Category Archives for Blogging

$201.40 Giveaway – Community and Charity 10% Monthly Blog Income Give Back # 2 – November 2011

• 1) The readers – Obviously, without you here to read my articles and interact with my ideas, there would be no blog in the first place (let alone blog income). As such, it is only fitting that you receive a portion of any blog income.
• 2) Charitable organizations – If you’ve read my blog before, you know that I’m a big believer in donating a portion of my money to charity. Each year, I donate between 5-10% of my income to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society as part of the Bike for MS fundraiser that I do. Beyond the good that is done by donating your money, getting used to contributing to charity is also a good practice to emulate the actions of affluent individuals (T. Harv Eker discusses this in his book, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, which I would definitely recommend reading if you have a few hours).

Like last month, I’ve decided to use the new RaffleCopter giveaway management tool to handle sign-up facilitation for the November giveaway, so simply go through the steps listed in the widget below to enter the running for the prizes. Since this month marks the 2nd month of the launch of the new My Personal Finance Journey Newsletter, I’d like to get as many people signed up as possible, so spread the word! 

There is no limit to the amount of points you can earn. If you refer 10 subscribers – your name will have accumulated 170 entry points! Or, if you link to the giveaway more than once, you can accumulate those 7 entry points multiple times. You can also retweet the giveaway once per day. In the event of a tie, I will be using a random number generator to select the winner.

Important instructions: After you complete an entry method, make sure to click and fill out the “I Did This” button in the widget so that I have a record of your points.

Remember, the deadline for entries will end at midnight on November 30th, 2011 (~2.5 weeks from today). Good luck to you all! Please contact me if you have any questions. After the deadline for entries passes, the winners will be contacted via email to receive their prize and select this month’s charity organization for the donation.

***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/runytry/5188899842/sizes/m/in/photostream/

10% Blog Income Give Back # 1 Winners and Charity Selected!

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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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Approximately 2 weeks ago on October 31st, the first ever My Personal Finance Journey Community and Charity 10% Blog Income Give Back came to an amazingly successful close. As such, I wanted to share the results of the October give back with you all today.

I apologize in my delay in sharing these results with you all, as I have been traveling to New York City and tied up with work in my Alzheimer’s disease lab for the past few weeks. Things have been slightly crazy to say the least!

October 10% Blog Income Give Back Set-Up

As described in the original October Give Back post, the October 2011 10% Blog Income Give Back was set up in the following way:

• $205 total blog income to give away – $105 going to My Personal Finance Journey readers and $100 going to the charity selected by the giveaway grand prize winner.
• $105 in prizes available to two readers was broken down in the following way – 
• 1) Grand Prize = $75 cash via PayPal.
• 2) 2nd place prize = $30 cash via PayPal.

October 10% Blog Income Give Back Entry Points Summary

During the 3 weeks that entries in to the giveaway were open, there were a total of 1229 entry points accumulated by approximately 66 readers.

I used the relatively new Rafflecopter giveaway tracking/management tool, and I was very satisfied with the experience! It made counting up the entry points much easier since I could export and sort them by entrant using Excel. Rafflecopter also has a nice feature that allows you to use a previous giveaway as a template for a new one. This will greatly streamline setting up this month’s (November) 10% blog income give back. More details on this will follow shortly.

Some significant highlights of the results of the entries are described below:

• 19 people filled out the Site Feedback Questionnaire. I really appreciate everyone doing this, as it helps me out greatly to know how to change/tweak this site in order to serve the readers better. I’m reading through everyone’s suggestions and feedback now. 
• 32 subscribers signed up to the new free My Personal Finance Journey Intelligent Financiers Newsletter. 

Give Back Winners and Charity Selected

Ultimately, Corey from 20’s Finances and T. Alexander were the Grand Prize and 2nd place prize winners, respectively. Corey received $75 cash via PayPal, and T. Alexander received $30 cash via Paypal. Congrats winners!!!


The charity selected by Corey from 20’s Finances for the 5% blog income ($100) donation was Greenpeace. The $100 donation was processed on 2-November-2011.

If you’re like me and are not very familiar with Greenpeace, pasted below is a quoted excerpt from Greenpeace’s donation page explaining what their purpose is:

Greenpeace’s mission is to expose global environmental problems, ensure that the Earth is able to nurture life in all its diversity and promote solutions for future generations.

Greenpeace is a force for hope. We are independent and non-partisan. We do not solicit donations from corporations or governments and rely on individuals to make our work possible. 

Greenpeace Fund supports our educational and public outreach efforts, in part, through our Greenpeace Quarterly magazine, fact sheets, and reports about our campaigns. Greenpeace Fund also informs the public about environmental issues through our media operations and supports our scientific and public policy research that is fundamental to our campaign work, both nationally and internationally.

As I understand it, Greenpeace is essentially a direct action non-government funded organization that exists to help to expose actions around the world that are being taken that harm the environment. By exposing these harmful actions, it helps to garner support to correct the problem. It seems they have been quite effective to date with this method. They definitely gather a lot of media attention to say the least! I heard that several years ago, they somehow hung a “Stop Global Warming” poster on Mount Rushmore. I have no idea how they managed to do that!

One of the really cool things about this giveaway was that it enabled me to learn about many charities that I was not aware of previously. Giveaway entrants selected charities ranging from food banks to nature conservation groups to disease research organizations and all points in between. It was really an eye opener!

Looking Ahead…

To conclude, I want to send out a big thanks to everyone who entered the October giveback/giveaway. I’m going to start putting together the November 2011 10% Blog Income Give Back today and plan to start opening entries tomorrow.

The total to give away to charity and blog readers will be a similar amount to last month. $201.40 will be up for allocating for the November giveaway! Should be exciting!

