Grad Money Matters: Speed Linking

The Best of Finance Blogosphere: “Mandatory PF courses in Ohio” Edition

According to this news article personal finance courses will be mandatory in Ohio high schools starting 2010, according to a new bill. Well, about time someone took a step in this direction. I hope this will spread to other states as well, and by the time my (yet-unborn) children attend high school they will learn all about responsible money management :)

Now on to some great articles I came across last week.

The Baglady picked up on my musings last week whether parents should try to influence their children’s college applications, in a poignant post about how Asian parents influence their children’s success. In addition to the great article, there is also an interesting discussion going on in the comments. This was definitely the best article I read (and participated in) this week!

Another article that I liked a lot is 8 steps to a six figure salary @ Brip Blap. This is some great advice, very practical and very honest.

SVB @ The Digerati Life has a great post about being frugal while you watch your hygiene. I loved the article, but the picture she chose to include scared me to death! I am seriously reconsidering ever having any kids :)

David @ My Two Dollars asks Are You Maximizing Your Credit Card Rewards Program? Well, I get 5% cash back on the money spent at the gas pump, but other than that it is all just 1% cash back every where. Not as good as getting 5% at the grociery stores as well, but I never did lay my hands on a card that would give good cash back rewards as well as a great balance transfer offer for my arbitrage game.

Cathy @ Chief Family Officer write about her choice to go the DIY route instead of joining Weight Watchers. I have a bunch of friends at work who are doing Weight Watchers and I never understood why they would want to pay someone to do something they so easily can do by themselves for free. As a matter of fact, I offered to keep track of one of my friends points for half the price – she just laughed at me. Again, I wonder why :)

If you ever plan to move to Canada, you must read this article at Loonies and Sense which compares the savings plans in US vs. Canada.

Patrick @ Cash Money Life has an interesting article listing the 25 ways in which he saves money. It’s a classic list with some additional things that you don’t normally think of such as “drive smoothly” and “take care of things”. A good reminder.

If you are into dividend stocks for generating passive income, you should check out this article by Sun @ The Sun’s Financial Diary about dividend paying foreign stocks.

Glblguy @ Gather Little By Little has an honest confession in his post titled old habits die hard. But I am glad to read that he has opened a Mint account to fix the lapse. I think what I took from this post was that, Yes old habits do die hard, but new habits can help stop them from causing any serious damage!

That's all for now. Hope y'all have a great weekend!

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The Best of Finance Blogosphere

Here are some great articles from around the Blogosphere for your weekend reading.

Golbguru @ Money, Matter and More Musings has a detailed article on percentage traps. An interesting look at how percentages are used to con people. I found the example that explains arithmetic mean vs. geometric mean the most interesting! Check it out.

SJean @ Stacking Pennies has a touching article about co-signing for an education loan for her sister. It is always very hard to refuse when your family asks you to co-sign a loan, but when the reason is something noble like a student loan, it makes it so much more harder. But how long can you keep the support? When and where do you draw the line? A very personal account of the situation.

Plonkee @ Plonkee Money has a very thought provoking article on the point of money. I don’t think it is selfish at all if your goals are to first feed yourself and provide for yourself, before giving away in charity. Even after your basic needs are met, if you still do not contribute for charity, then that is selfish.

Dividend Guy on the Dividend Guy Blog has a great article on how to involve family in investing. I wonder if trying to get 6 and 4 year olds interested in investing is a bit too ambitious, but I think the idea is great and will work well with slightly older kids.

Little Miss Moneybags has an interesting article about social costs which continues the discussion started by Madam X at My Open Wallet. Which one saves you more money – being social or anti-social?

Matthew Paulson @ Finance is Personal has some really good information on How to save money while adopting a child. I would suspect that most people will not need this information, but for the few that go through this process either voluntarily or due to circumstances, this is some really good information!

Dawn @ One Woman’s Journey has a nice little primer on budgeting. It is a nice, balanced article with a lot of life experience thrown in. A great read even for those that already have a budget in place.

