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Tour de Personal Finance 2011 – Final Championship Sprint on the "Parisian Champs-Élysées" of Personal Finance
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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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The 2011 Tour de Personal Finance has been an absolute 100% success (far beyond anything I could have imagined!). A big thanks goes out to everyone that has participated in the Stages and to the hundreds of voters who have stopped by to support their favorite authors/articles.
Later this week, I’ll write up a Tour de Personal Finance recap, post-race show, and awards ceremony to talk about what happened this year and how I envision the event growing in the coming years. But, that’s enough of that commentary for now!
Without further ado, let’s continue on with the final, 17th Stage (the final championship sprint) of the 2011 My Personal Finance Journey Tour de Personal Finance (to follow all of the action, click on the Tour de Personal Finance category link and scroll down to read all the posts involved in this subject).
Also, if applicable, I will give a brief description of the stage of the Tour de France that took place the same day as the competition.
How to Vote
You can vote for the one article (since there’s only one intermediate sprint today) you’d like to see proceed in the Tour by commenting in the comments section below and telling which are your favorites.
I’ve listed a keyword after each post title to make it easy to vote (as a made-up example, you can just comment: Sprint 1: Mutual; Sprint 2: 401k, etc.) Be sure to comment which one you like the best out of each set of two! Criteria for the best article is completely up to you, but you can use these factors as a guide: 1) post of your favorite blogger, 2) most interesting post, 3) most thought-provoking post, 4) most unique post, or 5) most actionable post.
Here is today’s competitions:
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This isn’t your grandparents’ recession (Grandparents):
Ever since the recession began I think there’s WAY too much blaming of the victims. I’m good and sick of hearing pundits grumble about how lazy and soft Americans have become, and how we ought to take a few lessons from the Great Depression. Here’s the thing: The world was a different place back then. Heaven knows I’m no apologist for slackers, credit-card spendthrifts or people who won’t take anything but the “right” job, but a lot of the advice our elders offered/modeled isn’t relevant today. Plenty of folks are in big trouble not because they’re lazy, but because of complex personal, local, national and global economic issues.
- If I Had a Million Dollars, I’d Go Into Debt (Debt): What would I do if I won a million dollars? This post describes how I’d invest every last penny, scrutinizing tax benefits, risk, returns, real estate, and why I would go into debt — yes, I would go into debt — if I were a millionaire. And don’t just take my word for it: Einstein backs me up, and so does third-world poverty theory. Read this post to find out more.
Barring a major accident out on the open road, the Australian, Cadel Evans, will end the day as the overall winner of the 2011 race.
Cadel took the race lead by doing a consistent ride throughout the high mountain stages and then throwing down the gauntlet with a STELLAR final time trial yesterday in Grenoble to take the yellow jersey only the day before Paris!
Alberto Contador, the all-around favorite for overall victory this year, came up lacking in the final mountain stages of this year’s race. In my opinion, Contador most likely was the best rider in this year’s Tour de France, but since he doesn’t focus his training solely for victory in the Tour (he wants to win races in May and September as well), he wasn’t in peak form. This just makes me realize and appreciate how hard and rare it is to find a rider such as Lance Armstrong who can win the biggest bike race in the world for 7 years IN A ROW without making a single mistake. It really is a testament to Lance’s ability as a rider.
***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/petitbrun/5664890889/lightbox/
How Do Your Car Insurance Rates Vary Based on Age, Gender, and Geographic Location?
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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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One of my favorite topics to ponder over and research is the cost of living differential based on certain demographic factors. Of these, probably the most interesting (to me) is the difference that is often seen in the cost of goods and services based on geographic location. It’s amazing how much you can save simply by locating yourself in the right place!
In my experiences of living in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, and Virginia, I’ve unofficially found that car insurance is no exception to this phenomena. During my time in PA and NJ, I found that many of my friends were paying upwards of $3000 per year in car insurance. When I told them that several people I know in Arkansas pay $1200 per year, they were simply amazed!
Because of the drastic difference in the price of car insurance I’ve heard from my friends and wanting to save money on car insurance being a topic applicable to almost everyone, I thought it would be an interesting thought exercise to do a little online research to see if significant price differentials exist based on other demographic factors.
Investigation Setup
Insurance Provider
According to CarInsuranceCompanies.com, the largest car insurance provider in The United States is State Farm. State Farm has a total of 75 million policy holders, corresponding to 18.7% market share. This is quite impressive!
When I first started looking in to this investigation, due to State Farm’s popularity, I was hoping to use their car insurance quotes tool to generate car insurance premium prices based on the different demographic information we input. However, since you have to input the specifics of your current car insurance coverage, using State Farm’s quote tool would be far too complicated for a broad analysis like we are looking for.
