Not that kind of speed

It’s 2 hours to our (self-imposed) deadline. Let’s see if we can get this out on time and still make it readable. We’ll start with our usual filibuster/welcome: Greetings, and behold a brand new Carnival of Wealth. Every Monday morning, after we’ve spent a week scouring the internet, we bring you said week’s least boring personal finance blog posts. Actually the submitters come to us, but whatever. Shall we get started? We’d better, the clock is ticking:

A Dutch entry? That’s what .nl is the country code for, right? Stefan at Skuzet has a tetralogy on the discount model of evaluating assets. This is about as uplifting as a page from a corporate finance textbook, but we’ll take its tasty exotic flavor. As best we can tell, the English translation of “skuzet” is “skuzet”.

A post from a site called TherapeuticReiki.com? Come on, we’re trying to rush though this. The submitter writes:

After doing all that financial analysis and planning, doing your marketing, social media, and reading that latest self-help book for business, here is finally something FUN you can do, that well, actually works. Works for me. Try it: make a crystal grid and charge your crystals with your intentions for abundance.

And a sample:

Emerald
The Emerald is the Queen of the Heart with deep connections to Gaia (the sprit [sic] of the Earth) and several of the Archangels.

Oh, for Pete’s sake. Even better, the post is 4 years old. The writer’s crystal grid is almost old enough to attend preschool. And you’re not going to believe this, but it’s a woman.

How about a post from someone relevant and on-topic? Roger the Amateur Financier says that having money, particularly gaining lots of money quickly, can sometimes cause problems if you don’t know how to handle it.

Roger seems like a nice fellow, so we’ll let him down easy. You should spend as much time wondering about rich people’s problems as rich people spend wondering about your problems. Roger admits to tons of credit card and student loan debt – problems we’ve never, ever, seen any other personal finance bloggers mention – and emphasizes his post’s point by quoting 2 of the most permissive and clueless personal finance bloggers in existence, Finance Fox and Financial Samurai. Both of whom agree that yes, it’s better to earn money slowly than quickly.

Because why not eat as many meals as possible out of an oblong box with a Kraft® logo on it? The longer you live with a frayed carpet and a beat-up Toyota Tercel from another century, the more you’ll appreciate what you do have when you eventually get it. The perfect scenario would be to save and deny yourself until your 99th birthday, finally cash out, indulge yourself for one glorious hour and then die.

No offense, but even the recommended, tempered version of this is several steps beyond nonsensical. And it illustrates why, as we’ve said before, poor people are poor largely because they choose to be.

One thing we harp on here is to examine every transaction from the other party’s perspective. That goes for buying, but it also goes for selling whatever it is you sell – your time, your expertise, etc. If you get rich, it means people chose to buy lots of what you’re selling and you kept lots of that after expenses. This is something to embrace, not to lament.

Who gives a flying one about Paris Hilton? So she didn’t earn her money and seems to enjoy squandering it. Why is this important to anyone else? Look, you’ll eventually get to witness her schadenfreude, but is that really going to be that satisfying? Wouldn’t you rather build your own wealth while not caring if she lives or dies? No, not if you can lather up in a nice big steam bath of self-pity and justification.

Wait, we’re not done. This is the mindset that plagues far too many people: thinking small. Not to mention, having immature hangups about money. Is there anything else good in this world that people bemoan having too much of? Too many loving family members. Too healthy children. Too tasty a steak dinner. But God forbid you amass more money than an unimaginative person would know what to do with.

The American school system is renowned for producing illiterates, some of whom even go on to fancy their words worthy of presenting to the world at large. But never fear, we’re not the only country to churn out people with a hazy command of their native tongue. Savvy Scot brings his heterodox spelling and grammar to the CoW with a piece on how some enterprising Brits are selling authentic Olympic torches on eBay for huge prices. Each person who actually carries a torch can opt to buy it for £295, which is £200 less than cost. (And to think that every Olympiad loses money. Who’d ever guess that? The citizens of Chicago should thank the heavens that Rio de Janeiro got stuck with the 2016 games.)