SVB @ The Digerati Life takes a look at the harsh realities of the cost of living in the Bay Area. I love California, but there’s a reason why I prefer to live in Texas :)

Sun @ The Sun’s Financial Diary takes a look at HSA accounts. My company started offering this last year and because of the high medical expenses that we expected this year, we turned it down. But we are not sure how to benefit from it in the future years. I will watch out for what Sun will decide about his wife’s HSA account. I think if there is some way to take advantage of a financial situation, Sun will find out, and as they say, you can see farther on the shoulders of a giant :)

That wraps it up for now. More great articles from the blogosphere next Sat/Sun.

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The Best of Finance Blogosphere

Here are the articles that caught my eye during the last week. There’s quite a few of them, so let’s get right to it.

This first article is actually not from the “Finance” blogosphere. But it is so beautifully written that I thought you all might enjoy reading it. The article is titled The Truth About Debt and Dreams and is published on the blog I will change your life.

”Frugal Vs. Cheap” is a topic that keeps popping up on the Frugality blogs every so often. But once in a while, one of the articles is so well written that in spite of having read about this topic several times before, you still enjoy reading the new article! One such article popped up this week at Being Frugal. The article - Crossing the Line: When does frugal become cheap? - has a bunch of examples, and what makes it interesting is that, it first makes you think and then walks through the examples one at a time. Nicely done!

And while we are on the topic of frugality, you might want to check out Cheap dates for college students @ Tips from a College Student. And don’t be fooled by the name – there is nothing “cheap” in the sense of “cheap vs. frugal” about these 15 odd tips, and no you don’t have to be a college student (or even on a date) to use these tips. It’s a really good list for anyone looking for frugal ways to have some fun.

Nick at Punny Money has an awesome flowchart to help you never buy useless garbage ever again. It really works! I liked it so much that I thought of buying it in pdf form for $39.99, but when I used it to make the decision, it told me not to buy it. ;)

Halloween is apparently the second most expensive holiday in the US, coming up right behind Christmas. If you want to keep the cost low, check out these great tips for a frugal Halloween by Kyle @ Rather Be Shopping.

Frugal Pride writes about how expensive architecture school can be. When I was in school, the architecture students had the most expenses due to all the supplies they needed to buy for their projects, and ironically, the assistantships in the architecture department paid much less than other departments. Hang in there Olivz!

Frank @ Finance and Fat write about small steps and accountability. After years of being debt free (apart from mortgage), we now have an auto loan, and boy, I can totally relate to what Frank writes. We can’t seem to get rid of it soon enough, but it is key to remember that it is not going to happen over night but if we keep taking small steps (and big strides when possible), we will eventually get back to being debt free.

Nivek @ Money Clipped has a great find – a witty wise-crack spoof news clip from DNN the Debt News Network. It is an 8 minute clip, but if you have some time one your hands, definitely worth a watch!

Sun @ The Sun’s Financial Diary has a great article about global REITs. He argues that the correlation between the US real estate market and that in other countries is quite weak resulting in good diversification if you invest in a global REIT.

Patrick @ Cash Money Life has an interesting comparison between credit cards and guns. I think it is a fairly extreme comparison, but it does convey the point – credit cards are not inherently bad, unless they are in the hands of people who misuse them!

Lazy Man @ Lazy Man and Money has some neat commercials to help you think about your future and money management.

Pinyo @ Moolanomy has a great article about choosing the best investment option available for various savings goals.

Dawn @ One Woman’s Journey has a short but inspiring post about Financial Goals vs. Financial Hiccups.

Creative Investor wonders if the financial sector will rebound again.

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The Best of Finance Blogosphere: “I won a Wii!!” Edition

I still can’t believe it! I never win anything… and here it was, a mail from J. D. announcing that I had won a Wii in the giveaway for the group writing project! My entry to the contest made it in with just a few hours to spare before the deadline! Wow, talk about luck! I am so excited. It is just in time for our anniversary too – now we won’t go and throw money on buying gifts for each other. I will keep one Wii controller and the better half gets the other controller :) Thanks, J. D.!

Now on to some of my favorite posts from the past week.

I love long lists, and here is a great one by Ben @ Instigator blog titled An Introductory Guide to Startup Funding. Definitely something to bookmark for future use!