Because of this, my focus shifted to reviewing previously-published studies on the Internet.
How Do Car Insurance Premiums Vary Based on Age?
In my quest to find a specific answer to this question, the best resource I could find was the table below from Bob @ Christian PF (originally published on Insurance.com). I added a % Difference column to Bob’s original table in order to specifically see the change in premium rates at different ages. It definitely makes for some interesting analysis!
From the table above, the most shocking finding is that it appears that between the age of 16 and 25, car insurance premiums decrease by almost 50%! Wow! That’s truly amazing! However, having been a driver during college and especially high school and seen the increased risk factors for young drivers, I cannot say I blame the insurance companies for charging high premiums. It’s probably smart business with how likely 16 year old driver’s are to get in a wreck.
In my experience, the specific risk factors present to drivers in high school are as follows:
- Driving with a full car of people – In high school, within each group of friends, there can exist a pretty significant range of ages (significant in high school terms being 1 year – haha). Because there are fewer numbers of drivers, more people are likely to pack in to one car. Naturally, with more people in the same car comes more talking and distraction, leading to an increased risk of accidents.
- Loud music – High school kids are also more apt to listen to very loud music (subwoofers with huge amplifiers were a popular item among my high school crowd!). This loud music can take the driver’s attention away from the road and increase the risk for accidents to occur.
- Driving being a “novelty” – Since driving is a new experience in high school, kids are likely to spend an enormous amount of time simply “cruising” around town. Many times, this takes place late at night, which can increase the exposure of the driver to accidents and/or drunk drivers.
Continuing with the analysis of the insurance rates based on age, it appears that prices generally decrease until retirement age (maybe when Alzheimer’s disease starts to kick in?). However, prices do increase slightly in the mid 30’s. One hypothesis I have for this increase is that drivers often have young children at the age, which can lead to increased distractions and more accidents. What do you all think?
How Do Car Insurance Premiums Vary Based on Geographic Location?
The best resource I found answering this question was the table below from The Insurance Information Institute.
Examining the table above, it’s not surprising to me that 7 of the top 10 most expensive states for car insurance either are Northeast states or contain many Northeast state retirees (Florida). However, it’s surprising to me to see Louisiana on the list as having such high car insurance premiums (pretty much the same as New Jersey). Does any one have any guesses to why this is? I thought Louisiana was a pretty rural, low-traffic state…
The states with the lowest cost for car insurance premiums were Iowa and North Dakota. This makes intuitive sense to me since these states typically have low traffic and low population density. What’s wild is that car insurance rates in these two states are over 50% lower than rates in DC and New Jersey.
How Do Car Insurance Premiums Vary Based on Gender?
According to a recent study published on PRweb.com about California car insurance premiums, the average annual policy for a male driver was 20% higher than for a female driver. They also found that the gender-pricing gap decreases as driver’s get older, with a fairly minimal gap being present above the age of 25.
However, at the age of 18, car insurance policies for male drivers can be upwards of $1,500 more than for females. Pretty wild stuff!
There is, of course, logic behind why the car insurance companies charge more to insure male drivers (except in five states where it is against the law to charge different rates for females than for males). According to the study, males are 196% more likely to be involved in a fatal car crash than a female.
In my opinion, the reason that guys are more likely to be involved in a fatal car crash is simply because we are not as smart as women when it comes to cars (sorry guys). In my experience, guys are more likely to participate in dangerous activities simply for the sake of “playing” with their car, whereas women typically just want to use the car to get where they are going.
For example, guys would be tempted to participate in the following activities, whereas I would think that girls would have no interest in doing so…
- Going 140 mph on the interstate simply to see how fast their car can go.
- Go shopping cart bowling at 80 mph slamming the shopping cart in to a concrete post.
- Go down a hill in a neighborhood street at 75 mph (in a 25 mph zone).
- Doing doughnuts in a parking lot or a field simply for the fun of it.
Needless to say, it’s very interesting to explore the fundamental psychological and economic differences between being a male and female. I think the next topic that I will explore regarding these gender gap differences will be seeing whether males or female typically get cheaper life insurance. It should be an interesting investigation!
How about you all? Have you experienced these or any other trends in car insurance premium rates?
Share your experiences by commenting below!
***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/madaroni/4964347820/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Tour de Personal Finance, Stage 16, Round 5 – Posts 1-32
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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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Without further ado, let’s continue on with the 16th Stage (the first and only Stage of the 5th round of competition) of the 2011 My Personal Finance Journey Tour de Personal Finance (to follow all of the action, click on the Tour de Personal Finance category link and scroll down to read all the posts involved in this subject).
Also, if applicable, I will give a brief description of the stage of the Tour de France that took place the same day as the competition.