As always, thanks for being a faithful reader and participant in the My Personal Finance Journey community.

Jacob

***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/87913776@N00/404037340/sizes/o/in/photostream/

Easy Like Sunday Morning Weekly Roundup – # 3 – October 30th, 2011

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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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Click here to enter my free $205 giveaway for a chance to win 5% of My Personal Finance Journey blog income and give another 5% to a charity of your choosing! Deadline to enter is October 31st, 2011 (tomorrow!).

Each week (even though I missed last week! – Oops!), the purpose of the Easy Like Sunday Morning Weekly Roundup is the same – for me to be able to connect with you, the readers, on a more personal (non personal finance informational transmission only) level, encourage community, and also to give back to the other bloggers around the blogosphere who have mentioned My Personal Finance Journey throughout the past week.

As far as the theme goes, the title of the roundup gives it away. The roundup theme is named after the Lionel Richie song, Easy Like Sunday Morning (which I play once a week while putting this together), to remind us of the importance of slowing down at least once a week to take appreciation for that which transpired over the past few days.

So, without further ado, let’s get started with this week’s roundup!

Weekly Updates from Jacob’s Personal Finance Journey and Life

• I mentioned in the opening paragraph of this post that I missed doing a roundup last weekend. However, I did not mention why. 
• The big happening for My Personal Finance Journey over the past week has been that I spent about 20 hours (the majority of last weekend – hence why I missed the roundup) researching and putting together a historical analysis guest post of the passive investing strategy called The Permanent Portfolio. The late Harry Browne introduced this strategy in the 1980’s, and it has been garnering much press recently due to favorable performance by the actively managed Permanent Portfolio mutual fund.
• I won’t go in to the details of what The Permanent Portfolio is (you can read all about it in a good post by J.D. at Get Rich Slowly if you’re interested), but I submitted the post to Ramit at I Will Teach You to Be Rich to see if he’d be interested in featuring it as a guest post on his site. I hope to hear back from him this week about whether it’s a good fit or not. 
• One of my higher-priority blogging goals for the 2H2011 is to guest post more (at least once a month) in order to expand the audience reach of my site, so this was a good step in the right direction.
• As far as my personal finances go, this past week has been slightly atypical in that I’ve spent more money than normal on going out to eat and office/school supplies (had to purchase a new backpack and some office supplies aka blogging expense items!). However, I didn’t get too out of control, and the spending ended up being within allowable limits. This last week served as a good reminder of why I make sure to transfer a certain percentage of money as it is received to my savings accounts before having a chance to spend it.
• As far as my life in general, this past week, I have been continuing my graduate school research in Alzheimer’s disease in my lab. Myself and another co-worker are running a cytotoxicity assay this week to try to determine if the drug molecules we have discovered inhibit the toxicity of the protein aggregates implicated with the disease.
• In addition, last weekend, I did my first running race (a Fall 10k in my hometown) in MANY months. I felt pretty strong during the race and was very satisfied with my time. You can view some pictures of me at the start and finish lines of the race by clicking here. I would have pasted them in this post, but I didn’t want to get in trouble with the copyright laws. 
• Also, last night, my girlfriend and I went to a Halloween Party dressed as Star Trek officers from The Next Generation. Shown below is a picture of us all dressed it! ENGAGE!!!

My Favorite 10 Posts of the Past Week

Guest Posts from Personal Finance Bloggers on My Personal Finance Journey

Over the past week, there were no guest posts here at My Personal Finance Journey. Let’s change that, shall we?!

If you’re an individual PF blogger (not a company that has a blog) and would like to guest post on my site, please click here to read more details about how to kick off the guest posting process. I’d love to hear from you!

Blasts From the Past

For the first 6 months after I started this blog, I pretty much “blogged in a cave.” What I mean by this is that I cranked out over 200 very good blog articles in this time period, but since I didn’t know any better, I didn’t reach out to other bloggers, get involved with the online community through commenting on other sites, or do any kind of site promotion at all. As you can imagine, some of the articles written during this time period didn’t get the attention that I think they deserved corresponding to the content contained.

The Blast from the Past section will feature one old My Personal Finance Journey article each week that I feel is high quality, but was published prior to my blog having any sort of real readership. This week’s article is listed below:

Why Following Hot Mutual Fund Manager’s DOES NOT WORK! – This post discusses my foolish decision to invest in a “hot” mutual fund, The CGM Focus Fund, after hearing about its praises from a book written by Jim Cramer. Boy, was he wrong and did I make a mistake! Take a look at this article.

The winner this week is Sam from Financial Samurai for his work with building The Yakezie group (of which I’m a proud member). From what I’ve heard in my relatively short (1.75 years) stent with blogging, blog networks tend to only “come and go.” What’s meant by this is that they are not sustainable because members quit, or when member bloggers become more popular, they get too busy to participate. However, Sam has been able to craft Yakezie in such a way that nearly everyone that joined a year ago when I did STILL participates actively today. Pretty cool stuff. Nice work Sam!

If you know of someone in the PF blogging world that is really doing amazing things, feel free to send me an email for consideration in future roundups.

Giveaways

Blog Carnivals Featuring My Personal Finance Journey Articles

Top 10 Referring Sites to My Personal Finance Journey This Past Week

However, I have several other domain names purchased, and I am currently learning WordPress Self-Hosted to get these sites live as soon as time allows! I’ll be sure to keep you all updated on progress.

Well, that wraps up this week! If you have any suggestions or recommendations for things you’d like to see in this weekly roundup, just let me know by sending me an email!

As always, thanks to all the readers for creating such a great community here at My Personal Finance Journey. Your interaction is what keeps me going on this blog!