And while we are talking about lists, here is another great one. MBH @ Mighty Bargain Hunter has put together an excellent collection of money-related forums and discussion boards. There are 28 forums in that list! And I follow only one (Fatwallet Finance) and that too, quite rarely these days. Why are there only 24 hours in a day?

Ben @ Money Smart Life has a great post titled How to Work Extremely Hard and Get Nothing Done. I do this a lot with my “online” fun projects – currently I have two ideas in the incubator that show no signs of coming to life :( Thank god though, its not so much of a problem in my regular job where things move a lot more smoothly!

I have heard the phrase “Cut your losses early” several time, but never really paid much attention to the math behind it. Pinyo @ Moolanomy does a great job in explaining the math.

And here is a nice article by Sun @ Sun’s Financial Diary about rate chasing. Hmmm, I have my credit card arbitrage money still sitting in HSBC earning only 4.5% APR – maybe chasing credit card offers is not enough to play this game, maybe I should be chasing rates too to maximize my returns. Something to think about.

GolbGuru @ Money, Matter and More Musings has a heart wrenching money story by Dough Roller. It’s reading personal stories like these where people have overcome tragic past to create a fantastic future that keep me addicted to personal finance blogs!

Frank @ Finance and Fat shares his personal finance success story as part of J. D.’s group writing project.

And back to lists. Financial Hack has a massive list of 117 quotes about procrastination. Hmmm, maybe I should read it tomorrow :)

Christian PF points to a study that indicates that swearing in the workplace can benefit morale because it helps employees bond to each other. Hmmm. Interesting. I did believe something along these lines while I was in undergrad, but hey, grow up already!

Clever Dude is on a donating spree and has given away 132 items of clothing, valued at $707, to goodwill. Wow! I used to clear out my closet every time we moved apartments, but now that we have a house, I have a feeling 10 years down the line, I will be writing a post exactly like that (if there is still such a thing called blogging at that time :)

Mrs. Micah revisits the latte factor discussion but has a unique perspective that will help you feel-good. Something to think about.

And finally, SVB at Digerati life celebrate her first Blogiversary by sharing her Silicon Valley job history. And she also has a giveaway to celebrate the blogiversary. Check it out!

So much for now. Hope you all have a great weekend

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The Best of Finance Blogosphere: The Reminders Edition

Before we go to the round up of my favorite posts from this week, here are a few reminders.

One of our own, Stephanie Collins, from the ever-interesting blog Poorer than you is among the finalists for $10,000 student blogging scholarship! Don’t forget to vote for her!

If you are a personal finance blogger please consider participating in the PF Blogs Financial Literacy Challenge. It will be great if you can contribute, if not, I hope you will help spread the word. Every bit helps!

I currently am running a giveaway of a fascinating new book called “Your Money and Your Brain” that explores the psychology of personal finance with a lot of examples, stories and surveys. All you have to do to win is leave a comment on this post.

Finally, Monday is Blog Action Day where a lot of bloggers come together to write on one common topic – the environment. If you are a blogger, consider participating in this fun event.

Now onto some articles that caught my eye on the blogosphere.

Achieving Financial Freedom - I've Retired In My Forties @ My Wealth Builder. (This is undeniably the best post I have read this week. It fills me with so much hope, reassurance and motivation…

5 essential tasks to minding your online business @ Mighty Bargain Hunter. I have a major dilemma on this topic that I have been avoiding for a while. I am currently on blogger. On the one hand, it offers a lot less flexibility than wordpress and so I would love to move. On the other hand it helps me avoid hassles about hosting mentioned by MBH and my lazy ass loves not having to worry about these things. Blogger has been able to handle the couple of surges I got due to being digg’d and I love this hassle free hosting. For now, I will put off the dilemma for some more time :)

Snowflaking – a primer @ I’ve paid for this twice already. A must-read if you are a fan of the debt snowball method!

5 types of credit card users @ Cash Money Life. I am a hybrid of the Max Payer and an Arbitrager. What are you?

6 ways you are passing up free money @ Brip Blap. Some great tips here. In addition to these tips, I use credit card arbitrage, employee stock purchase plan and services that give back (eg. realtor who gives back 1%) to make some free money.

Fat tax @ Thrifty Penny. Boy, if there was really a tax for not going to the gym, I’d be so broke! :)

Best and Worst Financial Decisions @ Plonkee Money. My best decision has been to invest in the 401K too!

