week! John Kiernan at Card Hub explains the psychological reasons why you did so, and why you’ll be just as fat come December 31. Also, on behalf of fit people everywhere, thanks for subsidizing our gym memberships. (kisses)

(Just kidding. Of course we wouldn’t kiss you. You’re fat!)

And we’re done. Check us out on Investopedia. Come back tomorrow for new stuff. And buy our book.

OMG look at all the potential murderers! WHY ISN’T SOMEONE ARRESTING THEM?!?!?!?!

Because guns reduce crime. Take the United States, a federated republic with wildly divergent gun laws. In the parts of the nation with the highest per capita gun ownership (Montana, Alaska, Wyoming, Idaho, the Dakotas), violent crime is low and mass shootings unheard of. In the parts where the populace has chosen to elect representatives who restrict gun ownership (Chicago; New York City; Washington, D.C.), violent crime is absurdly high. The negative correlation between firearm availability and murder is unmistakable.

This extends to other nations, too. In South Africa and Colombia, it’s all but impossible for private citizens to own guns. Murder rates in both countries dwarf those of even the most dangerous parts of the U.S. In Switzerland and Israel, practically everyone owns a gun, and murders are rare (excluding that there’s not a lot you can do when a lunatic Arab decides he wants to use a bomb to blow himself and several passersby up.)

Yeah, but what about Newtown? 

What about Newtown? From a mass murderer’s perspective, Sandy Hook Elementary was the perfect soft target. Little kids and unarmed adults, not a single one of whom is going to be able to confront a shooter in any meaningful way. There’s a reason why mass shootings rarely occur at gun stores or on firing ranges. One of the dead Newtown adults was a school psychologist, whose academic credentials were considerably less helpful that day than firearm training would have been.

And if that’s not a worthwhile introduction to this week’s Carnival of Wealth, nothing is. Personal finance blog posts from around the globe. Some awful, a few good, none boring (the boring ones don’t make the cut.) Let’s get started:

This week we welcome Michael Kitces of the eponymous Kitces, a man with a preponderance of designations after his name. This week he explains the new 3.8% Medicare tax on investment income, and how IRS agents and administrators will gladly exercise their power to ensure that you don’t manipulate your net investment income. Aren’t mass social programs beautiful? All the government has to do is assume responsibility for private citizens’ health, and everything else falls into place. Including spending the next 4 generations (and counting) defending the indefensible – a multibillion-dollar boondoggle that can’t help but neuter wholesale chunks of a once-vibrant economy. Also, our tax code just isn’t complex enough.

You know how we said that some of the submissions we receive are awful? Here’s a shining example from the lazy illiterates at Credit-Debt-Consolidation-Loans, a site that boasts the telltale sign of the opportunistic and lame (hyphens in the title.) Someone who goes by the imaginative username “admin” wrote this post a year and a half ago, and decided to submit it to us now. And it’s not like he was polishing it into a gleaming jewel all that time:

Before you press the ‘submit’ button on your online form, it may be a good idea to read through the terms and conditions that the online lending firm will send to you for your perusal.

Look, Ace. If you want to submit crap to a pointless carnival that no one reads nor cares about, give Clifford at Yakezie a spin. We don’t have room for that nonsense here.

(Post rejected because it came from a site titled 2008Taxes.org. Congratulations on now being 5 years out of date.)

(Batting .333 right now. This isn’t good.)

Wait, another newcomer? And a literarily adept one, too? Maybe we should run an all-rookie CoW. This elegant submission comes from Dustin Small at Stockodo, who explains the concept of “position sizing”. Don’t diversify for diversity’s sake. A portfolio that includes 100 random companies isn’t going to beat one with 10 stringently researched companies that meet certain criteria.

Another CoW newcomer, Mochi & Macarons (no, not “macaroons”, and not “macrons” either) at The Budgeting Tool. She lists age benchmarks at which you’re supposed to have amassed certain nest eggs. The numbers come from Fidelity investments. Our submitter thinks Fidelity’s numbers are too low, at least for her aspirations.

After an interminable hiatus, Canadian mother-and-son team Boomer & Echo explain how to calculate capital gains and your adjusted cost basis. Crucial information if you’re Canadian, plan to become Canadian, or invest in Canada. Fun, hitherto unknown fact: While in 2011 the IRS required brokers to track and report investors’ adjusted cost base, Revenue Canada has no such requirements. America, land of the free, right?

Abso-damn-lutely. Harry Campbell at Your PF Pro asks if Apple computers and related stuff are worth the premium. Just ask noted Lenovo user Bill Simmons, who apparently can’t afford a MacBook Air.

We speak as former Windows devotees who thought the Apple cult was ridiculous. Until our Dell and Lenovo machines broke down beyond hope in the same week, and we reluctantly bought Macs.

Wait, you mean computers don’t all take 15 minutes to boot up? They don’t crash multiple times a day as a matter of course? And they can be thin, elegant and efficient, too? We had no idea. And will never go back to a Microsoft operating system, no matter how pretty Windows 8 looks compared to its clunky yet omnipresent predecessors. Harry thinks otherwise, trading out his iPhone for a Galaxy S3. His post also features the wordiest phrase of this week’s CoW:

they can release a 5th version of a phone that is exactly the same as the previous(except for a weird vertical extension in length)

You mean, “height”?

John Kiernan at Wallet Blog says it’s not enough to think “I’m going to save for retirement.” He asks you to go another step, and visualize yourself with grey hair and an AARP card. Merrill Lynch’s new “Face Retirement” tool (what an awful name) will help. It’ll also tell you what your IRA or 401(k) will look like by the time you’re driving a Buick LaSalle and getting fitted for a hearing aid.

A Justin Bieber prepaid credit card? That makes about as much sense as a new single from Charlie Munger, but that’s the world we live in. Liana Arnold at CardHub tells us how the Canadian singing sensation (a phrase that we’ll always associate with Luba, for some reason) partnered with a company with the incredible name of BillMyParents. This card is supposed to “promote financial literacy”, something most teenagers can’t get enough of, apparently. The card is garbage, as you can’t take it out of your wallet without incurring some sort of fee. Still, it’s good for Mr. Bieber’s “brand” that he’s already branching out into business endeavors that will presumably be around after he morphs out of that twink body of his into something approaching adulthood. And to think that people decried KISS for slapping their faces on lunch boxes and PEZ dispensers. At least lunch boxes serve a purpose.

Thanks again for joining us. Check us out on Investopedia. Oh, and buy our book. See y’all tomorrow.