No one is looking for you

It’s a social networking site! A venerable one! And the most heavily advertised one in existence, if our web history is any indication. Just wait until its initial public offering. People will be clamoring to get a piece of…

Oh, we’re running out of jokes. No one cares. Just like no investor will care about Facebook in a few months’ time. That’s not literally true, and Facebook will still exist and even flourish, but the idea of its stock as a golden ticket will seem laughable long before then. Never in the history of the world has prolonged hype led to investing riches. Is that an unduly general statement? Fine, give us a counterexample.

Welcome to the Carnival of Wealth, the finest blog carnival known to man. A new edition every Monday.

7½.

Huh?

That’s the over/under on the number of submissions we’re expecting to receive whose topic is the Facebook IPO.

If you’re new here, the CoW is a collection of personal finance blog posts from around the globe, annotated, collated, and commented upon by us. Lots of people don’t like that. They can go die. If you want an inoffensive blog carnival, one where all the host did was cut and paste the submissions without even correcting for punctuation…well, there are several such carnivals and they’re easy to find. We found one competing carnival that presented 83 entrants in just that manner this week. As if any of you are going to sift through that. By virtue of alienating lots of people, we’ve gotten our numbers down to something a lot more workable. Let’s get readin’:

Sure enough, Canadian Personal Finance writes (indirectly) about Facebook’s IPO. The post is more about how a big advertiser chose not to spend $10 million on a site whose primary purpose is to give dull women a place to comment on each other’s baby photos:

Glad you gals have so much to say.

Will someone please tell Sean at One Smart Dollar that “et cetera” is abbreviated “etc.” and not “ect.”? This is about as generic a personal finance blog post as you’re going to read. An explanation of credit limits written for simpletons, with other bloggers leaving comments telling the author how brilliant he is and hoping that he’ll leave comments on their blogs. “Link love”, they call it. An extension of the principle that the lay reader means nothing.

How about a post from a blog with an obsolete title? Exactly what are you supposed to do, in 2012, with the URL 2010Tax.org? Somebody named “George Gallagher” (a pseudonym if ever we’ve heard one) is using it to write about people who’ve tried to argue that the United States income tax is unconstitutional. What should be unconstitutional are “George’s” random capitalization and wayward punctuation.

(Seriously, submitters. This is getting ridiculous. Tim Ferriss told you to hire Indian remote assistants, and you did, and for the $4.50 an hour you’re paying them to write your blog posts you’re getting…well, $4.50/hour-worthy work. Why not hire a Bangalorean to make hot sweet love to your significant other while you’re at it?)

Steve Zussino, the guy from Canadian Personal Finance, insists on submitting multiple times every week. Even his wife (or maybe it’s his sister or mom) submits on occasion, too. We’ve run maybe 1 of the 180 posts he’s submitted, but what the hey, let’s indulge him for a second time. Take it away, Steve:

With all the new bells and whistles available in BBQs – grill shopping can seem more like luxury car shopping. We wanted to share these tips to save money on your next barbeque purchase.

That is a lie. No, you wanted to collect money from Napoleon Grills, the Canadian manufacturer that sponsored your post.

Buying a grill all depends on your needs.

Here are some tips to help choose what is best to suit your needs:

No one reads stuff like this unless it’s being goofed on here in this milieu, right? Two links from Napoleon Grills, and an interview with a company spokesman. Stellar.

Jason Steele might be a pseudonym too, but at least we found a (grainy) photo of the Smart Balance Transfers writer. And boy, does he know how to get your attention with a gripping opening sentence:

Credit cards are remarkably transparent financial products as Federal regulations require that card issuers disclose almost all rates and fees before cardholders begin to fill out their application.

It’s like you’re trying to bore people. We’ll spare you the task of reading it, but Mr. Steele – as his website’s name indicates – is sharing the unnecessary details of the stupid procedure of transferring balances from one credit card to another. Do we even need to say at this point that you shouldn’t be carrying a balance? Great, so your new BBVA Visa charges you 17.9% while the Chase MasterCard you’re escaping from charged 19.9%. Really getting one over on the banks, aren’t you?

BBVA bought your debt from Chase. Do you think they did so because they like losing money? Of course not. They’re paying off your balance because they know you’re undisciplined, and that you’ll spend the next few years amassing thousands of dollars on your new card, money you won’t be able to pay.

