You have 4 days to work your magic, bloggers. Submit your genius and inspiration here. And would it kill you to learn how to spell? Also, “quotation” marks should be “used” “judiciously”. Same Deal With The Capitalization. (Hint: maybe that’s why we didn’t run your post last month.) And readers, join us back here Sunday for yet another installment of America’s Favorite Blog Carnival, featuring personal finance blog posts from all your favorites.
Carnival of Wealth, May Day version
May 1, 2011
Leningrad or Berkeley? Unclear
Капиталисты всех стран, соединяйтесь!
And a Happy May Day to all y’all. Today we at Control Your Cash celebrate the real starters of the world’s economic engine: the risk takers; the calculated gamblers; the capitalists. You folks. The people who realize that you can labor all you want, but it won’t make you rich without employing some capital along the way. Let’s get the parade under way:
We’ll start with something intermediate-to-advanced. This post by MikeAhi at After Hours Investing got our attention and with good reason. It’s tangible information about a particular mutual fund and why he’s investing in it. It’s got a little jargon, but go slowly and you can probably figure it out. Mike is conscientious, informative, and most importantly, he actually knows how to write. Check out his archives – his site deserves more attention.
Got to admit, when we got a post from something called Kathryn’s Conversations we figured she’d be just another dippy broad with nothing to say and no opinions to defend. (e.g. “Here are some yummy ways to save money for Easter!!!! So fun!!!!!”)
Boy, were we wrong. If you’re still defending your decision to rent rather than buy a place to live, Kathryn will skewer any financial arguments you might have and leave you hanging on with your useless emotional arguments in one hand (and your shriveled gonads in the other.)
How to get some cash flow for the doddering old person in your life? You could send her out on the street corner with a tin cup – Control Your Cash’s own Betty does that, and it pays some nice tax-free dividends – but Kyle Berks at Integrated Loans has his own method. It’s called a reverse mortgage, and it’s coming soon to a retirement community near you.
Jacob at My Personal Finance Journey features a guest post from some chick about online investing. The post itself is garbage (she thinks running ads on a website counts as a form of investing), but Jacob’s commentary on her post is useful and educational.
Do you know who Erin Pavlina is? Maybe you know who Steve Pavlina is. Her ex-husband, personal development guru, he’s pretty famous in that realm. She, on the other hand, is a…ahem…psychic. And a habitual submitter to personal finance blog carnivals. We linked to her post for pure comedic value last time, and she still didn’t get the hint. So here’s her latest, and we’ll let her set it up:
My twin sister and I started playing basketball when we were 10 years old. My father was elated as basketball was his favorite sport. He taught us all the basic skills and worked with us every weekend at the gym to improve our game, then he signed us up for a local community basketball league…
The ellipsis is hers, by the way.
Neal Frankle is the Mark Steyn of personal finance blogging; insightful and occasionally funny, even when his subject matter is depressing. Visit Wealth Pilgrim and hear what Neal has to say about incipient inflation.
As for Dr. Dean at The Millionaire Nurse Blog, about freaking time! We’ve been pimping Amazon’s almighty Kindle at Control Your Cash since before it was cool. (Did we mention you can buy our book on Kindle? Yes we did, several thousand times.) Dr. Dean is toying with getting one right now. Or maybe he’ll decide that having his entire library at his fingertips wherever he goes is grossly inconvenient.
You can’t ignore Miranda Marquit, you can only hope to contain her. This week she guest posts at Free From Broke with information on how to check the status of your tax refund. Which brings us to the Miranda Marquit Quote of the Month:
it can take as long as two months or more to see your tax rebate
So that means it can take 0 to 60 days (“as long as two months”), or 60 to infinity days (“or more”).
Which means it can take 0 to infinity days, which means it can take any amount of time whatsoever. Why she singled out 2 months as a benchmark is anyone’s guess.
