The Best of: Carnivals and Festivals January 20 – 26, 2007

Lot of great carnivals and festivals this week. Here are some of my favorite entries.

The Carnival of Personal Finance, was hosted this week at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity. As usual, this carnival had several great articles. My favorites are -

• College costs: How to Get Some Aid at taking control over money is a detailed overview of the FAFSA application for student aid. If you are looking for need-based aid for college and haven’t yet applied, you should start soon, since the earlier you apply, the better your chances are. Before starting though, take a look at the above mentioned article. It’s a lot of very good information that can take a bit of the pain out of the whole process.


• Notes from 20/20’s Special “Flat Broke” at Frugal Law Student is a nice overview of the 20/20’s coverage of debt. I wanted to catch that show but missed it. The Frugal Law Student has done a great job providing an overview and some commentary.


• Saving $ on telephone costs with VoIP at Trying to get it right has a great tip for saving on your phone bill.

As always, the Festival of Frugality, hosted this week at The Simple Dollar, has some excellent tips for those of us that try to keep our expenses down. The ones I recommend are

• Ethnic Markets: Feel worldly for cheap at Wise Bread is unarguably the best post I have read this week! As one of the reader comments, this article “should come with a warning label: do not read while hungry. Or perhaps: Drool-proof your keyboard before reading”. If you are a foodie like me, you should check it out!


• TV for Free on Your Computer at Frugal Upstate has a great tip about watching TV shows on your computer, at your own free time. I will certainly try that out!

I participated in the Festival Of Under 30 Finances for the first time this week. I was hosted by golbguru at Money, Matter, and More Musings. I loved the fact that this carnival has a unique interactive component where the host asks a question and the folks submitting articles can provide answers if they like. This week's question was While you have student loans to pay, if get some extra money, would you pay of your debt, save for retirement, save for house down payment, kids education or invest it?. There were so many different perspectives on it that I heartily recommend you visit the carnival website to read them all. As for the entries, there were several great ones, and picking some to highlight here was not easy. If you have the time and spend it on going through the carnival, I would say the time was very well spent. If you don’t have the time though, here are a few that might be of interest -

• Top 10 Resume Blunders at Rich Dad Says. It’s a great checklist and if you are looking for jobs, you should definitely go through this list to avoid some of these blunders.


• The Symbolism of Money at An English Major's Money. The English Major’s blog focuses on putting the “personal” back in “personal finance”. This is an excellent post in that category which discusses how outward financial decisions/actions represent underlying emotional states and relationships. A very nice read!


• Good Debt, Bad Debt, No Debt at Ask Uncle Bill is an inspiring story about a college freshman studying to be a teacher. This is what I liked best about that post "Megan told me she gets bored if she is not working or going to school so the heavy load; school and work, kept her active. Plus she doesn't want any debt when she gets out of school." Wow! If only I had that attitude when I was younger, how much pain I could have saved myself from!

Finally, the Personal Development Carnival was hosted by Creating a Better Life. My favorite post here was How To Take Risks at briankim.net.

That’s a lot of reading there. Hope you all enjoy the carnivals and festivals as much as I did!

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