Is there such a thing as too many carnivals? Carnival overload? Not at Control Your Cash there isn’t. It’s an endless midway of mirth here – full of the personal finance equivalents of The Zipper; the livestock show; and the kiosk serving Dippin’ Dots, The Ice Cream of the Future. In addition to our own weekly hosting of the Carnival of Wealth, this week we’ve decided to cram yet another traveling roadshow into our busy schedule. Presenting the Best of Money Carnival.

This one works a little differently than most carnivals do. As the hosts, we’re supposed to exercise some judgment with the BoMC and not just run every submission we get no matter how lame. No, the Best of Money Carnival actually rewards excellence. We peruse the submissions, cull the herd and present the 10 best for your reading pleasure. They follow. Thanks again to the incredibly organized* FMF at Free Money Finance for letting us host, and now, let the carnival begin:

10. The Family Wallet has an amazingly insightful recommendation if your income has fallen: you should…(wait for it) economize. Yep, spend less than you did before. There’s nothing in this post that isn’t glaringly obvious, but his spelling and grammar were nails. That’s good enough for a top 10 spot.

9. Joe Plemon makes a guest appearance at Christian PF, explaining 4 relatively painless ways to pay your mortgage off faster. (He left out one: make the occasional off-schedule payment and stipulate that it’s to go completely to the principal.)

8. Want to attend college and defer the productive part of your life for a few years? America needs more sociology majors. Roger the Amateur Financier explains how to secure a student loan, when to pay it back, and how to avoid paying it back. (Spoiler: you have to die or get permanently disabled.)

7. If you’re reading this in a chair, go find a bucket. Preferably one with a non-porous lining. You’re going to want one after reading this post from Flexo at Consumerism Commentary. Did you know that the Federal Reserve authorized $1.2 trillion in secret loans beyond TARP? Whatever Rick Perry wants to do to Ben Bernanke should he ever show his bearded mug down in Texas, it won’t be enough.

6. A guest poster at Experiglot has a new ruthless, demanding boss who expects him to work 10-15 hours a day for very little money. The boss is Chris Thomas, who recently decided that the best way to work down his 6-digit student loan debt was to quit his 9-to-5 gig. And you know what? We actually support him. Not financially – that’s his wife’s problem – but we give him kudos for realizing that self-determination and entrepreneurship go hand-in-hand. Well, maybe just a single kudo. One tip, Chris? Pay GoDaddy so your link will work. (Still though; >$100,000 in student loans?)

5. “Extended warranty? How can I lose?” – Homer Simpson
Then there’s Jason at Live Real, Now, who explains that the extended warranty on most items is a gigantic waste of money. However, rather than just criticizing the idea of purchasing one, he suggests what you can do with the money you save.

4. We normally eschew list posts – the reality TV of blogging – and especially when they come from what looks like a link farm, but we’re willing to make an exception for Online Masters. This week Marino Dixon gives 15 legitimate ways to reduce college expenses.

3. It’s appropriate that a guy who appears to be wearing a cast on the landing page of his website would write about whether disability benefits are taxable. Neal Frankle of Wealth Pilgrim reminds us that the last thing you want to do is run afoul of the IRS, who aren’t above throwing blind and crippled tax evaders in jail. (Wait, it’s his daughter’s cast. Never mind. Optical illusion.)

2. Mike Piper calling himself “The Oblivious Investor” is like a fat guy with the nickname “Tiny”. It’s irony (in some form)! Alright, the title of the blog doesn’t necessarily pertain to its creator, but still. Mike loves to buck conventional wisdom, which is one of the reasons we dig him. This week’s butchered sacred cow is the idea that you shouldn’t withdraw more than 4% of your nest egg in the early stages of retirement.

1. Yesterday we discussed the possibility of us being one pinprick away from gold reaching bubble status. Kevin at Invest it Wisely takes that hypothesis into exciting new places today, with this heavily researched post on gold’s value throughout the years vis-a-vis that of the greenback and other major currencies. Read the comments, especially the one that predicted that this just might be the Post of the Week.

That’s it? Wow. That was easy. Every carnival should have exactly 10 entrants. Next week, the carnival touches down at Complex Search. ‘Til then.

*Seriously. Not only does he write 8 million words a week, FMF has already figured out the carnival’s hosting schedule through next May.

Today, the Carnival of Wealth. Tomorrow, the Best of Money Carnival.
Yes, we’ve decided to host back-to-back carnivals. We’ll be looking at the world through a cotton candy haze (for our Canadian readers, a “candy floss haze”) until regaining our footing next week. How did this blue-moon curiosity happen? Well, we agreed to host the latter carnival months ago. Some time before that, we’d started hosting the Carnival of Wealth on the first Sunday of every month. A few weeks ago we ended up taking over the Carnival of Wealth permanently, which meant creating a new carnival every Sunday. We looked at the schedule, realized we’d committed to host the Best of Money Carnival this coming Monday, and…here we are. Like February 29 or a Cubs World Series appearance, relish this unusual event while it happens. Here comes Carnival No. 1:

Batting leadoff, from our Tired Metaphor department comes Kyle James pinch-hitting* for Fanny at Living Richly on a Budget, who likens the recent stock market gyrations to a roller coaster ride. Whee! Kyle gives us 4 ways to manage our “personal economy”. He thinks you should sdflkcvx,mzzzzzzzz….sorry. He thinks you should build an emergency fund and that if you carry any credit card debt, you should…here, we’ll make it multiple choice:

a) not pay it down
b) pay it down.

