Carnival of Wealth, Themeless Edition

April 9, 2012

 

Jim Nantz broadcasting at the South Pole. Musical entertainment by Train, catering by Panera Bread

 

We’re temporarily out of facetious ideas, so here’s the first Carnival of Wealth without a theme. To recap: personal finance blog posts from around the world. Details at BlogCarnivalHQ.com. Send us something good. If you don’t have anything good, spare our readers. Let’s get started:

Dividend Growth Investor is not going to buy AT&T stock. However, he will give us a handy description of what AT&T does:

AT&T Inc. (T), together with its subsidiaries, provides telecommunications services to consumers, businesses, and other providers worldwide.

Thanks.

Never say “people” when you can say “individuals”. It makes you sound so much smarter. Geoffrey at Financial Highway writes about exchange-traded funds this week, and stretches the piece out to extreme proportions.

THIS is how you do it. Todd Tresidder at Financial Mentor either read or is of a mind with our recent ProBlogger piece on how to create products inspired by a blog. Todd writes about Roth IRAs vs. conventional, and when you should convert. If you like what he says and take advantage of his free e-book, he’ll sell you other books for $37. (You have to read to the bottom of the page to read the price, but we thought we’d save you the trouble.)

It took Matt at Rambling Fever only 8 months to start recycling content. But in the first 7 lines he refers to this piece as “mandatory reading”, “required reading”, and “a must-read”, so it must be worth recycling. It’s about compound interest and how awesome it is.

We can’t goof on Mich at Beating the Index, because he’s ungoofonable. This week, the Canadian icon breaks down Parallel Energy Trust, which just increased its monthly dividend but is carrying debt equal to 25 months’ worth of cash flow.

If you can’t afford to pay for a college education out of pocket, finance it! It doesn’t matter if what you’re studying has no real-world applications. Who cares? College isn’t about money. Well, it still is on the tuition end, but that’s not your concern if a 3rd party is footing the bill. Paul at The Frugal Toad lists handy places where you can find state and federal grants. Because that federal grant money comes from a magic well in Washington. It’s not as if it’s confiscated from people who pay taxes. Kids, learn a valuable lesson about how paying for a service is less important than receiving that service. College tuition – a good with a completely inelastic demand. (You learn about that in economics class. Or in a textbook.)

It must be Monday, because someone (Steve Zussino at Canadian Personal Finance) submitted an article on how to create an emergency fund. You know, for emergencies and stuff.

Check that, the post is from “Cassie Howard…a stay at home mom living in Mississauga, Ontario. She writes daily on her website dedicated to frugal living. She’s what many would call an extreme couponer and saves a minimum of 50% off her grocery bill every week by using coupons.”

We don’t have time to visit Ms. Howard’s blog, which we’re sure is fascinating, original, and less dry than her bio. But the idea of telling people to create an emergency fund is ridiculous.

Who is she writing for? People who haven’t saved for a rainy day, obviously. But if those people haven’t been persuaded to invest yet, how can you persuade them to sock away money that’ll sit earning zero in a savings account? You can’t. This post wasn’t written to spur behavior, it was written to have something legible to run next to the coupon codes on that page.

People who set aside thousands for an emergency are the mirror image of those idiots who waited in line for hours to buy lottery tickets a couple of weeks ago. It shows a gross ignorance of probability.

If your house burns down, you have insurance. A similar thing is in place for your car, and your health. (Oh, health insurance is too expensive for you? It’s a lot easier to buy if you aren’t socking away money for an “emergency” fund with such an ill-defined purpose.) The number of actual financial “emergencies” that strike the average person are amazingly low. But again, emergency funds are easy to write about. So here we are.

Then there’s Teacher Man at My University Money, who has actual insight on actual topics, rather than “here’s a thought that crawled out of my head, let’s transfer it to WordPress.” He argues that Canada shouldn’t have lowered its national sales tax by 200 basis points. Teacher Man seems to think that raising the tax to its original level wouldn’t have an effect on quantity, but many of his other points are engaging and well worth the read.