Speaking of people who do unspeakable things to the English language, please welcome Marjorie at Card Hub to this week’s carnival. Her “island approach” to spending with credit cards involves…well, we’re not sure because we started gasping for oxygen somewhere around the 20,000-word mark. “Lack of proper segmentation will limit rewards potential.” Tell it, sister!
calandra at Home Equity Loan Calculator was tragically born without a capital letter. However, she can mix fonts with the best of them. Drop some peyote and try to make sense of this post.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is a douche. That’s what we got out of this post from Anisha via Tim Chen at Nerd Wallet about medical credit cards. Long story short, she explains what medical credit cards are (you can probably figure that out) and then mentions the opportunistic politicians ready to pounce on the cards’ issuers for giving them to idiots who refuse to read cardholder agreements.
This is particularly relevant. Your humble blogger got a GE Care Credit card – the very one mentioned in the post – to pay for LASIK surgery a few years ago. I was all set to pay the $3000 out of pocket, but the doctor’s finance person (also his sister) was pimping the card. 12 months, no interest.
Me: So do I get a discount if I pay you cash now?
Her: No.
Me: Then sign me up.
So I paid $250 a month for 12 months, with the CareCredit card. There was no cheaper way to do it. The card agreement contained some gigantic interest rate that kicked in on the unpaid balance after 12 months. I can’t remember what the rate was, and it doesn’t matter, nor did I care at the time. Why? Because the only thing I cared about was paying the balance by the due date, 12 months out. CareCredit didn’t make a dime off me, and only because I chose not to let them. In other words, I behaved like an adult and didn’t cry to the attorney general to make it all better. I didn’t blame the card issuer, I used them to my advantage. Anyone with half a brain can do this too.
Mr. Money Smarts hits it big this week at Smart on Money, telling you how to avoid capital gains taxes. If you’re already at the point where you’re deriving more income that’s susceptible to capital gains taxes than to income taxes, good for you. This post shows you how to make it even better.
Buy a PlayStation 3 and use a website template. These are the ways that Tarik, the funny man at I Am Wealthy Today, suggests you go about enjoying a richer and more fulfilling life. (We’re dead serious about the first one. Apparently he is, too.)
Spousal abuse is a serious matter. But so is saving money! Back Taxes Help points out that under certain circumstances, an injured wife or husband could be due tax relief. Whether you use that knowledge to pour Crisco on the stairs is totally up to you.
You need a budget. No, really, You Need A Budget. It’s the name of personal finance software that Peter at Bible Money Matters started using once the brain trust in Redmond pulled the plug on Microsoft Money. YNAB has advantages and disadvantages that neither Mint nor Quicken has, which Peter points out in detail. Also, Peter’s a heterosexual male, so we can only assume he was under sedation when he described YNAB as “easy peasy”.
What’s the investor’s secret weapon, everyone? That’s right, Sarin nerve gas.
The investor’s second secret weapon, as anyone who’s read Benjamin Graham knows, is dividends. Thus Dividend Stocks Online, which this week analyzes two tech stalwarts (I love that word) whose stock prices haven’t moved much in years – which means that their dividend yields might be unusually and deliciously high.
Interest rates are still low, at least for home loans. Home prices can’t get much lower, at least not before hay replaces drywall as a construction material. So buy a freaking house, already. Pinyo at Moolanomy thinks you should, too, and reminds you that even with prices working in your favor it’s still possible for a dumb or unprepared person to overextend himself.
Kevin Mercadante via Glen at Parenting Family Money might know the basics of antiseptic blogging work (bold subheads every few lines, posing a question at the end even if it’s a question you just spent the entire blog post answering, spelling plurals with apostrophes), but where he really shines is in telling you what kind of cell phone plan to buy for your kid. And with cell phone plans averaging around $60 monthly, this seems like another reason for getting your vasectomy/tubal ligation done as early as possible.
Jim Yih at Retire Happy Blog is happy. How happy? Look at his smiling visage on his website, where you should read his 6 unconventional estate planning tips, inspired by a speaker Jim listened to.
V.I. Lenin left his estate to the state, presumably. Miserable bastard.
Thanks again for your participation, comrades. Finally, here’s one from us on why only douchebags play the lottery. See you next month.
Sweet Jehovah, another Carnival of Wealth already?