How to Vote
You can vote for the one article (since there’s only one intermediate sprint today) you’d like to see proceed in the Tour by commenting in the comments section below and telling which are your favorites.
I’ve listed a keyword after each post title to make it easy to vote (as a made-up example, you can just comment: Sprint 1: Mutual; Sprint 2: 401k, etc.) Be sure to comment which one you like the best out of each set of two! Criteria for the best article is completely up to you, but you can use these factors as a guide: 1) post of your favorite blogger, 2) most interesting post, 3) most thought-provoking post, 4) most unique post, or 5) most actionable post.
Here is today’s competitions:
- Getting Started With Your Money Idea (Idea): Don’t know where to start or how to promote yourself? This article gives you the starting steps as well as a stack of ways to advertise and promote for free or very cheap. It is also an excerpt of my book 365 Ways To Make Money.
- This isn’t your grandparents’ recession (Grandparents):
Ever since the recession began I think there’s WAY too much blaming of the victims. I’m good and sick of hearing pundits grumble about how lazy and soft Americans have become, and how we ought to take a few lessons from the Great Depression. Here’s the thing: The world was a different place back then. Heaven knows I’m no apologist for slackers, credit-card spendthrifts or people who won’t take anything but the “right” job, but a lot of the advice our elders offered/modeled isn’t relevant today. Plenty of folks are in big trouble not because they’re lazy, but because of complex personal, local, national and global economic issues.
It appears that the Tour organizers are trying to deliberately keep the race as close as possible as long as possible.
Tomorrow and the next day are uphill finishes, and there is a 41 km individual time trial the day before the race finishes in Paris. These challenging Stages should put a positive ID on a winner! My money is on Alberto Contador for taking out the win at the end!
***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/brettlider/211108923/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Psychological Tricks Retailers Use to Make You to Spend More – The Importance of Smart Shopping in Today’s Society
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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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The following is a guest post. Enjoy!
The Problem
We have all had the experience of walking into a store to purchase a simple carton of milk and coming out with a shopping cart full of other items! It may be funny when this occurs, but it is not by at all by accident. This is due to the fact that malls and stores alike are deliberately set up to entice you into buying more than you need or want.
This is different than shopping for items online. Take looking around the Internet for a credit card for example. At least when it comes to this exercise, you can research online and spend time finding the most suitable card for you. You can use a reputable and informative site to view a whole range of cards offering low APR, rewards, and cash back features.
On the other hand, malls and stores have spent millions of dollars researching the psychology behind shopping. Everything is done for a purpose, and many of these strategies are subtle but effective. The atmosphere, the lighting, the carpeting, and the shelves are all set out within a store to achieve maximum sales of the most profitable goods and to keep shoppers in the store for longer periods of time.
Strategies Behind Store Layout
Have you ever wondered why the toy departments or washrooms are placed at the back of the store? It is because customers have no choice but to walk through other departments to reach them. In this way, customers are exposed to goods they may not have otherwise seen, and therefore, this creates a sales opportunity. It is a clever and common technique employed by most retailers.
Strategies Behind Shelf Placement
High-priced goods are displayed on shelves which allow easy access, whilst their lower-priced counterparts are placed on lower or higher shelves which are not as convenient. In the busy rush of daily life, consumers will often just reach out and take what is there without seeing the cheaper alternatives.
Some manufacturers pay stores more for their goods to be placed within easy reach. Often time, products will be put in some sort of bin or in a particular area to suggest they are a bargain. Check carefully before trusting that this is true as sometimes it is simply a psychological trick. Many times, the items are reduced, but only minimally.
When purchasing perishable goods especially, think about how long they will last. It can be what is known as a ‘false economy.’ You may save a dollar on fruit in the reduced aisle, but if this has to be eaten within 24 hours, it may not be such a bargain. Check the price against regular fruit that will not spoil so quickly.
Sensory Strategies
Psychological research shows that when shopping, consumers are more likely to purchase an item if they touch it. This is why you will find soft cashmere sweaters near the entrance to a store.
Using a shopping cart frees your hands to touch items, which is when temptation is strongest. If possible, use a basket or at least the smallest size shopping cart. Human beings do not like empty space, so a smaller cart will feel better than a larger one. The risk with this is it looks empty, even when you have many items in there.
Conclusion
The best advice is to prepare a list before entering the shop and stick to it. Don’t be seduced by the sights and smells of the store! Be single-minded and you will save money by shopping smartly.
How about you all? What strategies have you seen that stores/retailers use to get customers to spend more? Have you ever encountered or fallen prey to any of the ones on this list above?
What tips do you have for other readers to avoid these schemes?
Share your experiences by commenting below!
Jacob’s Thoughts – Listed below are my random thoughts as I was reading this article.