Willing to pay more for... @ Saving for a Home of My Own. I personally will pay more for quality.

How to make money from merger arbitrage @ Creative Investor 101. This is some hard core stuff! I am still dipping my toes into the work of investing and find such articles so fascinating :) Some day hopefully I too will be a part of the elite investors club!

No rush to pay off my student loans @ Money Blue Book. This is a very good read if you have student loans at low interest rate.

Top 10 cheapest ways to exercise @ The Digerati Life. Boy, SVB just took away one of my excuses (going to the gym costs too much). Wonder how I will over come the other excuse (don’t have enough time).

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The Best of Finance Blogosphere + Reminder for Book Giveaway

The giveaway for the book "The Quiet Millionaire" is in its last few days. So far, we have 49 entries for 3 books. The odds don’t look too bad :) So, if you have not yet entered, do so before the end of the weekend by leaving a comment on this post. Be sure to check back in on Monday to see if you are a winner, and on Tuesday for the announcement of a brand new giveaway!

Now onto some articles that caught my eye this past week.

This article from Single Ma takes the cake! I don’t have any kids (yet) and will probably not need to resort to these tricks any time soon – but the whole article is neatly filed away in some corner recesses of my brain. When the day comes for me to deal with a similar situation, I am pretty sure I will be able to pull it right out :) Believe me, all those of you with teen and tween age girls *want* to read this article!

Flexo at Consumerism Commentary has a great, detailed review of the online money management site Mint. I really liked that Flexo took the time to give a great introduction based on his personal financial life and then the in-depth analysis of Mint. Personally, I belong to the account-watchers-anonymous and would love to use a service like yodlee/mint. But I am so paranoid that if a hacker gets hold of such an account, he will end up having all my financial information that I have not ever opened an account at either Yodlee or Mint :(

Tricia at Blogging away debt decided yesterday was a feel good day and put up an article about Paul Potts. The first time I had seen his Britain’s Got Talent video on You Tube was probably the first time I sat through an entire opera performance! The emotional story of a dream coming true never ceases to amaze me! Head on over to Tricia’s post for some tidbits and videos about Paul Potts, for some lovely feel good weekend moments.

If you are familiar with the Sun’s Financial Diary, you probably know that he is very much into investment and does his own research. However, if you are “not quite there yet” and plan to hire a broker to handle you finances, then Sun can still provide you some great advice. In this post he offers some valuable resources for researching your broker.

Golbguru at Money, Matter and More Musings wonders whether signing the back of the card is really useful. In response to an earlier post I wrote, Anne who works at a retail store had said that at the place she works, the signature is only used to provide as proof if the credit card asks for it! In my own experience twice earlier, when my card was swapped once with my BIL and one with the better half, the signatures didn’t do diddly squat and we just kept using the other person’s card until somebody we realized that the name on the card wasn’t their own!

Pinyo at Moolanomy looks at compound interest with a slightly different perspective. He shows that the first million is the hardest to reach both psychologically and mathematically but it gets much easier after that (He actually hopes to get to 10 Mil!)

Sharon at The Frugal Duchess has a great find for all the thrift shop lovers - An Ebay style auction by goodwill stores!

Finally, Clever Dude has a very thought-provoking article titled Don’t let pride ruin your life that is not really about personal finance, but definitely worth a read.

That’s it for now folks! I hope you have a pleasant relaxed weekend.

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The Best of Finance Blogosphere: New Blog Discovery Edition

While I was randomly browsing this week, I came across a new blog (new for me; via Clever Dude) which I just had to highlight in this Best of Finance Blogosphere edition. The blog is called The Wastrel Show and has the tag line Confessions of a Middle Aged Spendthrift. I must admit that, I almost dismissed the blog and moved on because of that tag line. But the article that landed me there – Debt Free Is A Lonely Road - painted a very different picture. In this article Boomie (the author) talks about how her choice to stay debt free and live a simple life has put her and her spouse at odds with some of the family and friends, but helped them amass a net worth of a million dollars. I was quite intrigued by the dichotomy of the flittery tagline and the sensibility of the post. As I wandered around the other recent posts, I found this dichotomy repeating itself - ‘Boomie’ seems like a interestingly complicated person – firmly grounded in reality but with a tendency towards surrealism; straight and to-the-point at times and intentionally vague at others. Here are a couple of interesting posts to get you started into her interesting world -

How I Am Preparing For The Proposed Recession (A very practical post firmly grounded in reality).

