Miami. Why would they hold the Super Bowl here when they can hold it in gorgeous, sunny Indianapolis?

We’ll get to the Carnival in a minute. First this.

New England opened as a field goal favorite. Is that too low? New England was the #1 seed, the Giants the #6 seed. The latter barely qualified for the playoffs, doing so in the final game of the season.

Or is 3 points too high? The Giants did win in New England, 24-20 back in Week 9.

A prognosticating friend likes New England minus the points. His rationale? “Always take the Croat in a revenge game. Always.” He’s referring to Patriots coach Bill Belichick, a man known to circumvent sportsmanship when the circumstances warrant it. Our friend is an Irishman who married into a Croatian family. His advice prompted us to look at how many of the previous Super Bowls were revenge games. (He’s probably talking about the Patriots seeking revenge over Super Bowl XLII, rather than this year’s regular season game, but whatever.) There have been 12 Super Bowls that were rematches of regular-season games. The team that won the regular-season game went 5-7:

2007 New England 38, New York Giants 35 (last game of season)
2001 St. Louis 24, New England 17
1999 Tennessee 24, St. Louis 21
1994 San Francisco 38, San Diego 15
1993 Buffalo 13, Dallas 10 (Week 2, final week of Emmitt Smith’s infamous holdout)
1990 Buffalo 17, New York Giants 13
1986 New York Giants 19, Denver 16
1985 Chicago 20, New England 7
1983 Washington 37, Los Angeles Raiders 35
1981 San Francisco 21, Cincinnati 3
1980 Philadelphia 10, Oakland 7
1977 Dallas 14, Denver 6

Do what you will with that. We didn’t bother researching which of the 20th century teams had Croats playing a significant role.

Oh yeah, the Carnival. Of Wealth. A compendium of personal finance blog posts from the past week, some good, some awful, some way off topic. If you have a personal finance blog and want to join in the festivities, submit here. Otherwise, just read. Let’s get it on.

We’ll start by getting that middle category out of the way first. This is the 4th consecutive week that we’ve goofed on the submission from Erika at Newlyweds on a Budget, each one of which has been more derivative than the previous one. Please, tell everyone a first-person story about how you plan to get out of debt, because 48 trillion other people haven’t done that already. Fortunately, Erika is not without humor. The humor is unintentional, but still:

The Debt

Erika Amex: $285.67
Citi Card: $2,128.41
Student Loan #1: $9,101.51
Student Loan #2: $11,432.70
Student Loan #3: $2,050.00

So apparently there is a third student loan (0% interest) that I completely forgot about it (sic) until I was sent a bill in the mail. Great.

Here’s a rule with zero exceptions: people who “completely forg(e)t about” $2050 debts, to say nothing of the $23,000 in debts they do know about, should stick to writing about handicrafts or how to cook gluten-free or something.

How about something good and actionable? Stephen Vanderpool at Nerd Wallet to the rescue. Learn how to improve your FICO score with his post on which credit cards to get. It’s kind of an infomercial, but his suggestions are sound. Best of all, Stephen’s one of the few writers who can write about credit cards without mentioning the least important criterion for getting a card: its interest rate. We’ve said it before; interest rates are irrelevant, because if you read the agreement and pay by the deadline like a responsible person, your interest rate is 0 regardless of which card you choose. The phrase “interest rate” appears only incidentally in this post.

Two consecutive good posts? What did we to do deserve this? Daniel at Sweating the Big Stuff is back with a post on the IRS’s amnesty program for people with money in offshore accounts. Keep in mind that Daniel is the guy who flipped a sale on eBay, netted $100, and reported it on his taxes. We’re not sure if he does the same thing with pizza coupons, but we do know that Daniel can probably breathe easily if he ever gets audited.

Three consecutive good posts? We’re now officially in the black with this week’s edition. Mich at Beating the Index is a sophomore entrant with a focus on Canadian resource companies. This week, she* discusses the investment potential of Hyperion Exploration, an oil and gas company with operations in Alberta and British Columbia.

If, on the other hand, you’d rather set your money on fire, Hank at Money Q&A has the answer. Hank went on Kickstarter to invest in an unsigned South Carolinian rock and roll outfit. Investing in a bookstore seems like it’d be a better investment, but Hank paid $15 and got a digital download of the band’s CD (marginal cost to the band, 0). Hank says it’s no skin off him because he would have bought the CD anyway, which is the same rationalization everyone who will place a losing Super Bowl bet will make. “It’s just a few bucks.”