- @ Strategies behind store layout – Discussing the intricacies that go in to how a store is laid out is a source of un-ending interest for me!
- Just off of the top of my head, the store layout strategy that I see most often is placing the milk at the very back corner of the store. This ensures that all customers (since just about everyone in a grocery store needs to buy milk) must first walk through all of the promotion “discount” items throughout the aisles on their way to retrieve their milky-treasure.
- @ Strategies behind shelf placement – One strategy for product placement on shelves that I see quite often (in addition to placing higher-priced brand name items at eye level) is placing products within one side of the aisle where the highest priced items are on your left and the lower priced items are on your right.
- My hypothesis is that they think that people are most likely to scan products on an aisle the same way they read a book (left to right). This ensures that people first see the higher priced items, increasing their sale.
- Any one else seen this?!
- @ Sensory strategies of cart size – I am definitely guilty of falling prey to this strategy!
- Whenever I go on one of my big once-a-month food/household items shopping sprees at Wal-Mart, I generally continue to buy food until my shopping cart is full. And, if you’ve been to Wal-Mart recently, you probably know that the shopping carts are BIG!
- I imagine that if the carts were smaller, I would spend significantly less. Wal-Mart sure has me figured out! 🙂
- However, since I buy mostly all generic Great Value food/products and will use the food eventually, I consider these “smart” purchases and feel OK spending this money.
***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/james_lumb/5587734031/lightbox/
A Simple Way to Banish Credit Card Interest
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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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The following is a guest post written by Colin Robertson from Credit Card Balance Transfer Offers, a blog focused on the money-saving and debt-destroying aspects of balance transfers. Enjoy!
It Starts Off Small
I Ignored the Offers
Then, I Beat the Credit Card Issuers
How about you all? Have you ever used 0% balance transfer deals to reduce your credit card debt? If so, how did the process shake out? Were there any hidden fees?
If not, what has kept you away from using them? If you’ve never had credit card debt, would you use balance transfers?
Share your experiences by commenting below!
Jacob’s Thoughts – Listed below are my random thoughts as I was reading this article.
First off, great post Colin! I really enjoy these first-hand experience posts about debt reduction. It puts a very human feel to reading a blog, and I like that!
- @ Spending excessively in your first job out of college –
- Colin brings up a very prevalent issue that I have seen all-too-often with highly educated early 20’s graduates with whom I was acquainted at my old job.
- It’s definitely understandable how it would happen: you go to college for 4 years busting your tail to get your engineering degree (or equivalent). You’re most likely strapped for cash and having to cut as many corners as you can on your apartment, meals, car, etc.
- Then, SHA-BAM!! You land an engineering job where right out of college you are earning $60,000 – $80,000 per year. You have no children and no family to take care of. You’re living the high life, and the money is plentiful! Sure, maybe you have accumulated some student debt in your undergraduate days, but the interest rate for that is low, and you have no trouble affording it!
- Because of your new-found healthy cash-flow situation, it’s easy to be tempted to start taking out loans to buy furniture, cars, $10,000 wedding rings, or even a new house.
- However, by simply attempting to maintain some of the same lifestyle you had in your college days, you can really save a lot of money and get ahead in life.
- In my first job out of college, I was able to save about 60% of the money I made. This really enabled me to get ahead, especially since the money was being invested during the recession of 2008-early 2009.
- @ Key to reducing credit card debt = changing your habits –
- I couldn’t agree more with Colin’s point about it being crucial that he not only 1) get the balance transfer to enable him to get ahead on his payments, but 2) that he also make sure to change the habits that landed him with credit card debt in the first place.
- Even with the most favorable 0% balance transfer terms, you’re not going to be able to pay off your debt if you keep on spending excessively.
- @ Using balance transfers to get rid of credit card debt –
- First, I want to add one word of caution for anyone thinking of using a balance transfer. Please make sure to watch for hidden fees. In other words, do what Colin did here and read the fine print! This will ensure that no surprises come your way as you commit to a balance transfer deal.
- Second, I am still trying to decide if I would recommend using balance transfers or not when people are paying down credit card debt. Indeed, there seems to be a split in the advice of personal finance experts on this topic as well.
- On one hand, I cannot argue that using a balance transfer will allow you to pay less interest in the short term. However, in the long run, after the 0% promo deal is up, what will the interest rate be? Will it revert to being 20%? 30%? Will the whole ordeal of finding a 0% balance transfer deal just take away the person’s focus of saving and paying off their debt?
- Because of these reservations I have, in my Helping a Friend Get Out of Credit Card Debt Series, I currently just recommended that my friend focus on 1) calling their credit cards to lower their interest rates and then 2) creating their Debt Free Action Payoff Plan.