Until next time – Jacob

Easy Like Sunday Morning Weekly Roundup – # 2 – October 16th, 2011

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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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Click here to enter my free $205 giveaway for a chance to win 5% of My Personal Finance Journey blog income and give another 5% to a charity of your choosing! Deadline to enter is October 31st, 2011.

Each week, the purpose of the Easy Like Sunday Morning Weekly Roundup is the same – for me to be able to connect with you, the readers, on a more personal (non personal finance informational transmission only) level, encourage community, and also to give back to the other bloggers around the blogosphere who have mentioned My Personal Finance Journey throughout the past week.

As far as the theme goes, the title of the roundup gives it away. The roundup theme is named after the Lionel Richie song, Easy Like Sunday Morning (which I play once a week while putting this together), to remind us of the importance of slowing down at least once a week to take appreciation for that which transpired over the past few days.

So, without further ado, let’s get started with this week’s roundup!

Weekly Updates from Jacob’s Personal Finance Journey and Life

• The big news for My Personal Finance Journey over the past week has been the announcement that I will begin giving away 10% of my monthly blog income each month, with 5% going to giveaway winners (blog readers) and the other 5% going to the charity that the monthly Grand Prize winner selects. I’d encourage everyone to sign up if they haven’t yet done so already by clicking the link in this paragraph.
• This initiative, along with the annual July Tour de Personal Finance, represent the two most significant, involved, and perhaps even a little crazy (?) thrusts that my blog has done to date. 
• However, as I experienced in the Tour de Personal Finance this year, it was very fun and fulfilling (despite the effort involved), and I’m sure this will be the same. 
• I feel very passionate about this monthly 10% giveaway because it essentially creates a virtuous circle of giving and receiving, where essentially all parties, including the community at large, can benefit. 
• One of my hopes is that doing this might set an example for other blogs to offer something similar (giving a % of their income to readers and giveaways).
• As far as my personal finances go, this past week has been pretty routine, with no huge expenditures occurring. 
• However, I did purchase a $250 season pass to the Snowshoe, West Virginia ski resort for this coming ski season. In running the calculations, I only have to go skiing 3 days to recoup my money, so it’s a very good deal! 
• The main thing I am planning for right now is to save $700 for a trip to New York City in November to accompany my girlfriend (who runs a wine blog called The Academic Wino, which I’d recommend checking out) when she does the New York City Marathon on November 6th. We are also getting close to our 1 year anniversary of being together, so I am beginning to scope out some meaningful, nice, but still economically justified (of course, I don’t want to let any of you down!) gifts.
• As far as my life in general, this past week, I have been continuing my graduate school research in Alzheimer’s disease in my lab. However, since my adviser is out of town this coming week at a conference, I will be teaching the sophomore undergraduate Intro to Biotechnology class that he normally teaches. This will be my first time teaching an entire class period to undergrads. Should be quite interesting!   
• Additionally, I got out yesterday to enjoy the beautiful fall colors here in Virginia and did a 10 mile hike to visit Herbert Hoover’s summer retreat/home. Quite modest for a President of the United States, but I guess what else would you expect from the President during the Great Recession?!

My Favorite 10 Posts of the Past Week

Guest Posts from Personal Finance Bloggers on My Personal Finance Journey

Over the past week, we had two great guest posts here at My Personal Finance Journey. They are listed below:

• Briana from 20 and Engaged posted about What Are the Best and Worst Jobs in the World? as part of the 12th Yakezie Blog Swap, of which I served as the host. You can view my post over at Family Money Values as well. 
• Your Finances Simplified posted about Is Social Security a Ponzi Scheme? This is quite an interesting, but controversial topic. Worth the read nonetheless!

If you’re an individual PF blogger (not a company that has a blog) and would like to guest post on my site, please click here to read more details about how to kick off the guest posting process. I’d love to hear from you!

Blasts From the Past

For the first 6 months after I started this blog, I pretty much “blogged in a cave.” What I mean by this is that I cranked out over 200 very good blog articles in this time period, but since I didn’t know any better, I didn’t reach out to other bloggers, get involved with the online community through commenting on other sites, or do any kind of site promotion at all. As you can imagine, some of the articles written during this time period didn’t get the attention that I think they deserved corresponding to the content contained.

The Blast from the Past section will feature one old My Personal Finance Journey article each week that I feel is high quality, but was published prior to my blog having any sort of real readership. This week’s article is listed below:

A Detailed Look at Homeowner’s Insurance – Pretty much everything you ever needed or wanted to know about homeowner’s insurance, written since I had to learn about this beast prior to buying a condo in August of last year.

The winner this week is Phil from PT Money for his work in spearheading the organization of the Financial Blogger Conference. According to what I’ve read, some of the longer-running (since ~2006) personal finance blog owners had been talking for years about having an official meetup/conference. However, it hadn’t happened because of the no doubt enormous amount of work that would be involved in organizing it. But, this did not deter Phil from coming through with a great conference at the beginning of this month! Nice work Phil!

If you know of someone in the PF blogging world that is really doing amazing things, feel free to send me an email for consideration in future roundups.

Giveaways

Blog Carnivals Featuring My Personal Finance Journey Articles

Top 10 Referring Sites to My Personal Finance Journey This Past Week

However, I have several other domain names purchased, and I am currently learning WordPress Self-Hosted to get these sites live as soon as time allows! I’ll be sure to keep you all updated on progress.

Well, that wraps up this week! If you have any suggestions or recommendations for things you’d like to see in this weekly roundup, just let me know by sending me an email!

As always, thanks to all the readers for creating such a great community here at My Personal Finance Journey. Your interaction is what keeps me going on this blog!

Until next time – Jacob

Is Social Security a Ponzi Scheme?

The following is a guest post from YFS from YourFinancesSimplified.com. Enjoy!