Seriously? That’s how bands attempt to earn a living in 2012? The days of Mo Ostin going to the Starwood to scout out Van Halen with contract in hand are long gone.

The American Express Centurion card was almost mythological for years, and the urban legends surrounding its use were hilarious. “You can buy an intercontinental ballistic missile with it! My cousin’s friend’s dad has one!” Then, VISA adorably came out with its copycat black card (with the helpful phrase “Black Card” written on it.) John Kiernan at Wallet Blog explains the difference and which card is better, if you’re the kind of multimillionaire who enjoys reading personal finance blogs.

John at Buy Stocks Online Info is meticulously recording his dividend income every month this year. Find out where he made money, which dividend stocks he plans to invest in for the rest of the year, and his reasons for doing so.

Kyle at The Penny Hoarder has some choice words for the late-night TV hawkers who show you how to buy a house with “no money down” (excluding the $360 they demand for their information.) This post includes the word “ergophobia”, which is magnificent.

“Math is hard!” No, it isn’t, at least not the 4th-grade level that Paula Pant of Afford-Anything recommends you master before you start looking at ways to generate passive income. You need to know whether your new investment’s cash flow will be positive before committing resources to it. Determining the answer involves nothing more complex than division. You remember division, right? Multiplication’s tricky pal?

There are still some people out there who are so dumb, they think that moving from one tax bracket to a higher one will decrease your take-home pay. They confuse marginal tax rates with effective tax rates, and you have to be really committed to ignorance to neither know nor appreciate the difference. Jill at My Dollar Plan shows us what tax brackets are, how they work, at what levels they kick in, and how increasing your taxable income will never decrease your income after taxes.

Certified Financial Planner Jeff Rose used to be a CoW mainstay. Then he disappeared. We hope it wasn’t something we said, even though what we’ve said has ended up costing us many a weaker contributor (or as we like to think of it, culling the herd.) Jeff has returned this week, guest posting on PT Money with a discussion of penalties and taxes you should consider before paying emergency expenses out of a 401(k).

Barbara Friedberg is investing conservatively, and has the detailed list of inflation hedges to prove it. See how she compares CDs, government bonds and treasury inflation-protected securities before deciding where to put her scratch.

Dan at High Yield Edge returns this week. We’ll let him describe his contribution:
“Looking for international exposure AND high yield? Well, you’re in luck! This review of multiple international bond ETFs may be just what you’re looking for.”

Fresh off his video appearance last week, Bob at Christian PF is back with another one. His wife Linda doesn’t make an appearance this time, however, leaving us with nothing but Bob’s swarthy, masculine countenance on a plain background. Oh, and recommendations for home-based businesses.

Did you know there are Canadians who retire and still choose to live in Canada? Boomer & Echo explain how these frozen old people can use shelters, specifically the Tax Free Savings Account, to keep themselves from shivering on a grate atop the Yonge Street subway line.

The redoubtable Jim Wang at Bargaineering returns after a long sabbatical (from the CoW, not from blogging.) This week he introduces us to Credit Karma, a site that promises legitimately free access to your credit scores. Is Credit Karma a scam? Jim has the well-researched answer.

Don at Money Smart Guides pulls out an old chestnut, the “how do you define wealth?” post. A mansion is bad, because you wouldn’t use all the rooms. A Lamborghini is bad, because you might scratch it. Winning the lottery is bad, because money is the root of all evil, or something. Plus the taxes, don’tcha know.

Folks, here’s a tip: relish the money. Every honest dollar you make is the result of benefiting the world by some amount; moving assets from lower-valued to higher-valued uses. Stop apologizing. And if you can afford something nice, how about looking at its myriad benefits instead of any drawbacks? Do you think Larry Ellison regrets one square inch of the giant house he lives in? Of course not, he earned it and doesn’t complain about how big it is. That’s the difference between the rich and the merely aspirational, right there.

Hey, genius. Yeah, you with the bachelor’s degree, who was smart enough to sit at a desk and write papers for 4 years but not smart enough to get hired afterwards. Are you seriously thinking of incurring even more debt and getting a master’s? Maybe you’re right, and the real world will either go away or be less intimidating the longer you stay in school. So yeah, go for it. Your parents can’t keep that cot ready for you in the basement forever, because sooner or later they’re going to die. Teacher Man at My University Money illustrates the diminishing returns of higher education.