***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/alancleaver/4105755730/lightbox/
Tour de Personal Finance, Stage 15, Round 4 – Posts 33-46
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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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Without further a due, let’s continue on with the 15th Stage (the second Stage of the 4th round of competition) of the 2011 My Personal Finance Journey Tour de Personal Finance (to follow all of the action, click on the Tour de Personal Finance category link and scroll down to read all the posts involved in this subject).
Also, if applicable, I will give a brief description of the stage of the Tour de France that took place the same day as the competition.
How to Vote
You can vote for the one article (since there’s only one intermediate sprint today) you’d like to see proceed in the Tour by commenting in the comments section below and telling which are your favorites.
I’ve listed a keyword after each post title to make it easy to vote (as a made-up example, you can just comment: Sprint 1: Mutual; Sprint 2: 401k, etc.) Be sure to comment which one you like the best out of each set of two! Criteria for the best article is completely up to you, but you can use these factors as a guide: 1) post of your favorite blogger, 2) most interesting post, 3) most thought-provoking post, 4) most unique post, or 5) most actionable post.
Here is today’s competitions:
- If I Had a Million Dollars, I’d Go Into Debt (Debt): What would I do if I won a million dollars? This post describes how I’d invest every last penny, scrutinizing tax benefits, risk, returns, real estate, and why I would go into debt — yes, I would go into debt — if I were a millionaire. And don’t just take my word for it: Einstein backs me up, and so does third-world poverty theory. Read this post to find out more.
- What The Piano Tuner Taught Me (Piano): You can learn a lot from a person by their chosen profession even if that profession is not something you fully understand or are familiar with. Their passion, their spirit, their seemingly perfect fit with the intricate details involved – these things are clear when someone truly loves what they do. That and much more is what I learned from Howard the piano tuner. Read this article to learn more!
***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnspooner/2410906296/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Carnival of Wealth #47 – July 17 2011 Edition
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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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Welcome to the 47th edition of the Carnival of Wealth! We at My Personal Finance Journey are very excited to be hosting the carnival again. The last time we hosted was the December 26th Fantabolous YouTube Christmas videos edition, and we very much enjoyed reading all of the articles.
If you haven’t been by our site in a while, be sure to check out our big project for the month of July – The Tour de Personal Finance (a competition for personal finance blog articles). The event is currently in the 4th Round (Stage 14), and there are only 6 blogs/posts left. Be sure to stop by and cast your vote for your favorite article by clicking here.
But, enough of that for now! Let’s get to the Carnival. Listed below are the top 3 editor’s picks for this week’s edition.
Top 3 Editor’s Picks
1. Glen Craig presents What is a Credit Card Number? It’s Far From Random posted at Free From Broke.
2. Kathryn C presents What commitment phobes and investment phobes have in common posted at Kathryn’s Conversations, saying, “What do you think the similarities are between being paranoid about getting married and being paranoid about investing? I’ll tell you! So which one are you? or both?”
3. Neal Frankle presents Bear Market Withdrawal Strategies For Retirees posted at Wealth Pilgrim, saying, “If you are retired and taking withdrawals from your investments, you’re likely very concerned when the market isn’t doing well.”
Congrats to this week’s three winners! The rest of the submissions for this week are listed below.
Credit and Debt
Crystal presents Guide to Debt Prevention posted at Budgeting in the Fun Stuff.
Philip presents How to Pay for College Without Loans posted at Deliver Away Debt.
Jon the Saver presents Is Free Score Any Good? posted at Free Money Wisdom.
Entrepreneurship
Kyle Taylor presents 2012 Elections: How to Profit from Them posted at The Penny Hoarder.
BWL presents 7 Habits of Successful Bloggers posted at Blogging Your Passion, saying, “If you want to be successful with your blogging these are a few of the common characteristics that most successful bloggers share…”
Jason presents Making Extra Money: Niche Selection posted at Live Real Now.
Family
Before You Invest presents How to Teach Kids To Invest posted at Before You Invest, saying, “With so many young people graduating without knowing how to manage their money it is vital that we teach our children how to be smart with their personal finances.”
Investing
Control Your Cash presents This is Enough to Make Anyone a Red Sox Fan posted at Control Your Cash.
Boomer presents Should You Sell The Family Home? posted at Boomer & Echo.
Outlaw presents Can You Contribute to a Roth IRA and a 401K? posted at Outlaw Finance.
Philip Taylor presents Pay Cash or Finance a Car? posted at PT Money Personal Finance.
Maxim Kazawy presents Stocks that are Raising Dividends – July 2011 Edition posted at Best Dividend Stocks, saying, “Most retirees & Income investors know the value of stocks that are raising their dividends gradually over time. Dividend growth can make low yielding dividend stocks in to high yield dividend stocks over time because of the growth of dividends.”