Jill at My Dollar Plan explains tax exemptions (in the United States), and what will happen to them over the next couple of years.

Counterpart to that nonsense about an emergency fund, sort of: Boomer & Echo discuss what a waste it is to buy mortgage life insurance. Echo thinks you should buy term life insurance, which isn’t much better. But at least the lucky people who die after buying the latter don’t get screwed by insurers as often as their counterparts who bought the former.

It’s a rare financial blogger who catalogs his own mistakes. John Kiernan at Wallet Blog admits that he paid for months’ worth of unnecessary overdraft protection before realizing it. Folks, read your freaking statements. It’s not the bank’s fault if you don’t.

Jesus H. Did PKamp3 at DQYDJ.net seriously drop $60 on Mega Millions tickets? He rationalizes his choice – and keeping one’s wife happy is not unimportant – but try as he might he just couldn’t get the expected value of each ticket to fall over $1. (Nor did he discuss median prizes vis-a-vis mean prizes, but that’s a topic for another day.)

The magnificent Liana at CardHub continues to avail us of how poor people operate with a great piece on “payment allocation”, a term we’d never heard before (or at least, hadn’t heard before in reference to credit cards.) Long story short, if your card balance is split among purchases, balance transfers and cash advances, the outlays with the lowest interest rates get paid first. That’s how it used to be, anyway. Then the federal government reversed the order, because God forbid consumers be forced to, again, read agreements. Also, if you’re getting cash advances on your credit cards (and carrying balances long enough that you can transfer them to a different card), you’re either a) crazy or b) the parent of a hostage.

Pairs trading! Twice the risk! Twice the fun! Darwin’s Money shows us how if you’re bullish on one stock and bearish on its counterpart, you can go long on one while shorting the other and rub it in your more conservative friends’ faces twice as hard. The example he gives is Apple vs. Research in Motion, and we can’t think of an apter one.

We all have a hazy idea that our credit card and debit card issuers won’t put us on too big of a hook for fraudulent purchases, but do we know the details? Anisha Sekar of Nerd Wallet does, and went to the trouble of listing them for us.

And we’re done. Our ProBlogger series is now in its second week, you can’t go a day or two without seeing us on Investopedia, and we’ll have a new post here Wednesday (not to mention a new Anti-Tip every day.) ‘Til then.

Filed Under: Carnivals Tagged With:

Carnival of Wealth, Investopedia Edition

April 2, 2012

A Forbes Media Company. Steve, we loved your work on Saturday Night Live

 

Folks, did you know that Investopedia regularly features our work? Articles that you CAN’T get here on Control Your Cash? The fun thing about writing for Investopedia and its trillions of readers is that it forces us to phrase everything in a somewhat less incendiary style than the one we’re comfortable with here. It’s like when Vinnie Moore has to lay off the shredding and just play the notes when he’s touring with UFO, but can still whale on the whammy bar on his solo albums. For the 99% of you who didn’t get that analogy, here’s another Investopedia/Yahoo! Finance link.

Onto the Carnival. Personal finance blog posts from across the globe. If you’re a blogger, submit yours here. Send us garbage at your peril. For the overwhelming non-blogging part of the audience, you folks who are just here to learn a little about personal finance and maybe get entertained in the process, just keep reading:

If you turn at least 77 this week, live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, and/or are blind – and we’re not sure which of those is worst, probably living in Northern Ireland – Edward Webber at TaxFix.co.uk tells you how you can avoid paying taxes (in the UK, duh) in 2012.

Teacher Man at My University Money thinks credit cards, like single-malt scotches, are perfect for college kids. His point is that you need to build credit, and the sooner the better. If you can’t handle your liquor, as it were, grow up. Enjoy Teacher Man’s curious admixture of insight into the human condition and up-and-down grammar.

Yeah, living in Northern Ireland is far worse than being blind.