The strain on the system now is the massive efflux of Baby boomer retirees and the high unemployment rate. This means that there are a lot of people drawing on Social Security’s reserves, but there are not enough people paying into the system. Currently, the government is paying out everyone’s benefits. There are fears that in the near future, about 25 years from now, that the government will not be able to pay every retired individual who is eligible for Social Security benefits. The fact that people are living longer lives is also putting a strain on the system.

Without change, Social Security will collapse. In this way, it is exactly like a Ponzi scheme. It has become so large that it is untenable. However, this can be remedied, though that does not mean that we are going to like it. There are a few ways to make Social Security work. First, payroll taxes could be increased, and with that, more money will go into Social Security. Additionally, the amount of benefits that seniors currently receive might be decreased, and the age at which they can receive them will certainly increase.

Returning to Perry’s statement, it is likely that he was being controversial for attention. Social Security will not collapse like a Ponzi scheme, and it is not a fraud. Social Security will change, and whoever receives the added burden will complain, but once we reach 67 or 70 or whatever the required age ends up being, we will all be glad to receive our Social Security benefits.

How about you all? What are your thoughts on Social Security?  Do you agree or disagree with Rick Perry’s view of Social Security being a Ponzi Scheme? How much longer do you think Social Security will be around?
Jacob’s Thoughts – Listed below are my random thoughts as I was reading this article.

• Thanks so much for sharing this guest post, YFS! I’m always happy to have a fellow Yakezie participant do a guest post, especially one on a topic as important as Social Security!
• Personally, I think that calling Social Security a full-blow Ponzi scheme is not quite fair and a little bit of stretch. After all, Ponzi schemes are illegal (fraud) and Social Security is not, as you mentioned above.
• However, I won’t deny that Social Security does have some of the same characteristics, or flavor if you will, of a Ponzi scheme/pyramid scam.
  • It would actually be quite interesting to hear some of the considerations and debates in Congress when Social Security was just being formed. I wonder if they really knew what they were getting in to committing for years to come to a huge government program like this.
• Regardless of what we label Social Security, the fact of the matter is that the United States government and people are stuck with it, as many people rely on this today for supplemented living (a few of my relatives in fact).
• As such, the more important questions I ask are 1) how can we improve Social Security, if at all? and 2) will it be around when future generations (mine, for example) retire? Or, will the funds be totally depleted? Let’s take a look at these questions one at a time.
  • Regarding ways to improve Social Security, I have not analyzed this nor do I know enough about the workings of the program to offer suggestions. However, I did read a post this past summer from Ashley @ Money Talks that discussed an interesting idea of privatizing Social Security. It’s quite an idea, and definitely worth the read!
  • Regarding the second question about whether or not Social Security will still be around when future generations retire, I believe that it will be in some limited form. However, I would strongly encourage against depending on Social Security money for retirement living needs. Instead, invest regularly in a Roth IRA and 401k.
• Another common question that I wonder is this – Are the ever-popular “network marketing” (often called Multi-Level Marketing, or MLM) programs Ponzi schemes and/or pyramid scams? 
  • Some of these common programs include Empowerism, 4Life, Avon, and Amway.
  • Truthfully, it’s somewhat of a legal masterpiece the way these opportunities are set up. The way it works is listed below:
    • The business offers products for sale (makeup, skin cream, vitamins, etc).
    •  The company does not have to pay any full time sales reps, but instead offers the product sales “business opportunity” to individuals looking to earn a part time salary.
    • However, on top of selling the normal company products, the part-time sales people can recruit others to work in their “network” or “team.” The existing sales person earns money whenever new people enter in to their network. So, new money is funding the people already in the organization, similar to a Ponzi scheme.
  • To me, the way these programs are set up seems a little “hairy.” However, they have time and time again been proven 100% legal by the court system, since the sales reps also offer real products for sale.
  • What’s my problem with this, though? The problem I have is that in my experience (I’ve tried Empowerism and 4Life back when I was younger and nieve) and from what I’ve heard from others who have used network marketing, it’s nearly impossible to sell the actual products through these programs. Instead, most people make money on the programs through promoting the business opportunity.
  • So, I ask you all – do you think network marketing programs are pyramid scams? I’ll let you make up your own minds.

$205 Giveaway – Community and Charity 10% Monthly Blog Income Give Back # 1 – October 2011

This past weekend, I did some “soul searching” about what this blog means to me and where I see it growing and evolving in the future.

To make a long story short, I decided that since I have a day-job (I’m a chemical engineering PhD graduate student who does Alzheimer’s disease research if you didn’t know) and do not depend on income from blogging as my sole-source of making a living, any income made from this blog would have more significance to me at a personal life values level if I knew that a portion were being given back to the following places:

• 1) The readers – Obviously, without you here to read my articles and interact with my ideas, there would be no blog in the first place (let alone blog income). As such, it is only fitting that you receive a portion of any blog income.
• 2) Charitable organizations – If you’ve read my blog before, you know that I’m a big believer in donating a portion of my money to charity. Each year, I donate between 5-10% of my income to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society as part of the Bike for MS fundraiser that I do. Beyond the good that is done by donating your money, getting used to contributing to charity is also a good practice to emulate the actions of affluent individuals (T. Harv Eker discusses this in his book, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind).

I decided to give the new RaffleCopter giveaway management tool a try to handle sign-up facilitation for this giveaway, so simply go through the steps listed in the widget below to enter the running for the prizes. Since this month marks the launch of the new My Personal Finance Journey Newsletter, I’d like to get as many people signed up as possible, so spread the word! 

There is no limit to the amount of points you can earn. If you refer 10 subscribers – your name will have accumulated 50 points! You can also retweet the giveaway once per day. In the event of a tie, I will be using a random number generator to select the winner.