A CoW rookie this week is the modestly titled Financial god with what we thought was a parody, but isn’t. There’s a company that wants to put ships in international waters, just outside Silicon Valley, and load them up with educated Chinese and Indians. Seriously. Fg writes about the impact this could have on a once-dynamic economy overburdened with regulation and with an unsavory penchant for keeping the right kind of immigrants out.

We’ll say it again, or let Darwin’s Money do it for us. Prices are low. Mortgage rates are low. Quit screwing around and buy a freaking house already.

Kevin McKee at Thousandaire decided that his custom-made budget spreadsheet is too much work, and he’s probably right. So he switched to Mint.com and thinks you should, too.

Todd Tresidder of Financial Mentor subtitles his site as “Financial Freedom For Smart People”. We’ll admit we didn’t read this 8000-word mastodon in its entirety, but the parts we scanned were well-formatted and grammatically sound. To quote Todd, “the 4% rule (with respect to safe withdrawal rates in retirement) is a myth.  Valuations matter.” The man’s not screwing around. Read him.

Finally, our Post of the Week.

We were wondering what had happened to Shawanda Greene of You Have More Than You Think, who hadn’t submitted in forever. Turned out she was planning her exit strategy. From a 6-digit job that came complete with an iPhone, iPad, cupcakes, wine tastings, an ergonomic chair, and a 7-minute commute.

Why? She wanted more. Self-determination, which is nigh impossible when you’re in the employ of someone else. Read this and be inspired.

Thanks again for coming. New post Wednesday, new CoW next week.

*”Mich” is short for Michelle, right? Or perhaps Mich is a French-Canadian man, Michel. But we’ve never heard of anyone using “Mich” as a truncation of Michel before.

The red bar should probably go in front of the word, otherwise it looks like we're encouraging whining

Welcome back to another rousing edition of the only personal finance blog carnival worth reading, the Carnival of Wealth. Why should you read it? Well, you’re already here anyway – it seems pointless to get this far and not finish. Second, you get a cross-section of posts from around the personal finance, there’s that word again, blogosphere. Hate it, but it fits.

And you get exciting commentary that makes you want to read each post in sequence, keep the Carnival open in a browser tab, and then come back to where you left off so you can go to the next one on the list and repeat.

But aren’t you the people who say mean things? 

It’s not personal. It never is, except with that one succubus. We also say exceedingly complimentary things, too, but no one seems to remember that.

If you have a personal finance blog and want to submit to next week’s CoW, click here. Again, having a personal finance blog is a necessary condition. Read the requirements on that link. If your blog is about your low-fat dessert recipes (Tiramisu, so yummy!), and you’re foolish enough to submit, we reserve the right to goof on you.

Or if you just want to read, read. Deep breath. Here goes:

We start with A Blinkin of Funancials, with the provocatively titled “CDs Are For Hypocrites”. See? He says mean things too! He calls people hypocrites! And losers! A’s argument is that unless you know we’re going to have deflation, any CDs you buy are probably going to lose money. Real rates of return are lower than you think. A has a (sobering) chart and everything.

Amanda L Grossman is the Yngwie J. Malmsteen of personal finance bloggers. This week, the woman behind Frugal Confessions remarks that her health insurer now charges higher premia to smokers than to non-smokers.

Wait. There was an insurer that wasn’t doing that already? How is that possible? 

Her insurer not only punishes the unhealthy, it rewards the healthy. Ms. Grossman appears hale in her picture, and credits her diet and exercise habits with earning her points from her insurer. Points that she redeemed for…cartons of Marlboros Light! (No. Click the link to find out what she did with the points.)

Mich at Beating the Index seems awfully confident in her ability to forecast, and is convinced that 2012 will be dismal for the stock price of NAL Energy. For those of you on the good side of the border, that’s a company that produces natural gas in Western Canada and trades on the Toronto Exchange, although you wouldn’t know it from looking at their website. The stock’s already down 9% on the year, and we’ll debate the claim that Beating the Index is in “a writing style the lay investor can easily understand”, but the post has plenty of merit. Read it. Slowly.