April 3, 2011
Looking for something family-friendly? SORRY, WRONG CARNIVAL
Indeed it is time for another Carnival of Wealth. Which is great. Our monthly chance to not only see what our fellow financial bloggers are doing, but let them write most of the post for us. The following posts have been selected for their educational and/or comedic value. (Oh, and Marilyn Stowe of the Marilyn Stowe Family Law & Divorce Blog? You can stop your multiple submissions anytime now. No one here cares about the latest in divorce case management and procedure in the UK. This is a personal finance carnival. You folks speak English in England, right?)
Let’s start with Jeffrey Patrick Lui at JPLui.com, who’s giving us his new year’s resolutions. (LUI is also a backronym for “Living Under Imagination.”) These resolutions are for Chinese new year, according to him. Which was 6 weeks ago. Fortunately, he should be able to track his progress in time for Hebrew new year (September 29.) Apparently we’ll be seeing more of Jeffrey Patrick at his brother’s place this year. Can’t wait.
Glen at Parenting Family Money knows what utter misery children can bring to a household. In addition to ruining your sleep patterns, your finances and your sanity, they can also do a job on your furniture.
From Tom (via Brianna, via Matt) at Stupid Cents comes this helpful post on how to determine what factors determine your credit score. Until those secretive bastards at Fair, Isaac & Company give us the formula, this is the best we can do.
If you’re a man, or a childless woman, please move to the next entry. For the rest of you, Jessica at MomVesting explains how mutual funds work. It’s “mom”: America’s favorite new prefix.
The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (Canada’s answer to America’s FCC) requires that a certain proportion of radio and TV content be of Canadian origin, and sometimes it seems as though the CoW operates the same way. This week, Jim Yih at Retire Happy Blog tells his fellow hosers how to find help with their taxes.
Wait. There’s more of that, this from the halls of academia. Kevin at Invest it Wisely offers a guest post written by a Ph.D. who uses charts, graphs and jargon to explain something about the best way for retirees to earn income.
Are you familiar with Bill Eater? We were initially disappointed to find out that that wasn’t the actual name of this week’s contributor. While Mr. Eater unfortunately doesn’t exist, in his absence Jessica Bosari rails against celebrities acting as spokespeople for financial companies.
We can usually count on Mike Piper at The Oblivious Investor to provoke thought, and this week is no exception. Should you claim Social Security benefits early and invest the money? The answer isn’t as obvious as you might think.
If you’re ready to introduce your kindergartner to the exciting world of personal finance blogging, there’s no better place to start than with the elementary prose of Dividend Stocks Online and this week’s submission on the phenomenon of something called “dividend aristocrats.”
/wants so, so badly to do an interpretation of “The Aristocrats”
/doesn’t
We recently ran a post from someone named Madison DuPaix, and were convinced that it was a stage name. This week’s “come on, that’s got to be a pseudonym” entry is from Paula Pant at Faith & Finance. The esteemed Miss Pant writes about the 7 Deadly Sins and what they can teach us about money. Seriously, this is a fantastic read and in keeping with a recent observation we made here at CYC, people who grew up in non-English-speaking countries somehow seem to make some of the most erudite personal finance bloggers.
Ramsay at Moneyed Up gets your attention with the inspiring opening line, “Over the years, the maximum allowable 401k contribution has increased to a level that enables anyone who avails themselves of it to create a meaningful income source while enjoying significant tax savings along the way”, and it just gets more gripping from there.
Did you know that you shouldn’t ignore warning lights on your car’s dash? The Sun’s Financial Diary also recommends you should buy in bulk if you want to save money. Stay tuned for next week’s submission, “Lighting $20 bills on fire: good or bad?”
Hiring a financial adviser is so important that it supersedes the correct use of pronouns. Consumer Boomer gives us “10 questions to ask a financial adviser before using them”.
Sometime in the next decade, Money Reasons’ son and daughter are going to start asking him if they can “borrow” some cash. He’ll refer them to this post and explain that instead of giving them a fish, he had stocked a pond years earlier.
Justin at Money is the Root tells us this week that “saving more and spending less is a central theme for financial management.” He helpfully adds that eating healthy and exercising are…well, they’re either important or unimportant for maintaining health, we can’t remember which. So you’re going to have to read the post to find the answer.
