Welcome to the 110th Carnival of Personal Finance

Welcome to the 110th edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance.  This week’s Carnival of Personal Finance is hosted by yours truly, Fat Pitch Financials. 

Fat Pitch Financials is the personal blog of a value investor with a strong interest in personal finance. Here at Fat Pitch Financials you can learn how to taken the next step beyond investing in index funds. I have learned to exploit some of the advantages of being an individual investor (yes, there are advantages) by investing is special situation opportunities in the stock market in a similar manner to the way Warren Buffett used to invest in what he called “workouts” when he was younger. Fat Pitch Financials is also the birth place of another blog carnival, the Festival of Stocks, which was inspired by the Carnival of Personal Finance.

This week’s Carnival of Personal Finance submissions have been placed in specific categories below and listed in no particular order. The categories include banking, debt, frugal living, investing, planning, taxes, and other topics. Now fasten your seatbelts and enjoy the ride.

Carnival of Personal Finance

Banking

• PrsnlFinance.com shares some thoughts on finding the right bank account for your needs.
• Online Savings Blog provides 5 ways to improve online savings accounts. These are tips for the banks to improve their services.
• Money and Values warns us to look out for abusive overdraft charges at your bank.
• Queercents notes the benefits of online banking and bill pay. I love both!

Debt

• Growing Up… shares their cautionary tail of how credit card debt could impact your quality of living in the future in This is Your Life on Consumer Debt.
• Mortgage Blog shares some of the reasons they are increasing their mortgage term from 30 years to 47 years.  I’m not sure I agree with the reasoning present in this article.
• Everybody Loves Your Money warns anyone thinking about cosigning a loan to consider the whole situation.
• Ask Mr Credit Card presents 10 credit card practices that he disapproves, as do I.
• Single Ma’s Fabulous Financials discusses how to close credit cards without affecting your credit scores.
• Grad Money Matters provides a great myth busting article about the relationship between credit cards and credit scores.
• Plus6 provides some advice on how to get out of an auto lease. My advice is to avoid getting into an auto lease in the first place.
• Searchlight Crusade on “My Payment Is Too High and I Can’t Make It“

Frugal Living

• A Canadian and Her Money is amazed at the amount of money she spends on her car each year and wonders if car-free living is the path to financial independence.  My family only has one car, which I never seem to have. I live fairly car free in the Washington, DC area and I love how much money I save.
• Frugal Finance provides 10 tips on saving money on a family trip.  I’m going on a family trip in a few weeks and hope to use some of these tips to save some money.
• Advanced Personal Finance details 10 ways to save money in your budget.
• Cash Money Life’s take on a a recent article titled, “How to Earn $1 Million by Not Watching TV”, is called Earn $10 Million by Not Building Model Trains.
• SavingsAdvice.com also explores how much you could save by dumping TV inspired by the “How to Earn $1 Million by Not Watching TV” article.
• The Happy Rock also looks at the costs of cable and TV.
• FILAM Personal Finance is doing Christmas shopping early and provides the 5 laws of retail negotiation.
• Baby on a Budget looks at cloth diapering and why it is so controversial.

Investing

• The Dough Roller explains how you can technically buy real estate for no money down, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t still cost you cash to deal with capital improvements. Discover the myth of zero-down real estate investing.
• Accumulating Money provides an interesting profile of Carlos Slim. It sounds like Carlos Slim created his wealth from intelligent value investing and I’m interested in learning more about him.
• Smart Saving and Investing explains how to select mutual funds. While I liked the graphics that illustrate the information from Morningstar and FundAlarm, I think the article missed two critical things to keep in mind while selecting mutual funds. It is important to remember that past performance doesn’t necesarily indicate future performance and fund fees can really cost you so it is important to keep them as low as possible.
• The Finance Buff deconstructs some market stats provided by Schwab about market returns from 1996-2006 if you missed the ten best days.  I didn’t check all the math but the approach and answers looked about right to me.
• Kmull goes over his 401K options.
• The Time & Money Group is using basket trading to get ahead of the herd.

Planning

• You Incorporated discusses why it is important to continue to save for your retirement while giving advice to his older brother on paying for college.
• Journey 2 Retirement expects some budget changes after his wife gave birth Monday night.  Congratulations!
• Cheap as chips provides five pieces of advice for getting financial advice from trusted sources.
• Simple Pound provides a plan for how to start budgeting. It is as simple as keeping your receipts and updating a spreadsheet.
• Blunt Money provides three ways for getting rid of financial junk. I definitely need to cut down on the number of accounts I have.
• Free Money Finance explores what percent of your net worth should be in your house.
• Mighty Bargain Hunter also provides his take on your home’s value and your net worth.

Taxes

• InsureBlog discusses a news item about someone suing the IRS over a disputed medical deduction for a sex-change operation. Who said tax law couldn’t be interesting?
• Personal Finance Math shows us how to calculate your average tax rate. This could come in handy when planning.
• No Credit Needed reminds us of the value of an emergency fund with a real life story.
• Rocket Finance argues that lowering taxes on the rich may one day help him become rich.  Ah, the wonders of supply side economics, if only things were so simple.

Other Topics 

• INTJ Personal Development reminds us how it is often more efficient to Just Do It versus wasting time just thinking about doing stuff.  I hope you enjoyed your time at Cornell as much as I did.
• MoneyNing provides a great checklist to help you learn how to avoid losing more things. There are some great tips in this article for absent-minded folks like myself.
• Chief Family Officer questions how much is your privacy worth. You definitely have to trade off your privacy for many so called free offers.
• PowerWealth.com has a well written article on the basics of personal finance called, “To Consume, Save, Invest, or Speculate? That Is The Question.” I loved the definition of speculate provided in the article.
• Family Finance Blog discusses the spending patterns in marriages: the saver and the spender.  I’m not sure this model always works, but worth thinking about.
• Clever Dude provides some information on what people should consider in determining whether adoption is for you.
• The Financial Blogger reflects on two different financial paths in his article, Am I Waking Up or Am I Falling Into a Bigger Dream? The “go to school, work hard and get a job with a good salary and job security” approach vs “do what you like and concentrate all your efforts in it, money will come afterward”.
• My Two Dollars asks, do you own your stuff or does your stuff own you?
• The Financial Philosopher asks whether there such a thing as “original thought?” If so, what would you pay for it? Find out what some have paid for it (including Mohnish Pabrai) in The Pursuit (and Price) of Original Thought. I’m a little bit biased based on the topic, but this was one of my favorites this week.
• The Simple Dollar confesses the ten biggest money mistakes he’s made since his financial meltdown.
• The Digerati Life delves into the topic of wealth and social class in “Does Achieving Wealth Make You “Upper Class”? Facts About Class“
• My Wealth Builder confesses to being a personal finance junkie.  Are you one? If you made it this far, you probably are.
• Millionaire Mommy Next Door continues her series on Baby Steps to Financial Freedom with part three: How to Make Money Management a Family Affair.

That’s it for this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance.  I hope you enjoyed the ride.  Next week’s host will be Blogging Away Debt.  You can catch up on past editions of the Carnival of Personal Finance, submit an entry, or even volunteer to host a future edition of this carnival by following any of these links.