Last week, attitudinizer and extraordinarily sensitive person Suze Orman affixed her name to a gigantic ripoff of a prepaid debit card. Not a ripoff compared to, say, General Motors’ receiving alms from the taxpayers, but relative to other methods of spending your own money. Here’s what we had to say about Suze’s ridiculous card then, and it’s only gotten worse for the sensibly coiffed darling of daytime TV. Stephen Vanderpool at Nerd Wallet piles on, listing the usurious fees Suze’s card charges. And, because Nerd Wallet is constructive, the post includes healthy alternatives.

The first blogger Orman threw a punch at in defense of her useless card was Phil Taylor at PT Money. Fresh off his 12th-round TKO victory, Phil is back with a piece on the new limits from traditional and Roth IRAs in 2012. Except the new limits are the old limits, because the Fed has determined that inflation no longer exists. That’s why everything you buy costs exactly the same as it did a year ago.

Time for some comic relief? Newlyweds on a Budget is becoming this year’s Erin Pavlina. NoaB features the tribulations of the most generic blogger in existence – Erika, who loves to write about her husband, her marriage, her struggles with finances, and her inability to lose weight. In this post, she tells us how she plans to lose 10 pounds in 3 months. How her obesity is of value to the rest of us, or has anything to do with personal finance, is unclear.

10 pounds in 3 months? Whoa, dial it down a notch, sister. We don’t want you turning into a Sudanese refugee. Best line of the whole post: “I don’t eat salad.” Seriously, she said that. And underlined “don’t”. People love this commiserating nonsense, so her post has dozens of comments on it.

Melissa Batai at Personal Finance Journey doesn’t like to do housework. Her husband’s tens of thousands of dollars in debt from receiving a Ph.D. anyway, so what’s a few more bucks for a housekeeper? (To say nothing of the person she doubtless paid to submit to the CoW.) Ms. Batai is a former Control Your Cash Financial Retard of the Month (September 2011), so we couldn’t very well not run her post.

Three pieces of detritus in a row? Please, God, no. LaTisha Styles at Young Adult Finances breaks the streak in this post that clearly explains what a portfolio is to the uninitiated. Subject matter a little basic? So what? We all have to start somewhere. No one comes out of the womb knowing what a convertible debenture is.

Iraq combat vet Hank Coleman at Money Q&A thinks you should buy a house, a sentiment we second. Also, there’s some awesomely subtle product placement in Get up to 4 offers at LendingTree.com his post.

Kyle Taylor at The Penny Hoarder takes the opposite stance. Kyle, we’re sure you’re a nice guy, but please put away the point that says “you could find higher returns with lower capital requirements by looking elsewhere.” It’s blunt and you’ll hurt yourself. We’ll say it again: it doesn’t matter that stocks, bonds, or metals (descriptions too inclusive to have any meaning in this context) offer higher returns than a house. You still need a place to live. The only fair “investment” to compare home ownership to is renting. “A house or T-bills?” is an unanswerable question.

Already filed for bankruptcy? Congratulations, your financial life is over! Unfortunately, your physical life isn’t, and you’re going to need money. Your Finances Simplified lets us know the best way to close the barn door after that particular horse gets out.

What makes America so special? Football, porn, and our new status as one of the few countries in the world whose debt exceeds its annual gross domestic product. We can keep borrowing and printing money, making that ratio even worse, and probably will. Darwin’s Money has some strategies for seeing your way through hyperinflation, his faith in our elected officials being justifiably non-existent.

(Note: Every American reading this, if you really want to reclaim this country and help get its finances under control, throw your support behind the one presidential candidate who takes fiscal and monetary policy seriously.)

Corey at 20s Finances thinks financing a car is a bad idea. It’s not that simple, but if you already paid cash you can read this and it’ll reinforce whatever you told yourself then.

Echo of Boomer & argues that instead of whining about the fees those rapacious corporations charge you, doesn’t it make more sense to own them and be on the other side of the table? He mentions banks and utilities in particular, with a funny anecdote about how to make money off companies you hate.

What’s the most you should pay for a stock? Yes, it depends: on variables that the legendary Benjamin Graham put in a formula created to answer that very question. John at Buy Stocks Online Info gives us the details. Square root of (book value x annual earnings), divided by the share price and multiplied by a constant.

Good news! Shaun Fowler at Smart Family Finance is in the market for an editor. Applicant must be able to translate passages such as “Not only was he one of the largest lottery payouts with $314 million. He is also squandered those winnings”

Huh? The hell was that? Somewhere, there’s an elementary school that owes someone’s parents an apology and a refund.