If Money Were Human (Exactly the opposite, but no less interesting!).

Now onto some other articles that caught my attention –

Flexo at Consumerism Commentary is giving away Quicken 2008. I know I am diminishing my chances of winning by writing about it here and having you compete with me for it, but Flexo promises he has four more copies to giveaway – so what the heck, I might as well share the information and build up some good karma :)

While we are on the topic of winning things, if you plan to participate in the $10K student blogging scholarship contest (I wrote about it here), then you should check out this wonderful collection of blogging resources by Pinyo at Moolanomy. Actually, even if you are not participating in the scholarship contest, you should check out the resources and book mark it for handy reference.

MBH at Mighty Bargain Hunter has a list of prudent things to do with small windfalls - a good reminder for all of us to not blow away the little bits of found money.

J.D. at Get Rich Slowly shares his experience of firing an employee. While an experience like this can be frustrating for both the employer and the employee, I really like the way J.D handled it.

Sun at The Sun’s Financial Diary has an interesting article about investing in global REIT ETF’s - if you are looking to diversify your portfolio, you might want to check out this post for a not-so-commonly-discussed option.

While we are on the topic of investing, check out
this visual guide to morning start mutual fund comparison tool by Jeremy at GenX Finance. A really nice primer.

Patrich at Cash Money Life has got himself into a nice little battle about credit card usage and here is a post where he discusses 10 reasons credit cards are good. I am with Patrick on this one, and just recently did another 0% balance transfer bringing the total to $55K that is earning a nice little interest at the rate of 5% for me. What’s not to like about free money?

That’s it from me for this weekend edition. Hope you all have a good break spending time with family and friends and relaxing!

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Student Bloggers: Here Is You Chance To Make $10,000 From Your Blog!

Back in January, I had written about the Student Blogging Scholarships. Well, the deadline for the monster $10K scholarship is almost here! All you student bloggers out there have a little over 3 weeks to put the final shine on your blogs. The submission deadline for nominations is October 6th. Public voting will begin on October 8th and the winner will be declared on October 28th. For more information about the scholarship, check out the College Scholarships website.

Considering the hefty award amount and the broad scope, I suspect the competition will be quite stiff. I hope that one of you student bloggers writing about personal finance will win the scholarship – at least that way we can be sure that the winner won’t blow away the *entire* 10K on parties :) To help you add that final touch to your blog, here is a list of blogging tips shared by prominent personal finance bloggers. Good luck, and if you decide to put your name in the hat, be sure to leave a comment below so I (and hopefully some of the readers) can vote for you!

25 Steps To A Wildly Successful Personal Finance Blog by Jim at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity.

How to Get Your Blog to 100,000 Visitors and Beyond (Series) by FMF at Free Money Finance

How Not to Blog: Self-Defeating Behaviors by jdroth of Get Rich Slowly (Published at Meta Best Blog Win)

Building a Better Blog for 2007 (Series) by Trent at The Simple Dollar.

50 Tips for New Personal Finance Bloggers by Clever Dude at Clever Dude.

How to Start a Blog by Kira at Penny Foolish.

(I am sure there are many more good articles that I have missed - please feel free to share your favorites with the aspiring student bloggers!)

Two other sites that are not related to personal finance, but you must read (if you want to be a serious contender, that is) are Problogger and Copyblogger. Now be warned though, you could spend days together on each of these sites and not even realize it! And with the deadline so close, the more time you spend on reading about blogging, the less time you have to write on your blog – so watch out! I would recommend setting a restriction on how much time you allocate for improving your blog and how much for writing, *before* you visit either of these sites. To improve your efficiency, here are two good starting points for your quest

31 Days to Building a Better Blog (@ Problogger)

How to Attract Links and Increase Web Traffic – The Ultimate Guide (@ Copyblogger). While you are there don’t forget to check out the magnetic headlines series too.

