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Carnival of Personal Finance #356

The Money Drain is proud to host this weeks Carnival of Personal Finance.  The theme for this week is “Wasted Money”, as this is a site about ways we waste money (and save money, of course :)).

There were many great submissions for this weeks carnival, here are my Editor’s Picks:

Editor’s Pick #1: Jim from Bargaineering.com presents Netspend & Receiving Cards You Didn’t Apply For, and gives good advice on how to handle these types of offers, advice I had never even thought of before 🙂

Editor’s Pick #2: Sean from Free Snatcher presents 5 Tips to Help You Become Debt Free, and gives sound advice and step-by-step instructions on how to get started on becoming debt free.

Editor’s Pick #3: SB from One Cent At A Time presents Live Like in Early 19th Century to Become Debt Free, and gives some frugal advice on how to save money during hard times. Some suggestions are a bit extreme for most, but when times are hard these are some sound potential ideas.”

Editor’s Pick #4: Say Say from Life [Comma] Etc presents Unemployment Tips, and gives some awesome advice on making the most out of being unemployed.

Editor’s Pick #5: Robert from The College Investor presents How You Can Use SWOT Analysis for Investments, and gives a really interesting viewpoint on using SWOT analysis as a strategic planning method for your financial future.

Editor’s Pick #6: Miranda Marquit from Planting Money Seeds presents Being Social Online Can Help You Find Freelance Gigs, and gives some great advice on finding freelance work by social networking. Something I am very familiar with and utilize in my own freelance work 🙂

Editor’s Pick #7: 2 Cents from Balance Junkie presents Are You Ready for a Change?, and really touches on the subject of needing to accept the idea of change in order to better ourselves not only financially, but in other areas of our lives as well.

Editor’s Pick #8: Jason from One Money Design presents Natural Foods Cost More: Are They Worth It?, and gives a good cost analysis argument and further resources to eating healthy on natural foods.

Editor’s Pick #9: Glen Craig from Free From Broke presents What Do Your Property Taxes Pay For?, and says, “Most of us believe our property taxes are too high. But property taxes play a vital role in your community. See what your property taxes pay for.” Some really good research done here, I certainly wasn’t aware of all the things my property taxes went for.


Some other great articles to be included in this Carnival. Some of these authors really put a lot of thought and research into their posts, so please check them out!

Posts on Money Management

James Petzke from Critical Financial presents The Huge Importance of Early Retirement Planning, and says, “If you start planning for your retirement earlier, you will be more likely to be financially ready when you do retire.”

Mike from The Financial Blogger presents Should You Even Save Money in Your 20s?, and gives a strong valid argument towards saving money while in your 20’s

Peter from Bible Money Matters presents Smart Steps for Spring Cleaning Your Finances, and gives advice on how to apply our spring cleaning tendencies to our personal finances as well.”

John from Wallet Blog presents Do You Know What Your Bank is Charging For?, and says, “Make sure you read your statements carefully every month. If it doesn’t look right, it probabaly isn’t. Don’t get charged more than you should.”

Jason from Live Real, Now presents The Game of Thrones Guide to Personal Finance, and gives a unique perspective on financial lessons learned from the series.

PK from Don’t Quit Your Day Job… presents Lottery Winnings, and thoroughly analyzes the odds of winning lotteries.

Investor Junkie from Investor Junkie presents Getting the Most Out of Your 529 Plan, and talks about how you can get the most out of saving for college.

Posts on Saving Money

Squeezer from Personal Finance Success presents Going beyond spending less than you earn, and says, “Spending less than you earn is one of the principles of personal finance. The real power in spending less than you earn comes with what do you do with your money left over from not spending it?”

Posts on Credit

Jason from One Money Design presents Kids and Money: A Recent Credit Card Lesson for My Daugther, and says, “A recent trip to the dentist provided an opportunity to teach my child a lesson about credit cards that she’ll hopefully remember forever.”

Echo from Boomer & Echo presents What Your Credit Score Really Means, and goes over some details on what your credit score really means.

Squeezer from Personal Finance Success presents How to take advantage of credit cards, and gives some great “Do’s” and “Don’t’s” when it comes to taking advantage of your credit cards.

Posts on Investing

Van Beek from Stock Trend Investing presents Why You Need a Roth IRA, and gives some great input on why having a Roth IRA is important.

Jess Wagner from Personal Dividends presents Reasons Why You Might Not Want To Invest In Index Funds, and says, “Index funds are not perfect. They are not right for every single portfolio. Here are reasons why you might not want to invest in index funds.”

Jim Yih from Retire Happy Blog presents Basics of Investing in Bonds, and says, “Bonds are one of the cornerstones of the investment industry. They are an integral part of institutional money management and retail investing”

Posts on Taxes

Mr. Money from Smart on Money writes an article titled Home Business and Taxes: Doubling Up on Tax Day, which gives good advice on preparing for upcoming taxes in your business. He says, “If you have a home business, you need to be extra careful if you owe. Don’t forget that you actually have two tax payments to make: What you owe from underpaying the year before, and your first quarterly estimated tax payment for the current year.”