Balance transfers. Please.

Dividend Growth Investor is back with his arid pronouncements on companies that have recently increased their dividends. It’s his descriptions of the companies that amuse us. This week they include:

Costco Wholesale Corporation (COST) operates membership warehouses that offer a selection of branded and private label products in a range of merchandise categories in no-frills, self-service warehouse facilities.

In the last few CoWs, we’ve been spending so much time making fun of the awful posts that we get mentally fatigued and just string together the good ones at the end before cutting out and sniffing some glue. This week is no exception. Unlike many of our submitters, John Kiernan at Wallet Blog can type a sentence without feral dogs forming into packs and sniffing for the blood of infants. This week he tackles the opacity of medical professionals. When was the last time you walked into your doctor’s office, even for a standard checkup, and asked “How much will this cost me?” The big bills you’re paying are your fault as much as anyone’s.

With all due respect to the Smart Balance Transfer guy whose name we already forgot and can’t be bothered to go back and check, this is how you get a reader’s attention with an opening sentence:

Do you guys know what rhymes with debate? Masturbate. HEY. I NEVER CLAIMED TO BE MATURE.

Sudden all caps © Drew Magary, 2012. That’s the work of Nelson Smith at Financial Uproar, who finalizes the debate on 30-year mortgages vs. the 15-year variety.

PKamp3 at DQYDJ.net is playing chess while most of the rest of the submitters are still trying to figure out the complexities of nim. Don’t Quit Your Day Job gives us another impassioned, reasoned piece; this one on the incongruity of stock analysts having little incentive to downgrade the weak stocks of companies they might want to do future business with. When only 4.11% of analyst ratings are negative, we should acknowledge that those ratings say more about the analysts than the underlying companies.

There is no reason why the United States can’t, and shouldn’t, have a grossly simplified tax system. A basic personal deduction of $x, and y% on the rest. Once they agree to that in principle, the various factions in Congress could argue all day about what x and y should be. This will never happen, because it eliminates interest groups to curry favor with and collect tribute from. Roger the Amateur Financier looks at a slightly more complex system, but one still exponentially simpler than the morass we have now.

Veteran Curtez Riggs of Life After The Army returns with a post on how to get civilian employers to hire you. Straightforward, worthwhile advice. Although it’s hard to imagine that any employer would hire a civilian applicant over an otherwise equally qualified one who’d served in the Armed Forces. If you’re a vet, Mr. Riggs does suggest that you create a Facebook page in addition to any LinkedIn page. We’ll defer to his expertise, but giving employers access to a potential drunken photo depository seems like a questionable idea.

Free Money Finance is one of the few seasoned financial bloggers who doesn’t despise us, but we’d run his posts anyway. We often poke fun at the abominable practice of using “needs” as a noun (did it earlier in the CoW, in fact), but we’ll excuse FMF’s use of it here because he did it correctly. It’s germane to his topic; how to distinguish needs from wants when spending your money. Although we couldn’t disagree more with his assessment that “spending, not earning, is the key to financial security”. That’s like saying the head of a coin is more important than the tail. (Line stolen from Bill James’s 1983 Baseball Abstract.)

Holy crap. Walmart’s prepaid debit cards cost $236 annually? That’s an incidental finding from Anisha at Nerd Wallet, who analyzes the relatively cheap (just $59!) Chase Liquid prepaid card. If you can’t think of a way to avoid spending $59 for the privilege of spending your own money, a) all is lost and b) given that all is lost, you might as well read this post. Also, this week’s winning lottery numbers are 5, 6, 7, 8, 23 and 33. Make sure to play them when you’re buying your Camel unfiltereds in the soft pack. Heck, buy 2 packs and you’ll save yourself a walk to the AM/PM. Less work for your lungs, which you can then cram more carcinogens into. It’s win-win!

Finally, Liana Arnold at Card Hub discusses VISA’s and MasterCard’s latest attempts to futurize payments – digital wallets. There can’t be a downside to making spending faster and more secure, can there?

Thanks again for sitting through another CoW. Glad you could join us. New Anti-Tip of the Day tomorrow, new post Wednesday, new CoW Monday, and probably something good on Yahoo! Finance and Investopedia before then. Peace out, as the kids say.