Important instructions: After you complete an entry method, make sure to click and fill out the “I Did This” button in the widget so that I have a record of your points.

Remember, the deadline for entries will end at midnight on October 31st, 2011 (3 weeks from today). Good luck to you all! Please contact me if you have any questions. After the deadline for entries passes, the winners will be contacted via email.

***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/newsbiepix/3832702141/sizes/o/in/photostream/

Easy Like Sunday Morning Weekly Roundup – # 1 – October 9th, 2011

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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 thing that has been on my blog radar for quite some time now is to start putting together a weekly roundup. For about 5 months now, I’ve had a general idea about what theme I wanted the ongoing roundup series to have, what I wanted to include as far as content, and the overall purpose.

What’s the purpose, you might be asking? Simple! I feel like with a roundup, I’ll be able to connect with you, the readers, on a more personal (non personal finance informational transmission only) level, encourage community, and also to give back to the other bloggers around the blogosphere who have mentioned My Personal Finance Journey throughout the past week.

As far as the theme goes, the title of the roundup gives it away. The roundup theme is named after the Lionel Richie song, Easy Like Sunday Morning, to remind us of the importance of slowing down at least once a week to take appreciation for that which transpired over the past few days.

So, without further ado, let’s get started!

Weekly Updates from Jacob’s Personal Finance Journey and Life

• Unfortunately, I was not able to get away to attend the 1st ever Financial Blogger Conference in Chicago this past week. However, I have very much been enjoying reading all of the detailed recap posts from the >200 bloggers who did attend. 
• Free From Broke included a very detailed listing of all of the posts around the blogosphere recaping the conference in his recap post, and Good Financial Cents posted an AMAZING video featuring interviews with close to 30 of the bloggers and sponsors. 
• As far as my personal finances go, this past week has been pretty routine, with no big expenditures occurring. The main thing I am planning for right now is to save $700 for a trip to New York City in November to accompany my girlfriend (who runs a wine blog called The Academic Wino, which I’d recommend checking out) when she does the New York City Marathon on November 6th. 
• As far as my life in general, this past week, I have been continuing my graduate school research in Alzheimer’s disease in my lab (see picture of me at my lab work area below, of course sporting the proper PPE!) and have started a new half marathon training program to get ready for the Richmond Suntrust Half-Marathon in mid-November. My best time for this race is 1 hour 30 minutes. We’ll see if I can get close to this this year. Should be fun nonetheless! 

My Favorite 10 Posts of the Past Week

Guest Posts from Personal Finance Bloggers on My Personal Finance Journey

There were no guest posts from other PF bloggers on My Personal Finance Journey this week. Let’s change that, shall we?

If you’re an individual PF blogger (not a company that has a blog) and would like to guest post on my site, please click here to read more details about how to kick off the guest posting process. I’d love to hear from you!

Blasts From the Past

For the first 6 months after I started this blog, I pretty much “blogged in a cave.” What I mean by this is that I cranked out over 200 very good blog articles in this time period, but since I didn’t know any better, I didn’t reach out to other bloggers, get involved with the online community through commenting on other sites, or do any kind of site promotion at all. As you can imagine, some of the articles written during this time period didn’t get the attention that I think they deserved corresponding to the content contained.

The Blast from the Past section will feature one old My Personal Finance Journey article each week that I feel is high quality, but was published prior to my blog having any sort of real readership. This week’s article is listed below:

Ways for Parents to Give Their Children a Head Start in Life

The winner this week is J. Money from Budgets Are Sexy. He won head-over-heels more Plutus Awards at this year’s Financial Blogger Conference than anyone else, runs an incredibly entertaining blog, and spearheads the charitable Love Drop event on top of being a full-time blogger.

If you know of someone in the PF blogging world that is really doing amazing things, feel free to send me an email for consideration in future roundups.

Giveaways

Blog Carnivals Featuring My Personal Finance Journey Articles

Top 10 Referring Sites to My Personal Finance Journey This Past Week

However, I have several other domain names purchased, and I am currently learning WordPress Self-Hosted to get these sites live as soon as time allows! I’ll be sure to keep you all updated on progress.

Well, that wraps up this week! If you have any suggestions or recommendations for things you’d like to see in this weekly roundup, just let me know by sending me an email!

As always, thanks to all the readers for creating such a great community here at My Personal Finance Journey. Your interaction is what keeps me going on this blog!

Until next time – Jacob

Safe Travels to All Finance Bloggers Heading to the Conference This Weekend!

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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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As we all get geared up for the weekend, I just wanted to take moment to wish happy and safe travels to all of my financial blogging friends that are going to the Financial Blogger Conference in Chicago this weekend.

Unfortunately, my schedule didn’t allow me to be able to attend, but I look forward to hearing all about everyone’s learnings and fun stories about meeting face to face after blogging in different parts of the country and world over the past year or two!

So, have fun and be safe friends!

***Photo courtesy of http://viewology.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Thai-Airasia-HS-AAJ-Boeing-737-Plane-Landing-Photo-6-500×334.jpg

Yakezie Carnival – Examples of Selflessly Helping Others Throughout History – September 25th, 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 everyone to the September 25th, 2011 edition of the Yakezie Carnival!


About This Carnival

For those of you unfamiliar with the Yakezie Personal Finance Blog Network, it is the web’s largest, most involved, and most organized group of personal finance and lifestyle bloggers. Participants in the network collaborate multiple times throughout each day on the Yakezie forums and through other mediums. You can view all of the details at the “About Yakezie” page by clicking here.

Each week, the members and challengers of the Yakezie Network submit their best articles to be featured in the Yakezie Carnival. And, today, it is My Personal Finance Journey’s honor to be the host! We last hosted the carnival at the beginning of the summer on June 26th prior to the launch of the Tour de Personal Finance and had a great time!