Anyhow, the torch bearers are turning around and hawking the torches for giant profits. £150,300 for a “momento”? (sic) That’s not just the buyer’s asking price, either. Some idiot actually bid that much.

Blogging 101 requires its pupils to be pusillanimous and not have opinions, so Savvy asks whether it’s “morally OK” to cash in like this. Again, let’s all think small and apologize for obtaining money through means other than theft. We don’t deserve it. Someone else should have it. Profit is bad, even at the personal level. Enjoy your rainy island, kids.

Or as the brilliant Dave at 6400 Personal Finance puts it,

Building wealth is about offense.

God, that’s pithy. Read it again. He continues:

It’s fundamentally easy to play financial defense: work at a job that pays you a decent wage, spend less than you earn, pay your credit card bill in full and on time, and contribute to your 401(k) and IRA.  If Americans could just manage to accomplish those four things we would have a completely different societal relationship with money.  Unfortunately there are idiots among us and they are legion so such wishes are futile.

It’s like Dave’s collating and typing our most profound financial thoughts, the ones that even we refrain from sharing on a blog that has enough enemies as it is.

Which works both ways. We touted the American Express Blue Cash as the best all-purpose credit card in our book, and it remains at or near the top. Dave wanted to know if his USAA credit card was a rip (it was), if the Military Star Rewards MasterCard was better (it is), and if there’s anything still better out there (see above). Most people would stop there and then choose whichever card had the most appealing advertising campaign. Dave does things differently:

How about crunching the numbers and getting the answer that way instead of tossing words around to solve a 5th-grade math problem?

Dave is 20-something. He’s our early favorite for the 2042 presidential election, unless you know someone better.

Free Money Finance doesn’t apologize for his wealth, either. He reviews a personal finance classic that he’d never read before, Your Money or Your Life. We haven’t read it either, but FMF’s review (Part I of II) makes it sound tantalizing.

The steadfast and headstrong Liana Arnold at CardHub continues her exposé of the Durbin Amendment, the U.S. Senate’s intervention into private debit card markets. To summarize, because a bunch of irresponsible morons couldn’t keep their credit card debt in check, the rest of us got punished when Congress rammed through a law that limited the amount that banks can charge for each debit transaction (“swipe fees”).

You’ll never guess what happened. With politicians hampering banks’ ability to make money on debit card transactions, those banks responded by increasing checking account fees, eliminating debit card rewards programs, and encouraging us to use (unregulated) credit cards and prepaid cards instead. Everybody loses! But it gave a superannuated Illinois senator a chance to claim that he was doing something for the poor, which is far more important than increasing the flow of capital.

Another entry from the Hub family this week. Ross Garner at WalletHub (CardHub’s sassy younger sister) tells us to stop whining about the high cost of medical care (a legitimate gripe, by the way) and embrace telemedicine. Maryland just became the 14th state to require that insurers cover virtual doctor visits. Hopefully we’ll one day reach a place where Congress no longer forbids insurers from operating in one state and having clients in another.

This is the future Jules Verne envisioned. Never mind 60,000-mile trips under the sea, M. Verne dreamed of a day when he could use his smartphone at ATMs. That is, if he hadn’t died 75 years before the latter was introduced. Odysseas Papadimitriou at Wallet Blog tells the story of NCR, the erstwhile National Cash Register and likely maker of the most recent ATM you used. The company’s developed a smartphone app that lets you withdraw money without a card. Odysseas is observant enough to ask what good such an app is, and gives a convincing answer.

Dividend Growth Investor discusses his dividend crossover point, the mark where his dividend income equals his expenses. In other words, where he can now rely on dividend income for his financial independence. He’s not there yet, but it’s in view. See how he’s getting there, and how you can too.