Well, good luck y’all. I sure hope a fellow finance blogger will take in the trophy this year. God knows there are enough of you out there who are well capable!

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The Best of Finance Blogosphere: "I M BROKE" Edition

OK. Now onto some really great posts that I came across during the past couple of weeks.

Pinyo @ Moolanomy has started a great meme called the My One Money Advice meme and collected the response from all the different bloggers in one place. Frankly, this is the best collection of "one-liner" advice on money I have ever come across.

Jim @ Blueprint for Financial Prosperity has a thought provoking article about how you should compare salaries. If you can spare a few minutes I highly recommend that you stop by and read the whole article. If not, here is a tiny nugget from the article to mull on later when you are driving/cooking/cleaning etc. "You’re competing with folks with different educations, different skill sets, and different career paths. [...] You shouldn’t be comparing yourself to anyone else other than yourself. That’s the secret to being happy."

I have been trying not to look at my investment accounts during the past few weeks with the market down turn. And so when Sun @ Sun's Financial Diary started out an article by asking "There are sellers, there are buyers, and there are investors doing nothing. In this stormy market, who are you?" I was hooked. Highly recommended read.

Another really good article definitely worth taking out the time for is a guest post on Get Rich Slowly where the author shares how she and her new husband handled the situation where one is a saver and one is a spender. Any marriage in itself is not easy, but when two people with different financial philosophies get together, things get exponentially more complicated. I was very impressed with the way the author (and her husband) handled the situation!

With the whole sub-prime mess, everybody is busy pointing fingers either at those who offered interest only mortgages or those who accepted it. In the middle of this blame game, I found this article by Clever Dude explaining why they had chosen to go for the interest only mortgage 3 years ago quite refreshing.

Tempted to use the money in your emergency fund to [put your temptation here]? Then this article on the we are in debt blog that helps sort out the excuses from legitimate reasons is for you :)

Every one around me is either pregnant or working hard at it :) So I found this article by SVB @ Digerati Life about all the costs associated with raising kids very interesting (and scary :).

Planning to upgrade your home? The saving with me blog has a great article for helping you sort out the needs from wants while upgrading your home and has also gone the extra mile by soliciting advice from different bloggers on this matter.

Finally, winding down this "Best of" edition with a post from one of my favorite blogs - Money, Matter and More Musings. In this post, golbguru muses about why people accept wedding gifts? During our wedding, we had the "Presents in Blessings Only" printed on the wedding invite too, but frankly, I doubt that helps in any way! Would you *really* go without a gift to a wedding, if you were to receive an invite that says so (especially if it is pretty much a norm for everyone to add that to the wedding invite like it is in my community)?

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The Best of Finance Blogosphere + "My Car Finally Died – May it Rest in Peace"

Less than a couple of week ago, I had written about our car trouble. Last Thursday morning, finally, our trusty car gave in. It came to a dead halt very close to the better half’s work place. The better half has pushed it into a parking lot with the help of a friend and we are keeping our fingers crossed that it won’t get towed away during the weekend. We are pretty sure the engine is busted and have decided to give it away to the charity organization Kars 4 Kids to salvage whatever they can. (We picked the charity through a random Internet search, so if you have some other charity you would like us to consider, please leave a comment below. Thanks!) We are scrambling to find another car, but do not want to make any hasty decisions. Since both our offices are in very different directions surviving with just one car is not really an option for us. So we have gone ahead and booked a rental car for a week.

To me, it feels like we should have made this decision two weeks back when the car gave us warnings that the engine was in trouble. But then as the better half points out, every time we made a car payment we would wonder if we could have pushed our old car a bit more. Now we know that we really did squeeze every last bit out of it. Frankly, that logic sounds skewed to me, since the memory of the ~$260 we forked over for the repairs is still too fresh. But hey, if the car did run for another 6 months (like it did after the repairs before the last one), I wouldn’t have had anything to complain about would I? It was a gamble and we knew it – no point in second guessing ourselves.

We pretty much have mind made up our mind about which car we want to buy, but don’t want to rush in without being totally absolutely sure that we got the bestest deal possible. So while we look through the online inventories and we pore over the infinite details of which color, which trim etc., here are some great reads for you that I came across during the last week.