And he’s a mime, too! Here he is doing “Stuck In Center Alignment On Control Your Cash”

Why can’t everyone be like the big man? Year after year of quiet excellence, and no desire to share his personality with the world at large. Consistency and aptitude still count for something, right?

We could give a damn who wins the NBA title; not that we’re not fans, rather that we have no emotional investment nor rooting interest in something that only tangentially affects us. But it’s hard not to pull for the stoic giant who forever redefined the power forward position. Would that everyone on the planet knew what they were good at, and didn’t waste their time trying to be something else. Besides, he could use one more ring for the thumb.

There are blog carnivals. There are personal finance blog carnivals, and most of them are horrible. Cut, paste, present. You can read one of those if you want – it won’t take long – or you can stay here and at least be entertained and possibly learn something. Doesn’t that sound better? Of course it does.

The Carnival of Wealth. A week’s worth of posts from around the personal finance realm. Some are great, some are not. None are average, or they wouldn’t be here. Submitters, go here. Readers, sit back and ingest:

Week after week, Ken Faulkenberry of AAAMP Blog has an uncanny ability to submit his post seconds before we decide we’re going to start writing the CoW. That’s why he’s usually at the top, and remains so this week. Ken argues that you do well in a bear market by losing less than everyone else does. That isn’t technically true, but his point is undeniable – understand the difference between a secular bear market and a cyclical bear market. You can start by guessing which we’re in now.

Here’s an example of what not to submit to the CoW. It’s someone’s middle school essay on investing in oil and gas. Someone going by the name “Lynn Jackson”, writing at One Cent At A Time. “Lynn” explains what you need to do before buying shares of, say, ExxonMobil:

You will be faced with evaluating different companies for their experiences, success rates, and their fits with your needs.

Using “needs” as a noun, -1 point. “Lynn” continues:

In turn, these companies will want to get a lot of information about you to assess your suitability. You will need to work with a lawyer, because this weight of investment requires a considerable amount of regulation and compliance.

Huh? A post written for the most novice of investors, claiming that a company you’re interested in buying a piece of will keep a dossier on you? There were 2 comments on this post last we checked, and neither commenter challenged “Lynn” on this falsehood. If you’re looking to do a hostile takeover, then yeah, this post might be valuable to you if you can get past the unspeakable liberties “Lynn” is taking with the English language. “Lynn”, we’re trying to delight readers, not scare them away.

Good Lord. Speaking of middle schoolers, this next one opens with the last resort of every 12-year-old who has a report due Monday morning and it’s now Sunday night: a dictionary definition!

Purpose – what does this word mean to you?

The dictionary defines purpose as ‘The reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists’

That’s from Savvy Scot. Have at it.

Someone at UPromise wrote an advertorial for Jason at One Money Design, and allowed him to put his name on it. Or maybe he really did write it himself. No way to prove it. Either way, he got paid. Oh, did we forget the link? Oops. Remind us to go back and insert it.

Does anybody proofread anymore? We’re not talking about an occasional typo slipping through. We’re talking about a post so replete with errors that it makes us want to find the college admissions officer who greenlit the submitter’s application and give her a Breathalyzer test. Sean at One Smart Dollar lists (bloggers love lists) 8 jobs that don’t require a degree. The funniest part of this post is that out of the millions of college dropouts who went on to wealthy and productive lives, the 2 Sean cites by name are Mark Zuckerberg and…Ryan Seacrest. Yes, with the right brand of hair gel and sufficient shiny teeth, you too can be a barely closeted no-talent. But don’t despair, because

While college can cost thousands of dollar, the cost to take a few classes to before a real estate broker is much less.

Read that aloud for full effect.

Keep in mind that being a real estate broker is not a 9-5 type of job.

Fine as far as it goes, but he follows that up with a Control Your Cash favorite – the utterly superfluous sentence:

Real estate brokers often work nights and weekends.

If you don’t read your own stuff, why should the rest of us?

(A post titled “How Many Keywords Should You Run On A Page?” Yeah, we can’t wait to run that.)

