The Best of: Carnivals and Festivals February 3 – 9, 2007

There were several great carnivals and festivals this week, but I just did not have enough time to go through all of them. I am listing here some of my favorite entries from among the articles I managed to read. If you find that other articles should have been mentioned, please do list them in the comments for me and the other readers. Thank you! So here we go.

This week, the Festival of Frugality was hosted by Dawn at Frugal For Life. Even if you have very little time, I highly recommend that you check this out! Dawn has placed a picture in lieu of each article, and since "a picture speaks a 1000 words", this is a festival of 1000 words. And to help people decide which article to choose, you just have to roll your mouse over the picture and it will show you a snapshot of the original blog. Very creative! I suspect people with dial-ups or whose browsers don’t show the pop-up synopsis, might not appreciate the creativity though :( Anyway, my favorites are -

• Making Flowers Last at Frugal Upstate has some great tips to make your flowers last longer. Just like Jenn (the author), even I don’t get flowers too often. So, when I do, I cherish them and try to make them last as long as I can. These tips will come in real handy, when I receive flowers next!


• Easy grocery shopping at MyGroceryDeals.com at My 1st Million At 33 has a nice little tip about finding grocery deals at your local store. I usually don’t clip coupons for grocery shopping, but if I do find any coupons at the store (my store keeps the coupons next to the item), I sure use it! I should check out this site to find the best deals before hand and decide which store to go to.


• Borrow, Barter, Buy Used: Espousing The Frugal Lifestyle by the silicon valley blogger at The Digerati Life discusses an anti-consumerism group called "The Compact". The ideal seems really great, but personally, I doubt if I have that much self discipline :(

The Carnival of Personal Finance, was hosted this week at The Simple Dollar. Trent, the host, really made it easier for the rest of us, by scanning through the posts and listing a couple of lines that best describe the posts. My favorites are

• Mail-In Rebates, Psychology, And An Interesting Analogy at Money, Matter and More Musings is an interesting article on mail-in rebates. I absolutely detest mail-in rebates and resort to them only if it’s too good a deal to pass by (it seldom is!). I enjoyed reading this article, and particularly, liked the picture that Golbguru (the author) added at the end :)


• I liked What Teaching Taught Me about Money: A Financial Lesson Plan at The Frugal Duchess because it seems like, ever since I started blogging about personal finance, I can see money lessons at all sorts of unexpected places! I can so relate to this article, and Sharon’s thought process!


• Probargainhunter has a list of tips on TurboTax discounts and promotions. If you haven’t yet done your taxes and plan to use Turbo Tax, you should definitely check this out!

The last carnival in today’s “Best of” is the Festival of Under 30 Finances hosted at Endless Gibberish. My favorites article from this festival is When's it time to "grow up" and upgrade your stuff? (& does it have to break the bank?) at Money & Values. Most frugal pundits tell new grads that the best way for them to save during the first few years after graduation is to "continue living like a student". Penny Nickel, the author of this post, wonders when is a good time to stop living like a student and move on. It’s a very nice read, and there are several great comments too (which the Penny Nickel summarized here).

That’s about it for today. I hope you enjoy these finds as much as I did!

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