Jacob’s Deep Yakezie Reflections of the Day – Yakezie Changed My Blogging Life?


In January of 2010, I started My Personal Finance Journey. I “blogged in a cave” for about 6 months without reaching out to any other bloggers, which I found out later was a big mistake. However, I guess this time wasn’t totally lost since I generated almost 200 posts during this time, some of which still get read quite a bit (long chain approach of blogging if you read that post on ProBlogger). 


On July 10th, 2010, I joined the Yakezie Challenge without totally understanding or appreciating what it was (shhh..don’t tell Sam haha). At this point, I didn’t really know what I was doing blogging at all. I didn’t understand the etiquette (I would leave comments such as, “Nice article – check out my related post at this URL.” Blogs probably thought I was spam!), the business, or the communication of blogging. In fact, about 5 months dwindled by before I actually did anything with Yakezie. 


However, in December of 2010, this all changed; I started being very active on the Yakezie Forums and trying to help others in the Network wherever possible. And, I can say with certainty now that I would not be the same today were it not for Yakezie. 


Today’s Carnival Theme


OK, enough with the sentiment, Jacob. What about that carnival? You got it. 


Since the slogan of Yakezie is “to selflessly help others,” I figured it would be interesting to dig up some examples throughout history where people have selflessly helped others, not only in business but, in all walks of life. It’s so interesting to see time and time again that by simply helping others, you actually end up helping yourself in the process. So, enjoy!


To get us started, listed below are this week’s Top 3 Editor’s Picks. Typically, when I host a carnival, it is quite clear what the three winning articles are. However, I find that when I’ve hosted Yakezie Carnivals, the quality of the articles is so high that I often find myself torn between about 8 articles competing for the top spots. 


1. Wealth Informatics: How much emergency fund do I really need? – The amount of emergency fund recommended varies from $1000 to 1 year salary. How much do we really need?

A amazingly good post here from Suba, the resource-post master. I typically recommend simply keeping 6-9 months of expenses in an emergency fund. When I ran the 9 months of expenses figure for Suba’s situation described in this post, I came out with around $12,000 for her target emergency fund balance, which is in the ballpark of what she figured as well with the exception one personal expense item.

So, I think the 6-9 months recommendation is a good way to “keep things simple” and get people started towards an emergency fund goal. However, once they accumulate that savings, it’d be good to go through this list that Suba provides to obtain further visibility and optimization.

2.  Smart Family Finance: Are You Ready to be Your 20-Something’s Financial Advisor? – 7 percent of 20-somethings consult a professional financial advisor, but one in three consult their parents. Are you ready to be your 20-Something’s unofficial financial advisor?

In today’s society, not only are young adults coming back home to live with Mom and Dad, but it is also becoming a trend to use them as their sole source of financial advice. In this post, Smart Family Finance gives a list of the gamut of financial areas on which young adults are seeking advice from their parents.  I have definitely consulted my parents on almost all of the things on this list. However, I always investigate the advice given further to make sure I am taking the right path. So, my overall advice here is that young people blindly taking their parents’ suggestions could get them in to trouble.

3. KNS Financial: A Lawyer Is Forced To Become A Stripper To Make Ends Meet: How Far Would You Go? – A lawyer turned stripper, gives us a picture of what financial desperation really looks like. How far would you go to make ends meet? What would be your first move?

Very good post KNS! In some ways, this reminds me of the “what would you do if you were homeless” Yakezie blog swap we did a while back. In that, people shared just what they would do if hard times were forced upon them. If I was laid off from a “professional” job and couldn’t find another due to the economy, I would try to target jobs that are fairly high paying but don’t require advanced degrees. Some of these include being an airport valet (make lots of money in tips) or Porta-Potty cleaner.

And, listed below are the best of the rest! The selected entries are formatted as follows – 1) Blog title in bold, 2) Post title and link, and 3) a description written by the site owner about the post.

Frugal Confessions: Smart Stores: Consumer Monitoring in Exchange for Your Information – Retailers and manufacturers have developed some pretty crafty ways to monitor and target consumers over the years, like the example above. And people who hunt down deals (frugal people like us) appear to be the ones who are most monitored given the nature of how this technology works.

My Journey to Millions: How Much Will Your Expenses Be in Retirement? – In retirement planning, you don’t need 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, 90% or 100% of your pre-retirement income. During retirement, you need the amount that your budget dictates.

Prairie Eco Thrifter: Is Going Green Killing Our Economy? – While the environmental movement is not the sole cause of a shift in the patterns of our everyday lives, it does contribute. The demand to protect the environment certainly has placed a strain on the economy. In a time like this, it makes one wonder whether it is really worth it.

Live Real, Now: Time vs. Money – My time is valuable. No matter what I do, or how hard I work, I can never get more than my allotment. Why would I waste it to save a fraction of what I can earn by using it in other ways?

Mainstream Mom: Is Extreme Couponing Right for You? – I get that you can save an incredible amount on groceries, and that is fantastic. I save an incredible amount too, I just don’t stockpile it in my garage.

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Selflessly Helping Others – Example 1 – Help Others and You Will Be Helped in Return

Source – http://www.helpothers.org/story.php?sid=21057
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Living in Financial Excellence: 7 Good Character Traits of a Cheapskate – “Cheapskate” is such a negative term in today’s society, but when you look at the definition and characteristics of being a cheapskate, it’s actually a good thing (at least in my eyes). Today, I discuss what qualities define cheapskates and how those qualities set cheapskates up for long-term success.