Did we run a submission last week on checking your credit score? You mean we missed a week? That won’t do. If the most overwritten topic in personal finance is “creating your emergency fund”, “checking your credit report” is a close second. We’ll let Squeezer at PF Success handle it from Oh God, we don’t even have it in us to write interesting comments on the inanity of this particular repetitive blog topic anymore.

Should we just tank at this point? If we run the worst carnival on the internet, do we get the 1st pick in next year’s carnival draft? Let’s try.

Complex Search lists 10 reasons the housing market won’t recover anytime soon. Most of the reasons are valid, even though the post is wildly self-contradictory. Opening line:

We’re all pulling for the housing market to recover.

Start of the next paragraph:

If you’re considering buying a home because you want to live in it for 30 years, this market is perfect for you.

So we’re not “all” pulling for the housing market to recover. Some of us want prices to stay low. You just said as much! Even better, this post was written by John Haller, the self-proclaimed founder of Fidelity One Credit Corp, “a socially responsible company.”

“We’re socially responsible” is like “I have a great sense of humor.” If you have to say it…

Socially responsible? Guess what Fidelity One specializes in. Car title loans! You can’t make this up.

At least one person’s going to send us an email this week saying, “Why do you have to be so critical?”, to which we’ll respond, “Click on the links in the CoW.”

And just like that, PKamp3 from DQYDJ.net has to come in and ruin everything. Original topic? Check. Readable English? Check. A little humor and lots of expertise? Check. And he slew at least one dragon of conventional wisdom, too. PKamp3 says you can’t look at a stagnant market level over a certain period and say you’d have been better off keeping your money in a mattress. Why? Because dividend reinvesting, that’s why. PKamp3 backs up his points with irrefutable data, too. Damn him. And we were doing so badly, too.

What’s this? Another good post? Now you’re just rubbing it in. Stephanie at Nerd Wallet shoots down a gimmick from C1 Bank. Buy a CD, get a Mercedes. Of course there’s a catch, and of course the smart folks at Nerd Wallet are happy to bring it to your attention. This post is so comparatively good, we’re not even going to point out the tired “car loses value the moment you drive it off the lot” mantra.

(sigh) From Liana Arnold at CardHub, an honest and critical review of the 3 latest travel rewards cards from Bank of America. Again, rewards are everything. Credit limit is close to everything. Interest rate is nothing. (Not “interest rate is zero”, but “interest rate is nothing.” Download our book if you think that’s a distinction without a difference.)

Now we’re in danger of squeaking into the playoffs.

And again. John Kiernan at Wallet Blog wants you to just buy a freaking house already, alright? Mortgage rates have a lower bound (zero). They’re rapidly approaching it. God, the universe, John Kiernan and the Control Your Cash principals all want you to buy a house. Just do it.

Andrew at 101 Centavos is back. He embodies all the traits we love here at Control Your Cash: strong opinions, original research, the ability to write without stultifying…he’s basically the opposite of a mommy blogger. This week he writes about institutional investors’ reluctance to include Walmart in their portfolios.

Did you know that only 31% of Walmart stock is held by institutional investors? You didn’t, and you probably don’t know what to make of that number because it’s meaningless without a frame of reference. According to Andrew, 60-80% of a typical stock that trades on the New York Stock Exchange is held by institutional investors. So we figured that maybe Walmart’s low number is a result of the company’s enormous market capitalization: there’s so much Walmart to go around that Ma and Pa Investor can’t help but own 70% of it. Andrew proves that that’s not the case, and explains why brokerage houses are largely insane.

(Seven Essential Navigation Tips for New Boat Owners? From something called BoatInsurance.org? That’s more like it.)

On balance, that was awful. Here’s your money back. The good news is we’re on Investopedia, all the freaking time. And you can follow us on Twitter (@CYCash). And we’ll have something of our own creation here on Wednesday. Stay tuned.

"Fine, here's my g.d. autograph. You're not a collector, are you?"

Vienna, 188 years ago today. Ludwig van Beethoven “drops” his latest, and ultimately his last, the Symphony No. 9 in D minor. If this isn’t the greatest piece of music ever written, it’s definitely in the top 7. Beethoven himself conducted the premiere, marking his first on-stage appearance in 12 years. The audience was speechless when he began, and remained so throughout the performance.