Echo, the fils of the mother-and-son team Boomer and Echo, writes about “how to thrive and survive as a single-income family.” After Mrs. Echo cranked out a kid, the Echoes had to economize. And budget. And defer big purchases. On the other hand, they now get to clean feces out of diapers and wake up at 3 a.m. to high-pitched screaming, so it wasn’t a total loss.

Thanks to Jon the Saver for reinforcing why we get down on our knees every night in gratitude and praise to the God of our parents’ choice for letting us escape from the festering stinkhole that is the modern office. Basically, he tells you not to goof off at work. The More You Know.

Flexo at Consumerism Commentary understands that most people leave money on the table because they don’t even know that discounts exist. Case in point, your property taxes. Convince the taxing authority that your house is worth less than its deemed value, and you could save a lot on your next bill. (Fun typo: “review it quickly and repeal [appeal] right away”.) If only it were that easy.

(Deleted link farm post. Australian International Travel Insurance site, step your game up.)

The payroll tax! Yes, government administering a penalty for the one thing that makes the economy grow. Madison du Paix at My Dollar Plan discusses the temporary reduction in the payroll tax from 6.2% to 4.2%, and what’ll happen when it goes up again.

A wag at Cracked recently questioned why all the companies trying to sell you gold as an inflation hedge take currency as payment. Consumer Boomer (no relation to the Boomer of Boomer & Echo notoriety) thinks gold might be approaching bubble status.

It’s hard to determine which is the biggest scam in all of commerce – new vehicle rustproofing, or weddings. It’s one thing for a couple to consciously impoverish themselves, something different when they get their friends involved. Sustainable Personal Finance dropped $520 as a groomsman, or 13 times more than a marriage license costs. (Also, SPF felt the need to point out that in regard to bachelor parties, “my group of friends has little interest in going to strip joints.” Completely coincidentally, his wife is his blogging partner.)

We’d always assumed the hosts of My University Money were young. But this week Teacher Man, who apparently is 90 years old, takes a break from lecturing his great-grandchildren to explain the perils of orientation week to incoming college freshman. Our favorite line is this self-congratulatory closer before the obligatory series of questions that every blog post is supposed to end with:

Man I wish some anonymous angel had given me this “how to” guide for my first week.

Man, I hope someone at the Library of Congress records this blog carnival for posterity’s sake, because it’s awesome.

Next week on Control Your Cash, we’re going to do a long post about how to walk on the moon and what you need to do to prepare for it. We’ve never walked within a quarter-million miles of the moon, only had fantasies about it, but why should that stop us from speaking authoritatively on the subject? Enter Jo Robinson at Totally Money, who offers tips for starting a business during a recession. Her qualifications?

My business idea is to have a beautiful artisan shop selling organic produce and loads of home-made goodies, maybe even somewhere you can have a coffee as well.

So yeah, listen to her sage advice.

Like a mom clinging to her kid who’s gone off to college, Arohan of Value Stock Guide likes to check in weekly. (Yes, Arohan, we’re getting enough to eat and studying hard. Thanks for asking. We miss you too.) The former host of the carnival comes with an interesting post about Apple as an investment. Even though the stock’s risen 47% in the last year, Arohan thinks it’s still trading at a discount.

It would be exceedingly poor form not to include tomorrow’s regular carnival barker, FMF of Free Money Finance; largely because his posts are always well-written and provoke plenty of thought. This week he wanted to look at which strategy would help you make the most over your career — starting at a higher salary, or getting larger annual increases. Rather than just openly wonder, he sat down and analyzed the options.

Consecutive correctly spelled, helpful posts? Believe it! This one comes from Investor Junkie, who pours a ton of cold water on the notion that a risk-free investment exists. He not only classifies the multiple risks inherent in even the safest investment, but explains how some risks are insidious and invisible.

*Yes, we’re aware that a pinch-hitter can’t technically bat leadoff. Unless it’s for the home team, and in the middle of the 1st inning a position player had left the game and was scheduled to bat first.

Outtake from the Carnival of Electric Daisies. Which we hopefully have NO overlap with

Where do 168 hours go, anyway? Presenting yet another version of the Carnival of Wealth, the weekly extravaganza of personal finance articles culled and prepared for broadcast by your hosts here at Control Your Cash. If you want to submit your own brainchildren, do so here. There’s a list of guidelines on that page, but we’re adding one more here: be entertaining or informative. Or go in the other direction and be abysmally horrible, in which case we’ll run your post as a warning to others. Either way, get it in by midnight Saturday. You ready? Let’s get started:

(One more thing: this is the last week we’re going to pretend not to notice when people send multiple entries. From now on, when we see a second submission from the same blog we’re deleting it and the first.)