MM presents Volume Indicator Experiment posted at black swans & white crows.
Lifestyle
Eirini H. presents More money will only make you more of what you already are posted at Ask your Dreams for Ideas, saying, “Money is not the solution to any of our problems,financial or otherwise!
Don’t pray for more money. Pray for more wisdom first”
Kevin presents Savings=Freedom posted at Invest It Wisely.
Money Cone presents Focus on Recurring Expenses to Improve Savings posted at Money Cone.
Brian presents Money Saving Tips for Gamers posted at Wallet Watcher.
Money Spending Mommy presents How Giving Up Expensive Habits Can Save You Lots of Money posted at Money Spending Mommy.
Personal Finance
Bob presents 5 Overseas Travel Credit Card Tips posted at Christian Personal Finance.
The Family Wallet presents Five Ways to Deal with Financial Stress posted at The Family Wallet.
Investor Junkie presents Just Starting Up: Loan or Investment posted at Investor Junkie.
Sustainable PF presents My Take on the Emergency Fund posted at Sustainable Personal Finance.
Matt presents What to Do When Your Income Drops posted at Living in Financial Excellence.
Kelly presents Let the Dark Knight Guide Your Finances posted at Frugal Living.
Miss T presents Christmas in July posted at Prairie Eco Thrifter.
FMF presents Six Steps to Financial Independence posted at Free Money Finance.
Melissa presents Ways to Find Free Gifts – A Lesson I Learned from My Son posted at Mom’s Plans.
Money Beagle presents I’d Rather Be Safe Than Sorry posted at Money Beagle.
Paula @ AffordAnything.org presents Property and the Pursuit of Happiness posted at AffordAnything.org.
Dr. Dean presents Cable TV: Can The Cord Be Cut? posted at The Millionaire Nurse Blog.
Tim Chen presents With a Good City Credit Card, It’s Okay to Eat Out posted at NerdWallet Blog – Credit Card Watch, saying, “There’s a thousand credit cards for suburbanites, but a true city credit card appreciates fine dining, entertainment and shopping, preferably all three.”
Alex Young presents 5 Ways To Turn Ambition Into Results posted at Yell0BrickRd, saying, “Ambition isn’t really a valuable commodity at all. Have you stopped to ask yourself how you are different? Why will you be the one to achieve your ambitions rather than the person next to you? There are many people who have ideas on how to make a lot of money, but knowing how to turn ambition into results is the key. Here are 5 keys that can help”
Moneyedup presents Building Wealth Instead of Clipping Coupons posted at MoneyedUP, saying, “One of the big fads right now is extreme couponing. While there is nothing wrong with extreme savings, and many people can save a great deal of money clipping coupons, there might be another way to use your time and get even better results.”
Teacher Man presents Debt Consolidation posted at My University Money, saying, “A good way to beat that 18% interest rate on your credit card is to look into some debt consolidation.”
Taxes
Mike Piper presents What’s My Cost Basis for Inherited Property? posted at The Oblivious Investor, saying, “For inherited property, what cost basis should be used for the purpose of calculating capital gains/losses?”
Other
***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/joeshlabotnik/203777564/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Tour de Personal Finance, Stage 14, Round 4 – Posts 1-32
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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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Without further a due, let’s continue on with the 14th Stage (the first Stage of the 4th round of competition) of the 2011 My Personal Finance Journey Tour de Personal Finance (to follow all of the action, click on the Tour de Personal Finance category link and scroll down to read all the posts involved in this subject).
Also, if applicable, I will give a brief description of the stage of the Tour de France that took place the same day as the competition.
How to Vote
You can vote for the two articles (one from each intermediate sprint) you’d like to see proceed in the Tour by commenting in the comments section below and telling which are your favorites.
I’ve listed a keyword after each post title to make it easy to vote (as a made-up example, you can just comment: Sprint 1: Mutual; Sprint 2: 401k, etc.) Be sure to comment which one you like the best out of each set of two! Criteria for the best article is completely up to you, but you can use these factors as a guide: 1) post of your favorite blogger, 2) most interesting post, 3) most thought-provoking post, 4) most unique post, or 5) most actionable post.
Here is today’s competitions:
- Getting Started With Your Money Idea (Idea): Don’t know where to start or how to promote yourself? This article gives you the starting steps as well as a stack of ways to advertise and promote for free or very cheap. It is also an excerpt of my book 365 Ways To Make Money.
- Bicycle In The City (Bicycle): This article was produced out of both frustration at city traffic congestion, and with optimism for real alternatives to the car. Cars are stressful, from financing the purchase to filling the tank. There must be a better way. Cities that integrate the bicycle and support carless lifestyles are the way forward.