A URL loaded with hyphens is a sign of a likely link farm, but this post from Habeeb at BestDividend-Paying-Mutual-Funds at least has some content to it. It’s drier than Zsa Zsa Gabor eating beef jerky, but you can plow through it if whatever work you have sitting at your desk is particularly unappealing. As to why they didn’t include a hyphen between “best” and “dividend”, ask Habeeb.

Teacher Man at My University Money made it through college without knowing the difference between average and marginal tax rates. Now that he does, he explains how understanding your estimated marginal tax rate can make it far easier for you to plan your financial future. Mitt Romney pays what seems like a small effective income tax rate for one reason – he’s smart enough to take advantage of a complex system created specifically to screw wage earners while benefiting people who derive income via other means.

We take it back. There are Brits who can write. His apostrophed plurals notwithstanding, CoW rookie Ash at Sterling Effort has a merciless opinion of people who loaded up on Facebook stock (and people who did the same on Groupon stock, and whoever at News Corp told Rupert Murdoch, “It’s called MySpace. All the kids are on it. It’s gold, and for $580 million it can be ours.”) If you think Facebook’s majority shareholder gives a damn about you and your retirement,

Zuckerberg decided to spend the entire year’s profits on (Instagram,) a company that has never turned a profit and doesn’t have a clear way of producing any kind of return.

Opinions, data, and disdain for the stupid. Welcome aboard, Sterling Effort.

Paula Pant at Afford Anything clearly thinks she’s superior to us, or she’d deign to hold court at her permanently reserved CoW table more often. She is superior to us, that’s not the point. Greater Atlanta’s Favorite Nepali-American Personal Finance Blogger is back and better than ever, demonstrating the foolishness of justifying sunk costs – throwing bad money after worse, if you will. Read her, she’s wonderful.

Jill at My Dollar Plan goes to, by her estimation, 3-4 weddings a year. Which sounds slightly less appealing than having 3-4 reconstructive knee surgeries a year. It made her think about who’ll handle the finances when she theoretically gets married – her future husband and his big masculine brain, or Jill herself. Jill knows enough that she knows she wants to be in charge, which is wonderful but should be unremarkable. Ceding control of your finances to someone else – your boss, your government, your spouse – is juvenile. Literally. It’s what kids do. Grow up and take control. Buy our book if you have no clue where to start (link at the very bottom of the CoW.)

Credit Card Chaser was kind enough to run a guest post of ours when we were just starting out, so it’s only fair that we return the favor. Mac Hildebrand has common-sense, implementable tips for small business owners trying to make things work. “Buy assets, sell liabilities” applies here, too. Don’t commit yourself to larger borrowing costs than you can handle. Be a technology whore, it’ll save you in the long run. And true to his blog’s name, exploit the rewards that credit card companies offer and that dumb (i.e., most) cardholders end up paying for over and over again.

Ang Lloyd at 2012 Taxes tells you what to ask for in a small-business accountant. Particularly helpful if you live in Australia.

Ted Jenkin at Your Smart Money Moves opens by telling us that

There is an old saying that history has a way of repeating itself.

Like we’re supposed to tell our homosexual high school friends, it gets better. Ted explains risk vs. timeframe, diversification, and other exciting topics rendered even more exciting by Ted’s use of a tiny font.

Finally, PKamp3 at DQYDJ.net buried the lede. He mentioned that he got dropped by his car insurer (Progressive) when he attempted to make them his home insurer. Why?

Because of this truculent, bloodthirsty monster, that’s why:

PKamp3 (and his American Staffordshire terrier) went with Farmers instead. Thanks again, idiot pit bull owners with your cans of Full Throttle and Xtreme Couture t-shirts, for getting every dog who looks like yours blacklisted. Nice going.