Still putting your money in a savings account because you’re intimidated by that curious new development called a money market account? Don’t be. John Kiernan at Wallet Blog explains the difference and how if you’re invested in the former, you’re leaving cash on the table.

Despite its government’s best efforts to get businesses to flee, California remains the nation’s most populous state. For our Californian readers who enjoy paying confiscatory taxes and being told what light bulbs they can use (and that soon, their votes won’t even count), here’s a post from Manny Davis at Back Taxes Help about the Golden State’s tax amnesty program. Just move to Nevada already. Easy incorporation and no state income tax.

Emily Guy Birken writes about Lending Club at Deliver Away Debt, showing how borrowers and lenders can eliminate the intermediary and conduct business with each other directly.

It takes an awfully optimistic parent to think that college costs are going to decrease over the next 18 years. For the rest of you, PT Money gives an expository Q&A on the benefits of 529 plans.

Miranda Marquit guest blogs at Free From Broke this week in her best post yet. If you think the IRS is going to take “I didn’t know my husband was laundering money” as an excuse…well, they might. But here’s what you need to know before using that defense.

Eric Nisall at DollarVersity (I think we know him well enough not to use the identifying middle initial anymore, just like Yngwie J. Malmsteen) thinks if you’re paying any cash, you’re paying too much. Not when you can barter your way to prosperity. I’ll take 4 cow hides for your spear and fire-sticks, thank you very much.

If you offered us a credit card with a $395 annual fee, we’d assume it came with a butler and a massage therapist. But Tim Chen at Nerd Wallet is satisfied with getting baggage fees waived and being allowed to check out of hotels late. Check out what he has to say about the new Ritz-Carlton VISA card.

You work hard to earn, save and invest in order to grow a retirement nest egg. That being the case, you’ll likely agree that it makes a lot of sense to do everything you can to protect your assets. Neal Frankle at Wealth Pilgrim lists the top 5 ways to to do just that.

Kevin at Invest It Wisely thinks you should save half your net income, and offers this groundbreaking analysis of a John Maynard Keynes quote:

A famous economist once said “In the long run, we are all dead.” This is undoubtedly true.

Here’s a great example of how not to handle a 500-point drop in the Dow. WORRY IF YOU HAVE ENOUGH FOOD AND WATER TO SURVIVE. That’s how the lady mind of the somewhat excitable Marie at Prairie Eco-Thrifter prioritizes things after the market loses 4% of its value (most of which, of course, it regained the following day.)

Every submission we receive comes with a one-line summary written by the submitter. We usually discard it and come up with our own, but it’s hard to reword the one we got from Briana Myricks at 20 and Engaged this week: “My husband may be getting laid off. If so, we’ll both be unemployed.” Good times!

What’s the difference between a 401(k) and an IRA? Read page 117 of Control Your Cash: Making Money Make Sense. Or this post from The Family Wallet.

It’s amazing that our parents’ generation managed to raise any kids at all, what with the dearth of blogging mommies dispensing advice back then. Fortunately, today’s parents have Money Spending Mommy and her ilk to set them straight. Today’s topic: teaching kids how to invest. Did you know that kids have a tough time conceiving of delayed gratification? Because apparently they do.

Can you stand another post on the USA’s recent credit rating downgrade? Well, you’re getting one. Everything Finance buys into the belief that Standard & Poor’s pegging the nation at AA+ is based on politics. Funny how Tim Geithner et al. didn’t say a word about that before the downgrade.

Darwin’s Money is beating our very own drum. This week Darwin discusses how crazy it is to follow conventional wisdom and eschew home ownership when prices and mortgage rates are historically low in tandem. (As landlords, however, we think he’s crazy. You should rent, rent, rent!)

We’re tight on space this week – lots of rejections, and submitters who can’t figure out the deadline – so we’re running this piece from Ricky at Qwoter on how to buy, ahem, penny stocks. We’ll let you figure out whether we included it as legitimate advice or as a warning.

There are companies increasing their dividends? Believe it. D4L at Dividend Growth Stocks lists several of his favorites.

Anything that makes the established major brick-and-mortar banks weaker is OK in our book. Daniel at Sweating the Big Stuff shows how you can tell Bank of America to take a walk while embracing ING. (Of course, if Bank of America loses enough market share, they’ll demand another bailout, and the federal government will doubtless give it to them, out of our pockets, so maybe you should stay with Bank of America anyway. Great, this is what personal finance advice has some to in 2011. Fatalism.)

Think post-secondary education is prohibitively expensive? Not if the aptly named My University Money has anything to say about it. Their scholarship contest will take a $100 bite out of one lucky applicant’s tuition. Or beer money.

Thanks again for coming. See all y’all next week.