If you read methodically enough, and click on every link, today’s Carnival of Wealth should take you 66 minutes to get through. So go back to the top and start again, but not before clicking this link. The words and the music will sync perfectly, far better than The Wizard of Oz and The Dark Side of the Moon do. (Ode to Joy starts at 46:00 if you can’t wait.)

Ah yes, the Carnival of Wealth. A week’s worth of personal finance blog posts, distilled for your pleasure. Entrants submit here. Now let’s get started, the 2nd movement is about to begin:

We love heresy here at Control Your Cash. Not the sedevacantism kind of heresy, but something a little more on-topic. Ken Faulkenberry of AAAMP Blog thinks strategic asset allocation – that is, concentrating on the investor’s objectives rather than the opportunities available – is bunk. The man earned an MBA from USC; read it.

Madison Du Paix of My Dollar Plan recently refinanced Chez Du Paix, and is now applying for credit cards “to make some money!” 12 of them, no less. She claims she’ll earn $1,525 in signup bonuses, which wasn’t clear from the provided links. The only bonuses we found were for rewards, not cash, and were contingent on how much money you spent. Also, some of these cards came with giant annual fees, as high as $175 (albeit waived for the 1st year).

This deserves a more critical eye. 1st, these links are all sponsored, which a diligent blogger would have mentioned. 2nd, they include such juvenile sales pitches as

No annual fee for the 1st year – a $95 value!

We’ve talked about anchoring on this site before, but come on. That’d be like us saying, “We could set up a $40 monthly paywall on Control Your Cash, but we didn’t. You just made $480 this year!”

Another card Ms. Du Paix touts as offering a “$250 cash back bonus” really offers a $100 bonus, plus another $150 if you spend $5000 in your 1st 3 months.

It’s easy to manipulate numbers to take advantage of the innumerate, and the folks at Chase know this. Get a credit card with no annual fee and cash rewards (or rewards for items that you already buy, and don’t have to change your behavior to accumulate.) You can’t make a legitimate $1,525 from filling out credit card applications. Maybe in Shangri-La you can, but not here.

Are dividends the Cabbage Patch Kids of the early ’10s? Boomer and Echo look at some major Canadian corporations that have recently increased dividends, and try to determine whom those stocks are suitable for.

Free Money Finance lists 30 simple steps you can take to overhaul your finances. Yes, because people in need of financial overhauls are notorious for following directions, especially 30 at a time. Well, maybe if they receive said steps in pairs. This week, steps 1 and 2.

A new submitter this week, Curtez Riggs (USA, Ret.) of Life After the Army. He asks why so many returning soldiers have such awful credit, then gives a 1st-person account of how easily it can happen. If you’re a civilian, you can get some use out of this post. If you’re in the military, you can really get some use out of it. Read now.

Scott at the hopefully titled One Smart Dollar thinks there are certain items (paint sprayers) you should rent, while others (lawn mowers) you should buy. His litmus test?

A good rule of thumb is to look at the item.

How about that. What he means is, figure out how often you’re going to use it. He’s right. Home Depot and Lowe’s let you rent big-ticket items, and you’re crazy if you need one for a single big job and decide to buy the item outright.

Shawanda Greene of You Have More Than You Think is back from a long absence (2 whole CoWs or so) with a magnificent post about – well, we’ll let her describe it:

As a single, currently childless, woman, it bugs me that motherhood is a lifestyle choice that warrants special treatment in the workplace. It just ain’t right.

Congratulations, you spread your legs and got inseminated. Even better, you made the world incrementally louder, whinier, and more indulgent. Here, enjoy these perks that the zero-impact members of society don’t get to enjoy.

Also on our list of irregularly appearing yet noteworthy contributors is Nelson Smith of Financial Uproar, who writes about whole life insurance. Like us, he treats this useless product with the contempt it deserves. How contemptible is whole life insurance (and the people who sell it)?

uglier than Rosie O’Donnell making out with Ellen DeGeneres

No argument here, and one great thing about us disabling comments a few weeks ago is that no one can tell us that Ellen DeGeneres is actually quite beautiful and we shouldn’t be so closed-minded.