And that’s it. A new post Wednesday, another new one Friday, an Anti-Tip of the Day everyday, another CoW a week from today, plus we’re on Investopedia and ProBlogger and all sorts of other places – Forbes, Yahoo! Finance, Speakers Corner in Hyde Park, etc. Basically we’re a one-stop content machine. See you then. Get our feed here. And as long as you’re clicking links, buy our book.

Yakezie Carnival readers. Or Sarin victims.

If it’s Monday, it must be the CoW. The Carnival of Wealth, an agglomeration of personal finance blog posts from across the cosmos.

There are other weekly roundups. What’s so great about yours? 

Have you seen the other ones? Here’s a competing carnival that features 80 submissions this week. Are you going to read every capsule? Of course you aren’t. No one is. Not even the carnival host. He just copied the submission summaries word-for-word and added a couple of paragraphs at the start and end. That carnival’s not only unreadable, it’s unread. Each submitter just searches the post for his or her own contribution, then leaves a comment saying “Thanks for including me”, and the fundamental objective of engaging readers is sacrificed to the false god of link love. Control Your Cash doesn’t play like that. We try to keep you entertained and informed. Imagine that. Our method isn’t for everyone, and neither our readers nor us would have it any other way. Shall we begin?

Does Madison DuPaix at My Dollar Plan really carry all the credit cards she recommends? This week she’s applying for 12 cards so she can earn herself a bunch of airline miles and related sign-up bonuses. Don’t worry, Ms. DuPaix does mention that she cancels these cards before the annual fees kick in. She also mentions that she’s carried some of these cards several times. Hey, if Delta and American Express are dumb enough to keep giving Madison miles and get nothing in return, good for her. Keeping track of all these cards seems like a lot of work, but if the rewards weren’t worth it, she wouldn’t be doing it.

Tim Fraticelli at Personal Finance By The Book wins this week’s verbosity award. Extremely long story short, he discusses whether you should create a will or a living trust. His conclusion is…inconclusive. Also, it was helpful of him to explain what a will is, seeing as we all arrived here from Sirius β the other day and aren’t familiar with such earthly customs. This post is a literary example of Wadsworth’s Constant in action.

Life Insurance Quotes is a commercial site, but whatever. They discuss the same topic the previous submitter did, but in more gripping prose. (Reason #5 for getting a will? “You could end up brain dead.”)

(Post rejected because it was in the Neutral Zone. Awful, but not distinctive enough that it’s worth goofing on.)

John Kiernan at Wallet Blog is gold, as usual. He writes about the confounding practice of car rental companies levying surcharges – sometimes as large as 1,567% – to drivers who don’t pay tolls.

Which is unfair and illegal, because often those drivers don’t even have an opportunity to pay said tolls. Drive through a checkpoint on a cashless toll road, and there’s no basket for you to dump your coins into. Instead, the transportation authority will bill the car’s owner; i.e., the rental company. Which gets charged $3 or whatever, and passes the expenses onto you – plus as much as $50 for processing. Here’s the major culprit, and here’s its co-conspirator, the ominously named Violation Management Services. The latter are the ones tasked with tacking on the obscene fees. Just doing their superiors’ bidding, they’re the Rudolf Hess to Fox Rent-A-Car’s Hitler. Get a load of this line from the “About Us” page on Violation Management’s horribly written website:

We provid(e) results that promote customer satisfaction for our client and their customers.

Never mind the redundantly redundant use of “customer(s)”, nor the singular/plural confusion, what renter is going to have their satisfaction promoted by being stuck with a $50 surcharge for a $3 toll? May Violation Management’s CEO and the illiterate lackey who scribbled together that unreadable site both get the hantavirus, hopefully from each other.

Barb Friedberg has a new e-book about investing.

What’s the antonym of “retard”? Whatever it is, we nominate Dave of Dividends For The Long Run Blog for next month’s honors. This week he illustrates the foolhardiness of getting excited about dividend yields for their own sake. If you focus on dividend yields, rather than consistent raw dividends (or perhaps, you know, appreciation), you’re cheering for fractions. More to the point, you’re cheering for high numerators or low denominators. A large dividend relative to stock price often means instability. Apple spent 3 decades with a constant dividend yield of 0, and on balance, few of its investors are complaining.