- This isn’t your grandparents’ recession (Grandparents):
Ever since the recession began I think there’s WAY too much blaming of the victims. I’m good and sick of hearing pundits grumble about how lazy and soft Americans have become, and how we ought to take a few lessons from the Great Depression. Here’s the thing: The world was a different place back then. Heaven knows I’m no apologist for slackers, credit-card spendthrifts or people who won’t take anything but the “right” job, but a lot of the advice our elders offered/modeled isn’t relevant today. Plenty of folks are in big trouble not because they’re lazy, but because of complex personal, local, national and global economic issues.
- THE Top 10 Bad Financial Lists (Lists): I grow weary and tired of bloggers putting out Top 5, 10, and 20 lists of various financial things that would make our lives better. So, I have devised a most nefarious, ugly, and downright useless list of financial lists (there is the twist) that could ever be published and still be labeled as SFW (Suitable for Work). Careful reading this, you may find yourself suddenly wanting to write a similar list mocking other bloggers.
Against all odds, Thomas Voeckler is still in the yellow jersey after the first big showdown in the Pyrenees Mountains. However, the overall standings should get sorted out for good this coming week when the race goes through the Alps. One of the showpiece stages is a mountain top finish on Alpe D’Huez (I was actually lucky enough to be able to climb this mountain on a bike in 2008, and let me tell you – it is HARD!).
***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/puliarfanita/3311290609/
July Blogging Goals Update
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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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In January of this year, I wrote a post detailing some of my blogging goals, targets, and dreams for the year of 2011. When I did this, I also added a reminder on my Outlook calendar to track our progress pertaining to these goals each month.
I have been sort of bad in that while I have been tracking these goals offline, I have not published an update on my blog since April (only so many hours in the day, right?!).
My goal for today’s post is to rectify this!
By tracking blogging goals, I am hoping that it provides us with more accountability and visibility to what we are doing and where we want to go with this community/blog.
So, here goes! The blog goals for 2011 are as follows, with progress updates given in bold type, current as of July 2011.
- Obtain Alexa ranking of 200k or less. Dream goal = 100k. Currently, we are at 91,000. We were cruising along pretty steadily at 110,000. However, we have since dropped due to some good visits as a result of our Lost Decade guest post at Yakezie.com as well starting up the Tour de Personal Finance.
- Read and interact with (comment) 5 partner blogs per day. Currently below this average, but hope to improve. However, we have been doing well these past few months at reading through every post submitted to the blog carnivals that we’ve hosted..
- Continue active participation as a proud Yakezie Personal Finance Blog Network member. On track. Have posted a total of 1437 comments on the Yakezie Forums advising, learning, and interacting with others. Also, I have now coordinated ~8 advertising campaigns, bringing in a total of >$5000 revenue (and counting!) to partner blogs and have hosted the 4th Yakezie Blog Swap. I also helped to screen part of the ~1049 essays submitted to the 2nd Yakezie Writing Contest.
- Publish 3-5 blog posts per week. On target for this average currently. I’m very proud that I’ve kept up the consistency! I think I’ve found my “comfort zone” in posting frequency with posting one post per day Mon-Fri (with the exception of holidays). Having a break from posting on the weekends really gives me a chance to sit down with some quiet time and write good content!
- Obtain 200 unique visitors per day average by end of 2011. Currently averaging 203 per day. I was up to 307 average per day back in March before I had to focus more time in to my graduate program’s classes. I’ve heard from some of my blogging friends that traffic levels are very seasonal, with big drops happening in the summer. So, it will be interesting to see if traffic picks up in the fall/winter months when people are more often around their computers!
- Host all personal finance blog carnivals (Festival of Frugality, Best of Money, Tax Carnival, Carnival of Personal Finance, etc). Have hosted all blog carnivals that have allowed me! If any one out there needs a host in the future, just send me an email!
- Grow Carnival of Passive Investing to point where someone would be proud to host it. Have now had 7 editions of the carnival. Three were hosted by me, and the last four were hosted by Canadian Finance Blog, A Rich Life, Free Money Wisdom, and The College Investor. The top articles in the last two editions (May and June) were selected by two passive investing book authors – Larry Swedroe and Rick Ferri. We were very honored to have their help! The July carnival will be hosted by Wealth Informatics. Submit your passive investing posts by clicking here.
- My next moves for the Carnival are to a) continue getting passive investing authors involved and b) start reaching out to financial journalists (maybe from Kiplinger’s or Money Magazine, etc) and/or financial reports on TV. We’ll see how it goes!