Since we are talking about cars, let me start out by pointing this great series about buying used cars by golbguru over at Money, Matter and More Musings. Golb went through a similar experience with his old car and has done a very good job in recording in great detail the process he went through for purchasing a used car. I highly recommend this if you are in the market for a used car.

Used car not your cup of tea? Prefer a new car? Then you will likely love this article by SVB about 10 popular reasons to buy a new car at the Digerati Life. For the purchase of our next car, we plan to find a middle ground between the “used Vs new” debate by going for a relatively new used car :)

OK, enough about cars already! Moving on to other things, David at My Two Dollars has an ongoing challenge to start digging out of credit card debt. It’s *never* too late to join. Here is week 3 of the challenge.

J.D. at Get Rich Slowly is out vacationing in Europe and has given the mike over to guest authors in his absence. And he has done a great job in making sure that the guest authors keep up with the quality of posts that we have come to expect from GRS. This particular article about extreme personal finance by Tynan about his experience of moving from a Penthouse to an RV really grabbed my attention!

In the market for a credit card? Drop that application! Do not make any decisions until you read this detailed listing by Flexo at Consumerist Commentary about 50 credit cards offering 0% APR on purchases.

While we are on the topic of 0% APR, I must point you to this article by Sun at The Sun’s Financial Diary. It is his net worth update for the month of July, and if you pay close attention, you will notice that he has over 100K in credit card arbitrage! I thought I dabbled too much in credit card arbitrage (last year I had around 56K, but right now I have much less). But my amount almost pales in comparison to what Sun has going for him! (If you are not familiar with credit card arbitrage, you can read about it here and here).

And rounding off this best-of edition is this interesting post by Jim at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity about how he financially survived college. Here is a quote from the post that really resonated with me, except that I had to wait until much later in life to wise up - “While I still believe that (hard work is what you need), I think that the idea that I could sell something on eBay and earn as much as I did doing a work-study at minimum wage (or slightly above it) really turned my world upside down.”

With that I bid adieu – autotrader.com beckons me :)

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The Best of Finance Blogosphere: Revival Edition

It’s been a while since I did one of these. Based on the comments on this article I had decided to discontinue the The Best of Finance Blogosphere roundups. It has been quite some time now, and I have truly missed the opportunity to give a shout out to fellow bloggers saying, “Yes, I read your articles, and I loved them… keep up the good work!” So today I decided to bring the Best of… back. I haven’t yet decided if I will make this a weekly feature like it used to be – for now, let’s just take it one day at a time.

First order of business is the many Congratulations that are due (some over due).

Lazy man is now a lazy “married” man!
Sun was unfortunate to lose his job, but found a new job in less than two weeks, not an easy feat by any measure!
Flexo’s networth surpassed 100K and
Tricia’s credit card debt went below $20K.

Congratulations y’all! Break out the good wine and celebrate. And know that several people you don’t know and who don’t really know you are rejoicing with you!

Now onto some of the great articles I have come across recently (in no particular order) –

Resident Alien has an interesting article titled For the Frugal Mind: Cheapest days to shop that discusses when is the best time to buy different things such as groceries, books, airline tickets etc. I love the idea of saving money and found this article really intriguing – I am certainly going to test out some of these theories!

What’s in a name? – That’s the question asked by SVB in this article about name discrimination! I had never really paid much attention to it but after reading the article I realized how true some of it is. I mean, if you needed to have a surgery and your only choices were Dr. Candy or Dr. Lisa and you knew nothing about either of them and had to randomly pick one, who would it be? Amazing, isn’t it? I wonder what people associate “foreign” names like Zhang or Ravi with…

Golbguru opens up another interesting question about shopping at Walmart. I agree with Golb - on principle, I don’t have anything against Walmart. I just don’t get it when people vehemently argue against it! But like some of the comments, I do find it is too crowded and can find fresher groceries at a local grocery chain, and so, if possible, I avoid going to one.

English Major has an eye for unique personal stories and a talent for presenting them beautifully. In this article she shares how one of her friends has an unusual financial plan. I don’t want to be all judgmental about her friend that I don’t even know, but still…. I can’t help but cringe :(

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may have noticed that I am fascinated with entrepreneurial stories. And I found this one on Blunt Money filled with lessons learnt from a real experience. The article is not at very scanable, but stay with it, and you will come out learning quite a lot.