Knowledge for its own sake from Edward Webber at TaxFix, who gives us a primer on income tax rates in the United Kingdom for 2012. Bonus: the post contains a picture of a £10 note, with a smiling Queen Elizabeth on it.

Queen Elizabeth gets our vote for most underrated person on the planet. Which seems impossible, seeing as she’s also the most famous person on the planet, but hear us out. Yes, she was born into the very archetype of wealth and privilege, but (in ascending order of notability):

• She and Prince Philip have stayed married for 64 years, or 11,787 times longer than Britney Spears and that guy.
• Her Majesty might have some loony family members, but her reign (indeed, her entire life) has been free of scandal.
• She’s in perfect health, and if she hangs on for another 12 years, which would make her 98 (and this is someone whose mother lived to be 101), she’ll pass Louis XIV as the longest-reigning monarch in European history.
• She’s a World War II veteran. And she didn’t have some frou-frou occupation specialty befitting a princess, like nurse’s assistant who folds towels and fills up the occasional syringe. She was a freaking tank mechanic. At the age of 19. We wonder how many of her loyal subjects know how to change the oil on their Vauxhall Corsas.

47% of you are carrying credit card debt? Well, certainly not 47% of you, but 47% of Americans en masse. Tim at Nerd Wallet exposes the depth and breadth of our collective indebtedness. Believe it or not, our cumulative credit card debt has decreased in the last couple of years – both the raw totals and the per capita numbers.

But that’s nothing to be proud of. It’s mostly chargeoffs – credit card issuers giving up on the deadest of beats. Also, Tim outlines the historic shift in the makeup of that debt. Student loan balances are now larger than credit card balances! U! S! A! U! S! A! Yeah, but you need an education because an investment in your fut…oh, put a sock in us. Small consolation that we predicted this scenario years ago.

Dividend Growth Investor tells the stories of 3 of the most successful dividend investors of all time. Warren Buffett and 2 ladies, none of whom were ostentatious but all of whom understood patience and consistency.

From the lovely Liana Arnold at CardHub comes news that could serve as the last paragraph in Groupon’s upcoming eulogy. Capital One, purveyor of some of the most annoying commercials and most voluminous junk mail of all time, has started offering daily deals along with its monthly statements. Now, cardholders barely have to breathe and blink to take advantage of short-term retail sales. It’s stuff you’d probably buy anyway, cheaper.

No.
(Karl Marrion at Wise Stock Buyer asks, rhetorically, if you should use stock-picking software. Also, the poor guy only has 15 Twitter followers, one of which is another account of his. Follow him, out of pity if nothing else.)

(Post rejected for CHILD TAX CREDIT its embarrassing use of CHILD TAX CREDIT search engine optimization “copywriting”, which is CHILD TAX CREDIT almost a perfect CHILD TAX CREDIT oxymoron.)

That paragraph flowed as smoothly as the rejected post. Also, CHILD TAX CREDIT.

Finally, this week’s most provocative post is from W of Off Road Finance. Heck, it might be the most provocative post we’ve ever run. Part manifesto, part dystopian prophecy, it’s a call-to-arms to secure your finances by not investing. Like, not at all.

I don’t want my family’s prosperity to be tied to stock or bond prices, the value of my home, the employment situation, the performance of rental properties etc.

Which sounds like it wouldn’t leave a whole lot, but W has a strategy in place. This post is labeled “Part I”, and you won’t want to wait to see what’s coming next.

And that’s it. New Anti-Tip tomorrow, new post Wednesday, new CoW Monday, and all sorts of goodness on Investopedia, Forbes, Yahoo! Finance, ProBlogger et al. Ciao.