The days of the smoke-filled boiler room aren’t behind us. The rooms have just moved online and gotten harder to track down a physical address for. Pinyo at Moolanomy explains what to do if your stockbroker goes out of business.
We were hoping that Outlaw Finance contained money-saving tips from Billy the Kid and Jesse James (“Never hold up a fast-movin’ stagecoach. That means it just dropped off its payload, reckonin’ as it ain’t weighed down by silver.”) Instead, this week’s post is about how to save money. Guess what? You should pay off your debt and set savings goals.
A submission containing actual research and useful information? Say it ain’t so. George at Fat Pitch Financials throws a big one down the heart of the plate with his list of the S&P 500’s cheapest companies (measured by price relative to book value.) Why is this guy’s Alexa rank only in the 500,000s?
Here’s another one for your pre-schoolers. Tear them away from The Wiggles for a second and show them this entry from Charles Chua C K at the recursively titled All About Living With Life, who tells us why debt is bad.
This might be our funniest post yet:
Submitted 18 months after publication? Check.
Far too long? Check.
Full of patently obvious advice? Check.
Superfluous use of the word “literally”? Check, although that’s not as bad as incorrect use of the word “literally”. (“The world is literally her oyster.”)
Written by a psychic? Check.
Who’s gravy-training off her more famous husband (or ex-husband, we’re not really sure)? Check and mate. Erin Pavlina, everyone.
Credit Donkey* avails us of extended warranties offered by credit card companies. They’re a great and risk-free way to save money, operating under the assumption that you’re not so dumb that you’re carrying a balance.
Kyle Berks at Integrated Loans offers this post on how to improve your credit score after bankruptcy, which is like learning how to breathe after getting a lung removed. WARNING: in the picture of the post’s author (not Kyle), he’s not just doing the wink-and-the-gun, he’s doing the rare wink-and-double-gun.
Oh, for crying out loud. Someone who calls herself Harriet at something called Human Services Degree chose to submit something on the personal finance subtopic of not going on vacation. Perhaps that counts as personal finance, if you think hard enough. First off, no one under 90 is named Harriet. Second, how can you use the word “staycation” and have any self-respect? Too bad Harriet’s not a guy, maybe he’d have a “bromance” brewing. Perhaps with a frenemy.
How do you eliminate your college credit card debt in 2 years? That’s easy – blackjack and roulette! (Hint: never bet on red, it comes up less than half the time.)
But apparently Neal Frankle at Wealth Pilgrim doesn’t like fun solutions like that. Instead, he suggests taking responsibility. Sheesh, what a buzzkill.
If you’re traveling through time and happen to catch Wesley Snipes in 1999, please send him this submission from Steve at 2011 Tax on how to make nice with the IRS. Trust us, Mr. Snipes will thank you.
The answer is yes. The question is, Should I quit my 9-to-5 job? Sonia Naidu at Fuel2Drive argues the exact opposite point, we think.
One of the best ways to start an intercenine war within your family is to create a lucrative business and then let your heirs figure out what to do with it once you’re dead. Evan at My Journey To Millions explains how for the well-prepared, nothing succeeds like succession.
Looking for a financial advisor? Carlos Sera at Financial Tales suggests that you look at his checklist. And you’ll never guess what he does for a living.
You’re right, this week’s CoW isn’t quite preachy enough. Everything Finance at Talking About Green reminds you that the Internal Revenue Service’s managers have chosen to play favorites with people who own wood-burning stoves. So now, while you’re turning CO2-burning trees into useless cinders to heat your home, you can not only kid yourself into thinking that you’re being ecologically benevolent, you can get paid for it!
If you missed Control Your Cash’s guest post on balance sheets, Alex Young at Yell0BrickRd explains them simply.
Finally, from the “putting in effort is a waste of time” subsection, MM (it stands for “Miniscule Missive”) at Black Swans & White Crows not only borrowed his blog’s name from Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s pop sociology tome of the moment, but MM also managed to send us a submission that’s only 69 words long – including the obligatory 2 reader questions at the end. (This paragraph’s description of MM’s submission is 71 words long.)
The Carnival returns to Personal Dividends next week, and will be back here on the 1st Sunday of next (and every) month. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
*How did they not go with the infinitely more awesome “Credit Burro”?