Is your house branded? No? Tsk Tsk Tsk... :) MBH had this interesting article about Brand-name Houses which are co-branded with celebrity names. Seriously, what next? I live in a house designed in part by Martha Stewart, eat Applebee’s fresh grilled food designed by chef Tyler Florence and chat on the red Moto RAZR designed specifically for Bono’s Aids cause and now endorsed by Beckham?

Finally, a detailed FAQ-like article about credit card balance transfer offers at PFAdvice. When we were getting out of debt, we relied heavily on the 0% balance transfer offers to avoid paying huge amount in interest. If you are looking to reduce your debt, I highly recommend this approach of consolidating the debt under one or two zero (or very low) interest cards. But the credit card companies are next only to loan sharks, and if you are not vary you will be bitten badly. This article is a good place to start looking for more information on whether this path is right for you.

That's it for today. Y'all have a good weekend!

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Carnivals and Festivals

Oops. Looks like I forgot to link back to the carnivals and festivals last week. So here is a quick note of acknowledgement and thanks to the hosts of all the fantastic carnivals and festivals for the previous two weeks!

The Festival of Frugality #75 was hosted at Get Rich Slowly.
The Festival of Frugality #76 was hosted at Blogging Away Debt.
The Carnival of Personal Finance #101 was hosted at Fire Finance.
The Carnival of Personal Finance #102 was hosted at Money Smart Life.
The Carnival of Ethics, Values and Personal Finance No. 9 was hosted at Tired but Happy.
The Carnival of Financial Planning was hosted at The Skilled Investor Blog.
The Carnival of Family Life was hosted at Be a Good Dad .
The Carnival of Money, Growth & Happiness #6 was hosted at Credit Card Lowdown.
Empowering Women - Issue 1 was hosted at A Modern Goddess Online.
The Carnival of Student Finance #5 was hosted at Student Loan Consolidation Lowdown.
The Carnival of Home Improvement #5 was hosted at Mortgage Lowdown.
The money makes life fun! was hosted at Ultimate Wealth.

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The Carnivals and Festivals this Week

A quick note of acknowledgement and thanks to the hosts of all the fantastic carnivals and festivals this week!

The Festival of Frugality was hosted at Millionster.

The Carnival of Personal Finance was hosted at My Open Wallet.

The Festival of Under 30 Finances was hosted at Money For the Rest of Us.

The Carnival of Financial Planning was hosted at The Skilled Investor.

The Carnival of Family Life was hosted at Be a Good Dad.

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The Best of Finance Blogosphere: Problogger Group Writing Project Special

(Update: Based on the lengthy comments by fellow bloggers on the article What Have You Got Against Personal Finance Bloggers? @ Money, Matter, and More Musings, it seems like a lot of bloggers *HATE* linkfests and weekly roundups! I find this surprising since I mostly enjoy them. I don't have the time to read through all the blogs out there and I like "discovering" articles that I may have missed, through a fellow blogger with similar tastes as mine. And if I am on a new blog and do not have similar tastes as that blogger, I just skip past the roundup post. Also, a weekly roundup represents an opportunity to link and get linked from folks who think like me. So, week after week, I have been spending a significant amount of time in rounding up my faves and writing a commentary around them. And if no one really likes it, I guess there is no point in continuing to do it. So here is a question to you - a reader of this blog - do you really care for the weekly roundups? If "yes" please leave me a comment below. Otherwise, this below, will be the last roundup post.)

This week I participated in the Pro Blogger Group Writing Project that invited bloggers from all walks of life to write an article around the theme "Top 5". I entered with the article 5 Gifts for Mom That Won’t Ever Go Out of Fashion. The project received an unbelievable number of entries - drumroll, please - 893 in 4 days! It was quite a nightmare to go through the list and pick the best ones related to personal finance. I finally managed to pare it down to a list of 25. This list took me a long time to compile, and I just don't have the energy today to write a commentary on each article as I usually do for my weekly roundups. So, here it is. I hope you enjoy them -