- Continue to spread word about benefits of passive investing over active investing. Get involved in BogleHeads forums as well. Need to do this more. I have done a good job organizing the Carnival of Passive Investing, but have neglected visiting the BogleHeads forums. However, I just placed an automatic weekly recurring reminder on my Outlook calendar to try to increase my participation.
- Write and publish 1 guest post for another blog per month. On target with this goal. Have guest posted once this year on Free Money Finance, twice on InvestorJunkie.com (a review of Sharebuilder and a review of Vanguard), once on Yakezie.com, once on Budgeting in the Fun Stuff, and guest posted a total of five times during the 2nd-6th Yakezie Blog Swaps.
- Create an eBook on one of the following topics – a) Ways to be Frugal b) Investing Strategy c) Steps to Buying a Home. Ongoing, but have not yet started.
- Possibly transfer blog to WordPress hosting???? This is still a maybe. I am leaning more towards not going to WordPress. I know that it limits me from doing some things, but with weekly manual backups, I feel safe using Blogger for now.
- Create newsletter – “X Number of Weeks to a Frugal Lifestyle”. Ongoing, but have not yet started.
- Two free giveaways / contests during 2011. Have hosted 4 giveaways so far this year – a $25 Amazon gift card to the best cheapskate story, a $25 Wal-Mart gift card for the best passive investing article from the March 31st Carnival of Passive Investing, an H&R Block At Home giveaway of 5 tax software codes, and 3 sets of 500 free business cards from Allbusinesscards.com.
- Put together material to present to groups and or classes on personal finance. Ongoing, have not done yet.
- Attend blogging, marketing, finance, or real estate classes at local community college or nearby conference locations. Need to search for seminars. Found classes offered at local community college in blogging and marketing. Have not made any progress on this yet.
- (New as of July, 2011) Submit blog posts to 5 blog carnivals each week to expose my blog to new audiences and build links. Have been doing well at this for the past 3 months or so. Hope to continue!
- (New as of July, 2011) Successfully execute Tour de Personal Finance in July this year and each July in the future. For 2012, plan further ahead of time to gather more entries (max = 64) and get some sponsors involved. If get sponsors, donate 50% of the earnings of the event to a charity chosen by the yellow jersey winner of the event. 1st round of Tour de Personal Finance going on right now!
How about you all? What goals did you set for 2011? How are you progressing in achieving them?
Share your experiences by commenting below!
***Photo courtesy of http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2622/4207563765_954cd50863.jpg
Tour de Personal Finance, Stage 13, Round 3 – Posts 1-8 & 33-40
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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
————————————————————————————————————————
Without further a due, let’s continue on with the 13th Stage (the fourth and final Stage of the 3rd round of competition) of the 2011 My Personal Finance Journey Tour de Personal Finance (to follow all of the action, click on the Tour de Personal Finance category link and scroll down to read all the posts involved in this subject).
Also, if applicable, I will give a brief description of the stage of the Tour de France that took place the same day as the competition.
How to Vote
You can vote for the two articles (one from each intermediate sprint) you’d like to see proceed in the Tour by commenting in the comments section below and telling which are your favorites.
I’ve listed a keyword after each post title to make it easy to vote (as a made-up example, you can just comment: Sprint 1: Mutual; Sprint 2: 401k, etc.) Be sure to comment which one you like the best out of each set of two! Criteria for the best article is completely up to you, but you can use these factors as a guide: 1) post of your favorite blogger, 2) most interesting post, 3) most thought-provoking post, 4) most unique post, or 5) most actionable post.
Here is today’s competitions:
- How to feed a family of 6 on roughly $200 per week (Family): Groceries account for one of the highest household expenses. However, it is also a variable cost that we can all budget for. Nikki Holloway, a Canadian mother from Arrowwood, AB, who feeds 6 on roughly $200/week, has provided her top 11 tips to putting the money back in your bank account and not on your plate.
- Getting Stated With Your Money Idea (Idea): Don’t know where to start or how to promote yourself? This article gives you the starting steps as well as a stack of ways to advertise and promote for free or very cheap. It is also an excerpt of my book 365 Ways To Make Money.
- If I Had a Million Dollars, I’d Go Into Debt (Debt): What would I do if I won a million dollars? This post describes how I’d invest every last penny, scrutinizing tax benefits, risk, returns, real estate, and why I would go into debt — yes, I would go into debt — if I were a millionaire. And don’t just take my word for it: Einstein backs me up, and so does third-world poverty theory. Read this post to find out more.
- I Refused To Pay Someone What I Was Charged (Refused): What do you do when the value of a service or product doesn’t match the price you were charged? In this personal finance story, you’ll find out how my situation played out (it may not be what you think) and what you can do if you find yourself in a similar situation.
***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/petitbrun/5809291874/sizes/z/in/photostream/