Where To Find Great Personal Finance Writing Online
If you don't know about the Carnival of Personal Finance, it's a weekly round-up of interesting posts from the glut of personal finance blogs and websites that now litter the web. I discovered two of today's posts—the 23 debt-saving tips and the the alkaline-vs-rechargeables story—through the most recent Carnival.
Like any good potluck, you never know what you're going to find in a Carnival, but there are always at least a few useful, thoughtful, or just entertaining posts you probably wouldn't have heard about otherwise. The curatorial duties are passed around to a different blogger each week, which helps mix things up.
This week, Emily Starbuck Gerson at CreditCards.com assembled the collection, and you can see from the list below the wide variety of topics you'll frequently find:
- "What it Costs to Own a Home" [The Money Mythos]
- "How Margin Trading Works" [Narrow Bridge]
- "Four Fifteen-Minute Financial Fixes" [Good Financial Cents]
- "Another fantastic unintentionally low-cost weekend" [Beyond Paycheck to Paycheck]
Carnival of Personal Finance
(Photo: kevindooley)
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Comments:
I hate articles that boil down how to achieve financial independence into X simple steps. In such simplistic terms, one of the steps is usually "achieve financial independence." It's usually paraphrased, like "stop spending so much", or "don't buy what you can't afford" or so. But it boils down to that, and everything else is just another way of saying it.
Getting in the mindset that you can live within your means is the real trick. Sometimes that means getting it OK in your own mind that living in an apartment or not having a vacation this year is OK.
That said, I love articles that reinforce what I'm doing right. ;-)
They never suggest being born into a wealthy family, or marrying someone who just won the lottery.
I do not see an RSS feed link on Carnival's page.
@humphrmi:
So many of the articles are repeating the same advice. Of the articles linked to in this post, there is nothing I haven't seen on Yahoo Finance's personal finance page, or in the "Money Matters" section of my local paper. In fact, the only article linked to that I haven't seen before is the battery one, which as discussed elsewhere on consumerist, is greatly flawed as it does not mention the newer low self discharge rate batteries (Eneloops), which are great for things like remotes and clocks.
@Downfall: I don't agree with the snowball method but I can see it's usefullness in some situations.
By paying off the smaller amounts first you're not necessarily saving money but you're winning some momentum, morale, and a willingness to stick with the method to eventually pay off the big bills. As I mentioned not my cup of tea (I would want to pay off the biggest interest rate first to save money) but definitely works for some.
@wrjohnston19283: Funny though how people keep needing hte same advice that's been around for years.
I have a very simple way of determining whether a site is a good place for personal finance: If they advocate for the snowball method, they're not a good site: [en.wikipedia.org]
Sites that advocate a more traditional highest interest method get my seal of approval.
The debt snowball method is so illogical I registered just to talk bad about it. It's like finding a history site that says FDR knew Pearl Harbor was coming-- very disappointing.