Ryan Souza at Your Life For Less joins the parade this week, and reminds you not to be a lightweight with regard to comparison shopping. Don’t stay with a trusted brand just because it’s comfortable, especially if an acceptable substitute can save you serious cash.

Case in point? Your humble blogger reluctantly admits that throughout his early 20s he never bought groceries at Walmart because, well, that’s where the poor people shop. The ones made fun of on that People of Walmart site. I can’t be seen shopping with them. Besides, it’s filthy in there. (As far as I knew. I’d never actually been in one.)

Then it dawned on me: I am poor. Partially because I’ve been buying groceries at more expensive stores. The first time I sucked it up and bought groceries at a Walmart, not only did I not catch bubonic plague, I saved about 40% off what Albertson’s was charging. And never (or at least, hardly ever) went back. Walmart became this shopper’s trusted brand.

Until WinCo showed up a few weeks ago, in her slutty makeup and 9″ heels, smiling and complimenting me on my broad shoulders and tiny waist. She started running her acrylic nails through her frosted hair and I was hooked. I still can’t figure out how WinCo sells red peppers at 48¢ a pound, but that’s someone else’s concern. Walmart, if this doesn’t work out, I’ll be back.

As usual, Tim at Faith and Finance put less work into this week’s submission than we did into that previous paragraph. Tim lists 8 jobs for recent MBAs, who presumably have already thought about what they’ll be doing after graduation and don’t need a blog post to remind them that

If information technology or management information systems is your specialty, you can command a great salary at a strong company, especially with an MBA.

Thanks. He basically lists 8 positions, and ends each description by telling you that your chances of getting hired for any of them are greater with an MBA. Tim also encourages people to get jobs working in human resources, which is the most loathsome career path in the world.

Parents, if your children have the right equipment, encourage them to get into porn instead of HR. We’re not kidding. At least porn actors don’t live to make other people’s lives miserable. Then again, what’s more fun and professionally satisfying than reciting the list of company benefits and denying employees’ requests for vacation days? HR administrators are the evolution of the insufferable little girls in elementary school who reported even the most miniscule infractions to the teacher. Bad, bad people. All of them.

PKamp3 at DQYDJ.net would be one of our favorite contributors even if he only submitted his aesthetically pleasing charts. Or if he only submitted his clever, informative prose. Put them together and you have a personal finance blogger most folks can only aspire to be like. This week he asks “Who gambles in Canada?”, a country where people were buying $10 lottery tickets back in the 1970s (not adjusted for inflation).

Speaking of Canada, apparently Rob Carrick of the Toronto Globe & Mail stole our idea and wrote a personal finance book for people who know nothing about money. Is his available on Kindle? For $7? No, it’s $17 Canadian, and that on undercutter extraordinaire Amazon. So you can order it and wait 10 days to receive it, or click the above link and be reading ours in less than a minute. Ours which actually applies to you if you’re American, like most of our readers are. Anyhow, Boomer & Echo reviewed Mr. Carrick’s book.

Did the guy behind Free Money Finance sell his site? Just wondering, because it’s changed radically. This week he lists a few simple actions for building wealth. Driving 70 miles out of your way to wait 4 hours to buy lottery tickets isn’t on the list.

Joe Morgan at Simple Debt Free Finance boils it down even more. He thinks you should increase your income and reduce expenses if you want to build wealth. We’ll try it out, see if it works, get back to you on that.

Every week we get posts that offer pointless advice. It’s rare that we get one that recommends you do something that’s dumb from every angle, but then we’d never heard from Jeffery (sic) Weber at Smart Balance Transfers before. Jeffery thinks you should use a credit card to pay your income taxes. Which is insane because, as Jeffery even admits, the IRS requires you to go through an intermediary that will charge you 2-4%. But hey, double miles.