Invest It Wisely: The Biggest Unknown Risk of Stock Investing – “We say that stocks are risky because we know that prices can suddenly drop hard — stock prices are volatile. But, we also believe that stocks are not really all that risky for those committed to holding them for the long term. In the long term, stocks always provide good returns. By following a Buy-and-Hold strategy, we can overcome the riskiness of stocks.” Personally, I don’t think it is so. I view this as dangerous thinking.

Control Your Cash: Follow these steps for guaranteed wealth, seriously – As a discipline, personal finance is similar to sociology and women’s studies in that there’s almost no hands-on knowledge involved.

Maximizing Money: Why I Finally Closed My Chase Bank Checking Account – After years as a happy customer, I closed my Chase Bank checking account, even though I would have rather kept it open. This is the story of my experience as a Chase customer.

My University Money: The Government Can’t Actually Create Jobs – The government has tons of problems, but their solutions usually add to them.

Investor Junkie: What Do Netflix and Taxes Have in Common? – Now you might be wondering what does taxes have to do with Netflix? Everything! This is a classic example of elastic demand

Free Money Wisdom: Tips for Borrowing from a Family Member–Family Personal Loans – Utilize the information in this article to decide if taking out a family loan makes sense for your situation and what you can do to ensure that you manage yourself in a manner that will equate to a situation that is comfortable for all participating parties.

Mom’s Plans: How We Plan to Tackle Our Debt – We would like to have a significant chunk to put down on a house in a few years, and I don’t want to purchase a house if we have other debt. Here is our plan for paying down our current debt quickly.

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Selflessly Helping Others – Example 2 – Urban Legend About Winston Churchill in a Virtuous Cycle of Giving and Receiving 

“Fleming was a poor Scottish farmer. One day at work in a field he heard a cry for help. Following the sound, Fleming came to a deep bog, in which a boy was stuck up to his chest, screaming and sinking. Farmer Fleming tied a rope around his own waist and the other end to a tree, and waded into the bog. After a mighty struggle in which it seemed they would both perish, the exhausted farmer pulled himself and the boy to safety. He took the lad back to the farmhouse, where Mrs Fleming fed him, dried his clothes, and when satisfied he had recovered, sent him on his way home.

Source – http://www.businessballs.com/stories.htm
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The Frugal Toad: College Students and Identity Theft – College students made up roughly 25% of all victims of identity theft last year.  Find out how to lower your risk of Identity Theft by using these six strategies.

Narrow Bridge Finance: Home Buyer’s Guide Part II: From Offer to Contract – A continued look at the process of buying a home. This article focuses on the steps for making an offer and going under contract.

The Happy Homeowner: Why I’m Taking a Vacation Instead of Paying Down My Debt – If my financial journey were compared to a hand of Texas Hold’em, I have seen Dave Ramsey’s gazelle-like intensity–and raised it by a few hundred Suze Orman “DENIED!’s.”  This article highlights why it’s important to infuse balance in your financial journey.

The Penny Hoarder: 5 Weird Ways to Make Money Recycling – Collecting cans for the recycling center is not the only way to make a buck with your recyclables. Check out these 5 new, very weird ways to make extra money recycling…

Everything Finance: Money and Relationships: What’s the Root of Your Problem? – You’ve probably heard plenty about how money problems and relationship problems often go hand in hand. You’ve seen the statistics, and read about the reality of financial and budget problems and their impact on relationships.

Money Reasons: How I Saved $1190 By Purchasing A Cable Modem– In this article, I describe how sometimes, savings creep up on you.  My cable modem purchase over 11 years ago is one such example!  If you still rent a cable modem, check out my article and see why I decided to buy my cable modem instead.

Stock Market Basics: Best Gold ETF – Invest in gold via the gold ETF, as it is the easy way to invest in gold without the troubles of buying and selling gold in physical form. Plus, gold investment is a must in your portfolio given the state of economy.

20’s Finances: Is it Hard to Time the Market in a Recession? – Offering advice on the best time to invest in the stock market.

Investorz’ Blog: What to Consider When Investing in Commodities –Most investors don’t invest in commodities for one reason or another. But, using the right techniques, trading commodities can be far more profitable than stocks. Here are a few things you should know before investing in commodities, which is a much different world than stocks.

Buck Inspire: Las Vegas Ground Transportation, Mortgage Options – Knowing your ground transportation options will make your travel plans run smoother.  But, knowing all your mortgage options will help you make the most informed, biggest financial decision of your life!

Squirrelers: Save Time and Money by Hiring the Right Home Improvement Contractor – When getting work done on your home, it’s important to hire the right people for the job. This post provides tips on how to go about doing just that.

Krantcents: Am I Training for a Race? – I am in training physically, mentally, and progressing to my goals.

Saving Money Today: Investing in Gold – With gold prices soaring and more investors looking to add some to their asset mix, it’s important to learn the different ways to invest in gold.

Compounding Returns: Trading Options? Keep an Eye on Expenses. – Options for low cost trading. Expenses can cut into your profits. It’s in your best interest to find the lowest fee brokerage.

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Selflessly Helping Others – Example 3 – Want Someone to Save Your Life? Save Theirs First!

In 1996, Kevin Stephan of Lancaster, N.Y. was serving as a bat boy for his brother’s baseball team when someone accidentally hit him in the chest with a bat. This collision caused his heart to stop beating. However, Penny Brown, an off-duty nurse, was in the stands and performed CPR on Kevin to revive him. Kevin recovered from this incident.


Ten years later, Penny Brown was eating in a restaurant and choked on her food. Coincidentally, Kevin worked as a cook at this very same restaurant and had learned CPR during training as a volunteer fire fighter. Thankfully, Kevin performed the Heimlich maneuver and saved Penny’s life.


Fate sure works in mysterious ways eh?!