Mich at Beating the Index returns with a vengeance, offering his usual amalgam of deep research and practical advice regarding Canadian natural resource companies. This week he breaks down Arcan Resources. It’s an oil company whose stock Mich finds attractive, if you’re willing to wait for it to spend the next year resolving debt issues.

J.P. at Novel Investor gives us a refresher course on bonds, and how their prices and yields are more or less inverses of each other.

Go the search box and type “university” or “education”. It’s one of our biggest peeves here at Control Your Cash, the idea that the math works out on a heavily financed degree in a useless field. Teacher Man at My University Money references the latest incident of entitled brats whining about the unfairness life has thrown them; the Quebec student “strike”. (Don’t you have to be employed to be striking?) Basically, students who already pay low out-of-pocket tuition that’s heavily financed by taxpayers are whining about a $325 annual increase. Look at the pictures of the protesters, and you won’t find a civil engineering or chemistry major in the bunch.

For a different if not opposite perspective, W at Off Road Finance is a computer science major who’s actually gone to the trouble of determining how much colleges spend on what they provide, and what those colleges offer in return to their customers. W’s right – too many consumers of higher education ask “What do I want?”, and don’t ask “How much will it cost?” or “Will I be getting my money’s worth?” Imagine doing that with any other commodity.

The brilliant Mike Piper at Oblivious Investor writes about a 4-letter acronym you’ve likely never heard of – the SIPC. It’s the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, and it has your back if you get screwed by a crooked broker.

James at Short Road to Retirement reviews a book, Michael Dever’s Jackass Investing. The author debunks a number of myths, and the ones James references are spot-on. Is the book worth it? Beats us, we didn’t read it. But there’s a link to a free copy.

Stephen at Nerd Wallet lists the 5 most common investing mistakes. The 1st 4 are indeed common, but the last one caught our eye: “Investing too early”.

Huh? Isn’t earlier unequivocally better? Not if you don’t know what you’re doing. And as the author points out,

There’s no sense in beginning construction on an investment portfolio if you’re $10k in the hole.

It’s amazing how many people – hell, how many CoW submitters – don’t know that. Forget about your “emergency fund”, or even your 401(k), when you’re drowning in debt. Get up to sea level first.

By far our most verbose contributor is Todd R. Tresidder of Financial Mentor, who banged out 5235 words on paying off your mortgage early. How did he do it? Repetition, plus he repeated himself, saying the same things over and over again, multiple times. Here’s our one-paragraph summary:

Add a set amount to your payment each month, with explicit instruction that it’s to go to the principal (mentioned in detail in The Greatest Personal Finance Book Ever Written.) Failing that, pay biweekly, or refinance, or shorten your term, or – and this is awesome – move to a cheaper house.

Given how long his post is, we’re impressed Todd R. found time to quietly contemplate life while sitting in a casual pose by a stream.

Liana Arnold at CardHub shares the details of Living Social’s affinity credit card. Her bottom line (which she got to considerably more quickly than our previous entrant)? Stay away unless you’re a Living Social addict. And if you’re a Living Social addict, there’s a world beyond coupons. Embrace it. (That’s our editorializing, not Liana’s.)

Kids, are you looking forward to making money this summer? Well, John Kiernan at Wallet Blog shows you how government can suck the fun out of it. Learn about withholding limits, tip reporting, and the endless fun of filling out W-4s. It only gets better as you get older.

So we’ve decided that maybe the most entertaining/educational post of the week should go last from now on. We’ll probably forget this by next week. But for now, PKamp3 at DQYDJ.net declares, “Asking people to divide themselves into categories before determining the best style of investing for them – this can only go well!” He’s only semi-joking, but he does force you to think about how much of your mindset is emotional and how much is driven by cold calculation. Plus PKamp3 references the enigmatic Rob Bennett, whom we ran a guest post from a while back.

Wait. Sorry, PKamp3, but you’ve been usurped at the last second. The horrifying and otherwise largely indescribable Wizard Corpse has returned, asking the seemingly relevant question, “How was you (sic) Ipad (sic) made?” Seriously, this post and its site are worth stopping and staring open-mouthed at.

We leave you on that note. Come back tomorrow for another Anti-Tip of the Day, Wednesday for another original post, Friday for yet another, Monday for another CoW, and check us out on ProBlogger and Investopedia. Godspeed.