We’re due for something good. John Kiernan at Wallet Blog reminds us that plenty of people don’t know who their health insurer is. If you have a vague idea that your insurance is handled by Blue Cross, Blue Shield, or some combination of the above, you might be surprised to know that those names refer to multiple insurers whose coverage can differ wildly from state to state. Your acupuncture treatments for that nasty bout of shingles might not be covered in Delaware after all.

We buried Liana at CardHub deep in the mix this week, only because that way it’ll mean something when we put her in the leadoff spot again. She gives the stark details of Chase’s practice of overstating past due consumer debt, which it then can sell to third parties. Chase is essentially rolling back odometers on debt collection, and we can’t understand why this isn’t a bigger story.

Ken Faulkenberry at AAAMP Blog brings it every week. This time, an important discourse on one of our favorite topics – fundamental stock analysis vs. technical stock analysis, a/k/a alchemy.

In a similar vein, Mich at Beating the Index shows how to identify that scourge of the market, the emotionally invested shareholder. Understand that being emotionally invested in the market is like being emotionally invested in the weather. You can’t control it, all you can do is intelligently anticipate what it’s going to do. Wishing and hoping are wastes of time. Mich’s posts are usually fairly advanced, but this one’s easy (and useful) for everyone.

There are hundreds of corporations that don’t understand Twitter. And then there’s American Express, which doesn’t necessarily have an entertaining feed, but is using Twitter’s structure to expand its business. And it’s gloriously simple. Use a hashtag, get a credit from a specific participating retailer. Laura Edgar at Nerd Wallet gives the details.

Finally, the craziest post we’ve ever received. This one makes Erika the passive-aggressive wife at Newlyweds on a Budget seem normal. Everything about this – the font choice, the graphics, the errant spelling, the long-windedness, the name of the blog (Wizard Corpse?) – screams out for help. Let’s all join hands and pray for the anonymous lunatic who sent it to us. And if he doesn’t cast a spell on us, we’ll see you here next week.

Filed Under: Carnivals, Investopedia Tagged With: ,

Carnival of Wealth, Overrated Product Edition

March 26, 2012

We played with these side-by-side at Best Buy and couldn't tell them apart

 

An extra $100 for quadruple the pixels? Maybe, but we seem to have reached the point of diminishing returns with regard to display resolution. You need to be a great horned owl to appreciate the difference.

This week’s edition of the Carnival of Wealth, like all its predecessors, showcases the least average personal finance blog posts from around the world. If you fancy yourself worthy of submission, click here. Keep it on topic, of a decent length, and correctly spelled and punctuated. Send us dross and we reserve the right to mock it. Which we will. The safe thing to do is just read. So let’s do exactly that:

You see what we were talking about 4 sentences ago? Here’s an example. “Francine Ersery” at 2009Taxes.org has some tips for us on how to avoid getting audited. Given the timely title of her site, we should point out that in only 4 years the IRS can’t go after you for your 2009 taxes anyway. Also, Ms. Ersery claims to be “an accountant in the windy city”. (Uncapitalized, so it could be any city that has wind.)  It took 2 seconds to Google Ms. Ersery and find out that she’s also “a full-time writer and blogger with a passion for the web world and technology” and “a college student who enjoys spending Spring break in Florida.”

Look, we understand that honestly is optional online. But if you’re going to create multiple identities under which to write your unreadable link bait, can you at least come up with a different name for each one? Then once you’ve done that, don’t make your pseudonyms so generic that it’s obvious you’re lying (“Jane Smith”), but also don’t make them so particular that we can expose you for the fraud you are. Try something in the middle, like “Betty Kincaid”.

Laura Edgar at Nerd Wallet is the antithesis of this. She gives us practical and useful advice, this week for Wells Fargo customers who don’t fancy having to pay fees for the privilege of letting the bank use their money. Depending on what state you live in, Laura recommends you bail out and try one of the other banks and credit unions she lists.

