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.

Merry Christmas! The Carnival of Wealth doesn’t take the holiday off. Personal finance blog posts of varying worth. Let’s get started:

Justin at Young & Thrifty cites examples of what we’ve been saying for years: A university education is not a certain ticket to riches, a necessity in an ever more competitive marketplace, a human birthright, or any of that nonsense. For most of you, going to college will be worse than a gigantic waste of time. It’ll be a gigantic waste of time that will set you back dozens of thousands of dollars and will permanently retard your financial progress. Go ask the philosophy major stocking shelves at Guitar Center if you don’t believe us. But before you do that, relying on the reading skills you mastered in elementary school and read Justin’s post. He lists several lucrative positions that require little more than a brief and relatively inexpensive, relevant course of study. Neither Harvard nor Oxford has a Department of Elevator Repair, but mastering that particular trade is an easy way to earn good money while staying out of debt that will crush your spirit and weigh on you like a fat girl attempting to do squat thrusts.

Kroger is one of America’s 25 or so largest companies by revenue. Think of all the synergy they’d have if they started buying up farms in the San Joaquin Valley and cattle ranches throughout the Midwest! In fact, why aren’t they doing this already? Because Kroger’s executives aren’t crazy, at least not at crazy at the Delta suits who decided that if you’re going to buy jet fuel, you might as well eliminate the middleman and buy yourself a refinery. Andrew at 101 Centavos brings us this curious tale of an airline forgetting what business it’s in, and loading up on an asset that ConocoPhillips was happy to get rid of. But yeah, if an oil refiner with a 137-year history can’t turn a profit on an idle refinery, an airline can.

Michael at Financial Ramblings explains the common phenomenon of your mutual fund share prices dropping while the market itself rises. It’s not just possible, it’s likely, depending on dividend distribution. We’d give more details about Michael’s submission but the CoW has a longstanding tradition of never offering an analysis of a post that’s longer than the post itself.

One thing we’ll never understand here at Control Your Cash is some people’s relentless faith in their government. Especially in their government’s financial prowess. Former President George W. Bush made a halfhearted attempt at giving Americans the opportunity for a little more autonomy in their retirement accounts, and got drowned out by a chorus of “DON’T TAKE AWAY MY PRECIOUS SOCIAL SECURITY” for his troubles. Never mind that Social Security has been unsustainable from the day that incestuous statist Franklin Roosevelt developed it, we can’t let mathematics stand in the way of our desires. PKamp3 at DQYDJ.net imagines a world in which human self-determination includes the right to not have federal functionaries proclaim, “Citizen, you’re too stupid to make your own investment decisions. Let us handle them. One less thing for you to worry your pretty little head about.”

The ever-mysterious Dividend Growth Investor discusses the inevitable can-kicking that will result from the “fiscal cliff” “talks”. We used that first set of quotation marks because the term that’s entered the vernacular implies that our nation’s economy isn’t already in a gigantic freefall resulting from a volume of spending that has permanently entrenched the United States as by far the biggest debtor nation in history. As for the second set of quotation marks, our political bettors aren’t discussing anything of consequence, other than how quickly the voices of alleged fiscal conservatism will sell out their principles when confronted by a dashing and charismatic President who, as one voter pointed out to us, sings to his wife at night.

Some crap about yoga.

Free Money Finance saved almost 40% on appliances? Wait, that should be a statement, not a question. Or maybe it should be an exclamation. Yes, an exclamation! He went to Lowe’s, used a gift card with a built-in discount, finagled another discount from a realtor friend of his, bought in bulk, paid with an American Express Blue Cash card, and basically saved hundreds of times what that kook at The Simple Dollar saves every time he brews his own toothpaste or collects tattered baseballs on his intrastate vacations instead of going to a souvenir shop.

Odysseas Papadimitriou at Wallet Blog recently bought some eye drops for his kid, Achilles Spiro Papadimitriou (we believe they might be Greek.) The eye drops cost 3,025% more in the United States, the country where they were developed, than in Greece. How is this possible? Mostly patents, plus insurance companies mandating the use of specific drugs for specific ailments. Those and a 1987 act of Congress that prohibits resale of drugs. You know, because why should there be a market for a valuable commodity? Better to deny people the right of mutually beneficial exchange.

Harry Campbell at Your PF Pro is an aerospace engineer? Wow, didn’t see that coming. Consider him the counterexample to our argument that a college education is almost always going to be a waste of time. Anyhow, Harry sacrificed money for professional convenience (he took a job in expensive San Diego rather than a better-paying one in the interior of California, a day’s drive from the beach.) Harry’s content with his decision. Then again, he can write his own ticket for the rest of his life because he didn’t waste his time studying something pointless in college.

“Buying a house? Don’t forget about the closing costs.” “What are closing costs?” “Heck, I don’t know. But watch out for them.” Charles at Wallet Hub doesn’t do vague platitudes, he does detailed analysis. And explains  exactly what each closing cost is when you buy a house, and how they can impact your purchase price. God, there are lots of them. Still, it beats the hell out of renting.

From John Kiernan at Card Hub, an original take on the aforementioned “fiscal cliff”. He talked to…cliff divers. Actual cliff divers. And a guy named Cliff (a business administration professor). This is better than it sounds, swear to God. Read it.

All in all, not an awful Carnival. Way better than last week’s, anyway. Thanks again for joining us. Merry Christmas. New Anti-Tip of the Day tomorrow, new post Wednesday…you know how it works. See ya.