MSNBC has the complete story here – http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11190559/ns/us_news-weird_news/t/teen-saves-life-woman-who-saved-him/
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Fat Guy, Skinny Wallet: Why I Chose Not To Use Debt Consolidation – Debt consolidation was not the right choice for me many years ago. Find out the details that made me turn away from this seemingly helpful service.

TotallyMoney: How to deal with bringing debt into a relationship – Can debt and relationships work?

Smart On Money: How To Deal With Regular Bills When You Have An Irregular Income – When your income doesn’t come in 24 equal payments spaced evenly throughout the year, it can be hard to make a budget.

Money Q&A: Should You Pay Off The Lowest Balance Or Highest Interest Rate Debts First? – There are several opinions as to which method of paying off credit card and other debt is best. Should you pay off the debts with the highest interest rate first? Or, should you tackle debts with the lowest balances first?

How To Save Money: US Bank Account Comparison For Canadians – A thorough side-by-side comparison of all US dollar checking and savings accounts that are currently offered by the major Canadian banks.

Free From Broke:  Budgeting for Christmas Shopping Before it’s too Late – Start budgeting for Christmas shopping now before it’s too late! Otherwise, you can be stuck in debt. Read this article for tips on how to budget your Christmas shopping.

BeatingTheIndex:The Bet On Rising World Energy Consumption – World energy consumption is rising sharply in the next 2 decades which makes a compelling case for investing in the energy sector.

Broke Professionals: Moving up the career ladder – Have you ever wondered why Johnny Jerk down the hall was promoted to that director slot while you were passed over? Here are profiles of three managers with whom I once worked.

The College Investor: Best 401k Moves – A look at the best moves you can make to maximize your 401k!

My Multiple Incomes: The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Backlinks – A look at the social media options out there and how to use them to create backlinks to your website.

Not Made of Money: Don’t Let Money Errors Derail Your Finances – Everyone makes mistakes: bank tellers, store clerks, and us. I’m never put out when someone makes an honest error. I simply point out the problem and ask them to correct it. If I’m not looking for them, though, those errors can cost a lot of money.

Family Money Values: Why We Have Official Family Meetings – In the years following 9/11, I realized that life is so fragile – it really sank in that we could die suddenly, at any time. The boys had grown up by then and had moved out, but I started thinking about what would happen to them if we did die suddenly and together. That is when I started sharing information about our finances and estate plans with them.  We do so in family meetings and so can you.

One Cent At A Time: What Makes You Feel Rich And Wealthy? – Why do you want to be rich? To have more fun, respect, social status, and a worry free life? I have an answer for you – you don’t need huge amounts of money to achieve all these great things in life.

Our Journey To Zero: Save Your Budget, Spice up Your Life – Reuse That Halloween Costume! – Tired of spending your hard earned money on a new Halloween costume every year?  Here’s some ways to get some extra mileage out of your ghoulish get ups!

Financial Success for Young Adults:Would QE3 Make Stock Prices Go Up? – The speculation surrounding a third round of quantitative easing has investors concerned and maybe a little excited that their retirement accounts will get a boost. Let’s see what would happen if QE3 began.

Well, that wraps up this week’s Yakezie Carnival! Thanks so much for everyone for participating. Next week’s carnival will be hosted by Family Money Values Blog. Get your posts in soon!

Thanks for reading,

Jacob

***Photo courtesy of http://farm1.static.flickr.com/192/471143582_e8b3a758d9.jpg

Tour de Personal Finance 2011 Post-Race Show – Awards Ceremony, Race Recap, and Goals for Next Year’s Tour

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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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On June 24th, I made the somewhat “last-minute” decision to organize an event/idea that had been incubating in my head since about February of this year. What solidified from this jumbled mesh of ideas and random “shot in the dark” intuitions was the introductory post and goal layout for the 2011 Tour de Personal Finance.

Over one month later, the Tour de Personal Finance has ended, a winner has been crowned, and I can decisively say that the 2011 edition of the event has been a great success! The success could not have been possible without tremendous support from the participants and readers/voters. A big round of applause is in order for all of you!

Awards Ceremony

Race Recap

The 2011 Tour de Personal Finance began on July 2nd (same day as the first Stage of the 2011 Tour de France) with 46 participants/blogs.

In order to start and finish in the same approximate time period as the actual Tour de France, the competition proceeded quickly through the first round with 8 blogs (4 intermediate sprints per day). Each sprint was given 3 days for voting to occur, and because of the time frame needed to keep pace with the Tour de France, no adjustments were made in voting based on weekday/weekend scheduling. In the last two Rounds of competition, voting was extended to a four day time period to give everyone a chance to vote.

You can view the complete story of how each Stage played out by viewing the 2011 Tour de Personal Finance Bracket.

When all was said and done, the month-long event featured the following statistics:

• 17 total Stages
• 26 blog posts
• 753 total comments/votes – Wow! That is an awesome amount of participation! Thanks to everyone involved!
• 3,000 page views of Tour de Personal Finance Stages and posts.
• 2,083 unique visitors to Tour de Personal Finance Stages and posts.

2011 Reflections and Goals for 2012 Tour de Personal Finance

As I mentioned above, I think that overall, the 2011 edition of this event went very well.

Listed below are the things that I very much enjoyed about this event the past month:

• It’s enabled me to interact and get to know many new bloggers and readers.
• I’ve learned a lot by reading some of the best articles from each blogger’s site that have participated in this competition.
• I liked how the race started and end of the race stages coincided with the start and finish of the 2011 Tour de France. I thought that was really cool! 

How about you all? What did you think of the 2011 Tour de PF? What would you like to see the different or the same for next year’s event? 


Share your experiences by commenting below!

***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/phillipo/3574507782/sizes/l/in/photostream/