Young Professional Finances from Young Professional Finances presents How I Spent My Tax Refund, and gives a breakdown on how they spent their refund, by using most of it to pay themselves first and create a hefty emergency fund 🙂

Philip from PT Money Personal Finance presents Are You Sure You Earned Enough to File Taxes?, and helps readers to determine if they earned enough to file taxes this year.

Rob from Dough Roller presents Should You Use The Standard or Itemized Deduction on Your Taxes?, and says, “The classic question – Should I use the standard deduction or itemize?” This is something I was asked quite frequently when I was training to be a tax preparer.

Sandy from Yes, I am Cheap presents Ten IRS Tax Audit Red Flags, and says, “I’ve been doing my own taxes since I was 16. It’s really not that hard when your taxes aren’t too complicated. That and I’m just too cheap to hand someone money to do what I can do on my own. I must be doing it correctly since I’ve never been audited, but today I am doing some community service and pointing out ten red flags that will get the IRS to audit your taxes.

Posts on Frugality

Sean from One Smart Dollar presents Save On Utilities: Upgrade Your Homes Insulation, which goes over several ideas on some cost-saving ideas to save on your utilities.

Harri @ TotallyMoney from TotallyMoney presents 6 tools that will make you more productive, and gives a great list of ideas to help better manage your time.

Squirrelers from Squirrelers presents 15 Ways to Save Money on Gas for Your Car, and gives a slew of ideas on how we can save money on gas as the gas prices continue to rise.

Young from Youngandthrifty presents 5 Easy Ways to Cut Your Monthly Expenses and Save Even More, and says, “If you could shave $100 off your monthly payments by refinancing your mortgage, you’d probably jump at the chance, even if the process required several hours of your time. But what if you could save more than $100 on your monthly bills and it only took a few minutes?” Good ideas on how to shave a little bit off your expenses each month.

Posts on Debt

Liana from Card Hub presents Payment Allocation, and says, “When you’re paying off credit card debt, It’s good to know what best to do. Understanding “payment allocation” may help you get that debt down faster!”

Nicole from Nicole and Maggie: Grumpy Rumblings presents April Mortgage Update and comments on a Minting Nickels Post, and gives an alternative exercise viewpoint in paying off debt early.

Posts on Finance

FMF from Free Money Finance,com presents Becoming Wealthy May Be Simple, But It’s Not Easy, and gives a run-down of the “Secret” to becoming wealthy, and it’s advice we should all already know and can do now.

Tim from Faith and Finance presents Health Insurance Options for the Self Employed, and gives some ideas on how to protect yourself from health expenses when self-employed.

Michael Kitces from Nerd’s Eye View presents Would Financial Planning Be More Valuable If It Focused On The Short-Term?, and uses a great metaphor comparing the hot new P90x fad and how it could apply to how we think of our finances.

Posts on Careers

Miss T. from Prairie Eco Thrifter presents Increasing Productivity with a Light Workload, and gives an alternate viewpoint on what to do to increase your productivity when you have a light workload.

Kathryn @ Financial Highway from Financial Highway presents Interview Questions and Answers, and says, “This guide not only tells you what the interview questions are but also provides insight into what the interviewer is really asking and what types of answers will help you get the job.” This one was a top contender for an Editor’s Pick for me 🙂

Posts on Economy

Tom Drake from Stupid Cents presents Canada Gets Rid of the Penny; Should the U.S. Follow Suit?, and talks about the issue of inflation and the value of the penny.

Posts on Real Estate

Sean Smarty from Grow Money presents 4 Tips for Saving Money in a Renter’s World, and gives a list of advice to help renters save money.

Posts on Budgeting

Green Panda from Green Panda Treehouse presents Married College Student? Learn to Live on One Income and Build Net Worth, and gives some advice on surviving one one budget while going through college while married.

Emily from Evolving Personal Finance presents How Does Your Salary Compare to the Living Wage?, and gives some good details on how to figure out your living wage levels and compare them to your spending.

Posts of Variety

TTMK from Tie the Money Knot presents Financial Warning Signts, and talks about a story of a dating experience to define whether we should judge someone who spends lavishly or frugally during a date outing.

Amanda from My Dollar Plan presents Why it’s a Risky Idea to Raid Your 401K in this Economy, and gives a strong argument as to why it’s risky to borrow against your 401k

Next week the Carnival of Personal Finance will be hosted by Start Talking Cents, so be sure to submit your best posts for consideration!

About Crystal Groves, Google+

Crystal Groves is a farmer, web developer, musician, blogger, and personal finance enthusiast from the back hills of Maryland and Pennsylvania. She started Money Drain as a project to encourage people interested in fixing their financial situation to share their stories and learn from the stories of others. We all make mistakes, but in order to change we have to make changes.

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25 Responses to Carnival of Personal Finance #356

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