Did you know the filth-ridden layabouts of the Occupy Wall Street movement have something resembling a formed opinion on credit scoring? We didn’t say a “well-“formed opinion, just a formed opinion. Private enterprise being the devil incarnate, the Occupy Wall Street Alternative Banking Group wants credit scoring taken out of the hands of Experian, Equifax and TransUnion and placed in the hands of a body that never spends money unnecessarily, never treats people unfairly, and is renowned for its fast and efficient service – the federal government. Odysseas Papadimitriou at Wallet Blog has a better idea, one that turns credit scoring from a closed oligopoly into something closer to fair.

Liana Arnold at CardHub lists the best credit cards for every life stage. She’s largely in step with what we’ve been arguing for years – rewards are more important than interest rates. In fact, nothing is less important than the latter.

Madison Du Paix at My Dollar Plan reviews a $50 book by Jim C. Otar, Unveiling the Retirement Myth. You’ll be paying for content, because Mr. C. Otar clearly doesn’t spend much money on cover design. (By the way, The Greatest Personal Finance Book Ever Written still sells for $7.)

Barbara Friedberg tells a wonderful Schaudenfraude story about a timeshare developer who got overextended and ended up on the hook for 9, maybe 10 digits. See, they’re a bad investment for everyone! That’s not the crux of Barb’s post, just a delightful aside. She wants to know why people can have large incomes yet little wealth.

Dividend Growth Investor lists this year’s additions to the list of Dividend Achievers – stocks that trade on one of the 3 biggest American exchanges, have increased dividends each year for the past decade, and have an average daily cash volume of at least half a million dollars. We love his utter refusal to edit:

NIKE, Inc. (NKE), together with its subsidiaries, engages in the design, development, marketing, and sale of footwear, apparel, equipment, and accessory products for men, women, and children worldwide.

Thanks.

Roger the Amateur Financier reviews 1996’s The Millionaire Next Door.

Canada lets you hold your mortgage in your retirement savings plan? From the land of stubby beer bottles and ketchup-flavored potato chips come Boomer & Echo, who also give you the fine print. You need to hold sufficient cash or liquid assets, and direct the savings plan yourself.

What are better- actively managed mutual funds or index funds? Free Money Finance preaches the benefits of the one over the other.

No wait. Exchange-traded funds are what you want. That’s according to Teacher Man at My University Money, who wrote (and is giving away) an e-book about that very topic.

“Carrie Smith” (boy, there are a lot of people named “Smith” who write articles) at Ready For Zero lists ways to save on rent, if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t like owning a home. Her suggestions are…original, that’s for sure. Yes, becoming the building supervisor will almost certainly knock a few bucks off your rent. As will paying 6 months’ advance rent. If you’ve already got that money, why you’d put it towards rent instead of a down payment on a house is anyone’s guess.

In our “faced deadline and pulled 800 words out of his” category, Tim from Faith & Finance lists 5 business lessons he learned from playing Monopoly®. Except his comparison makes no cents.

Get it? “Cents”? A homonym for “sense”, which Tim couldn’t resist using. Here’s lesson #2:

2. No Such Thing as Free Parking

Landing on Free Parking can be nice, especially if everyone contributes to the pot every round.  But guess what…there’s no free parking in life.

First, doesn’t Monopoly teach the exact opposite? “There’s no free parking in life” sounds like a lesson you’d learn playing chess or mumblety-peg, rather than the one game that actually has a feature called “Free Parking”. Second, there’s plenty of free parking in life, both literal and figurative. Third, that thing about anteing up and someone collecting when they land on Monopoly’s Free Parking space isn’t in the rules. It’s just a stupid convention.

But no, his post was awesome. If you don’t believe that, just read the comments.

Ben Bernanke says inflation is at 3.1%, which is about average. Darwin’s Money says inflation is at 8%, which is awful. Who are you going to believe? We’ll take the guy who doesn’t have a professional history of lying and dodging questions.

Brief, but intense. Like a heroin high. Join us tomorrow for another Anti-Tip of the Day, Wednesday for another post, Monday for another CoW. Adios.

Filed Under: Carnivals Tagged With: ,
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