The Best of Finance Blogosphere: Weekly Roundup for Apr 21-27, 2007

I now have a system. During the week, as I find articles that I like, I save the links in a personal bookmark file and mark them as “very good”, “good” or “so-so” depending on the first response evoked by the article. At the end of the week, I look through my list and write the roundup. So here we go. This week is a particularly good one since most of the articles earned a “very good” from me, with a couple getting “good”. I am a relatively tough critic – so I hope you enjoy these picks!

Jealousy/Envy? is a really nice post on the blog Living Almost Large that looks at the attitudes people have towards those that make a lot of money. I like thought-provoking posts and this one had me looking into myself and wondering, “Do I get jealous when I see/meet people who make more money than me? or do I use it as a motivation to push myself to get there as well?” Well, unfortunately the honest answer is “a little bit of both”. I still have a long way to go before I eventually reach the Zen state of "no envy" :)

J.D. at Get Rich Slowly has an interesting article titled Which Should You Choose: Joint or Separate Finances? in which he talks about the reasons why he and his wife chose separate finance and discusses the pros and cons of this decision. I like the post because it does not impose one view on everyone. As J.D. mentions, the bottom line is: “What’s most important is honesty and communication. Any system in which the partners are open about their money habits is a good one. Ultimately, it comes down to this: Do what works for you.”

Golbguru at Money, Matter and More Musings has a quirky post about Stuff That’s Painful When Piled. While I expect debt, bills etc to be on that list, I would not have thought to put stitches (remember, “a stitch in time…”?), emotions etc. on the list :) An interesting read – check it out. I have come to *expect* an interesting take on things on Golb’s blog – after all, his tag line does say “Personal Finance Doesn’t Need To Be Boring!”

Ben at Money Smart Life got a bunch of other bloggers together and investigated the issue of Emergency Funds. Since this series of articles has so many different authors and so many different perspectives, it makes for a very interesting and informative read. The article I have linked to is the summary Ben wrote based on the what the other bloggers had to say as well as reader comments, and includes links to individual articles based on discussion with different bloggers. While you are there, I highly recommend that you read the individual articles as well.

I strongly believe that the schooling system does not prepare the youth for dealing with “real” life finances and that this should change. So I liked this guest post on Blueprint for Financial Prosperity titled If Personal Finance Were A 4 Year Course in High School. The author of this post is a soon-to-be finance grad and lays out a clear and practical plan of a syllabus for introducing money management and ideas to the youth. A neat post!

If you are in debt, then you should check out this next post. Ramit at I will teach you to be rich invited his readers to share their stories about debt. And man, did the readers respond! At last count, there were 112 comments, several of them multi-paragraph long! And some neat ideas too. Check it out.

Have you received that chain mail urging you to not use gas for one full day, so you can influence the gas companies to reduce the prices? Have you had the urge to go rap someone on their head and say, “moron, think before you forward such mails?”. Well, if you have, then here is a neat little analysis by kgazette on Poorer Than You about No Gas Day: Good Intentions, Horrible Idea, Worse Follow-Through that you can forward back to the person who forwarded that mail to you!

Next one up is a very informative article from Credit Card Lowdown about 10 Common Credit Card Scams and How to Avoid Them. If you use a credit card (and who doesn’t these days, other than NCN, that is) this is a must read. Not only does it cover the well known scams, but also others that are not so commonly acknowledged, and a lot of helpful tips on how to avoid being a victim.

And for the last article in this roundup, an article titled A busy job and blogging, from the blog Making Our Way has more questions than answers and going by the sheer number of grammatical mistakes, it seems like it was written in a lot of hurry. I include it here, because it is something I can totally relate to. These are the exact questions I am asking myself. So, if anyone has any answers, I will gladly appreciate if you mail them to me!

And now for the list of Carnivals and Festivals for the week.




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1 Comment:

Anonymous said...

Heya, thanks for including a linkback to my blog carnival. Much appreciated.