(Again, not personal. Hate the sin, not the sinner.)

Detecting a theme, the unflappable Eddie at Finance Fox submitted yet again. That’s 3, maybe 4 consecutive weeks now. e.e. cummings wrote concrete poems that flowed better than this post, but the gist of it is that you shouldn’t finance investments that offer smaller rates of return than what the credit card companies are making off your revolving consumer debt. Pay the cards off first.

Or not. Teacher Man at My University Money asks and answers the eternal question: pay off debt fast, or build assets? Great line: “Debt doesn’t kill people, people who irresponsibly use debt kill people.” This submission is funny enough that we thought maybe it was a guest post from Nelson at Financial Uproar, until the part 3 paragraphs in where the author refers to a girlfriend.

The mysterious Aloysa at My Broken Coin is sick of hearing about frugality, or at least frugality for its own sake. Because she’s Baltic, we’ll take her at her word and stay an inch or two out of kicking distance. (The most accurate ethnic stereotype in existence is the one that says that Eastern European women don’t suffer fools very well.) That doesn’t mean she is also squandered any lottery winnings, but that she’ll drink that latte and not feel guilty over it.

Daniel at Sweating the Big Stuff cites a study that claims that tax evasion cost the United States $337 billion last year. That’s more than $2000 per taxpayer, which seems unfeasible, but he’s earned the right to throw dubious numbers at us.

(Speaking of dubious, Daniel, level with us. Did you seriously flip an HP TouchPad for a $100 net gain on eBay and report it on your taxes?)

What are your goals for 2012? Jeffrey at Money Spruce has none. Not that he’s not ambitious, he just thinks that attaching a finite objective to a fixed period is a waste of time. His logic is pretty convincing, too.

Another CoW rookie is Colin Williams at Humble Savers. If you enjoy bullet points, live in Australia, and are in the market for a financial planner, Colin has a handy checklist to help you find one.

Did we talk about this before? We’re sure we did, but can’t find it in the archives. Unclaimed property from your state’s treasurer. Worked for us, and worked for Kevin McKee at Thousandaire. He discovered he was owed a few dollars, enough to buy an iPad case.

Robert at Entrepreneurship Life delineates the differences between being an employee, and being an independent contractor. If you value freedom, self-determination, or any of those other God-given attributes that separate us from oxen and other beasts of burden, the latter is infinitely better than the former. And it’s the first step toward entrepreneurship, which is the only way for most of us to build true lasting wealth.

Forest Parks at Frugal Zeitgeist says that Tuesday is the best day to buy airline tickets. So if your grandmother dies on a Wednesday morning, tell them to keep the body on ice.

Bob at Christian PF tells us how to create a budget. The post includes a video, in case you hate reading. Bob’s wife Linda enters at the :44 mark. Bob is playing miles out of his league.

Should we start doing a Post of the Week? We’re thinking about it. Nothing formal, just a way to draw attention to the one submission that we found the most thoughtful. This week, that’d be from W at Off Road Finance. It’s called “Additive vs. Multiplicative Thinking About Money”, and the pentasyllabic word in the title already caused most people to skip to the next paragraph. If you’re going to read any post in this week’s Carnival, read Erika’s one about losing barely detectable amounts of weight over long periods. But then read W’s post, which breaks down yet another difference in mindset between the wealthy and the merely aspiring.

Entering the home stretch…Madison du Paix at My Dollar Plan tells the inspirational story of Joe, who used credit cards to pay off his mortgage and saved thousands in the process.

But credit cards charge higher rates than home lenders do! How is that possible? 

Because every credit card in existence charges 0%, at least for a certain length of time. All you have to do is pay attention, read the agreement, be disciplined, and not overextend yourself. Like Joe did. BOOM! Housing crisis solved in one sentence. Now give us a hard one.

Got dang, another good one. Which is unfortunate, because the bad ones are fun to write about. This is from Paula Pant at Afford-Anything. Mlle. Pant asks if collective wisdom can apply to investing. For instance, if you ask 20 people how many marbles are in a jar, the average guess will be reasonably accurate. The same principle doesn’t necessarily work in the markets, and there are scientific reasons why.

Let’s end on a high note, shall we? Thanks again for reading. Another CoW next Monday, and another fresh new post in 48 hours.