I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Archive for the ‘carnivals’ Category

My mom has been visiting the past week, so I haven’t been keeping up on my feed reader.  So this week’s link love is a roundup of the carnivals I entered – make sure to visit the carnivals and find some great articles to read!

The Carnival of Personal Finance was at Canadian Dream:  Free at 45 and my post, Tracking Pennies was an editor’s pick!  Number 25 this year, hurrah!  I also enjoyed One Caveman’s Financial Journey talking about a tricky issue of Setting Boundaries for Grand Parental Spending.

The Carnival of Debt Reduction was at Consumerism Commentary and included my post 3 Tactics to Get Everyone on Board With Debt Reduction.  I also liked My Dollar Plan presents Turn Your Wasted Money Into a Debt Reduction Plan.

The Carnival of Money Stories was at Piggy Bank Blues and included my post that Life is Meant to be Lived.  I found interesting information in Blueprint for Financial Prosperity’s great post on How to Cut College Costs by 13% – 25%.

The Carnival of Snowflaking was at Greener Pastures:  Responsible Personal Finance and included my post Snowflake Your Raise.  I really liked Debt Elimination Stumbling Block #1: Chasing Butterflies at More Dollars and Sense.  I am also easily distracted and consumed by a random pastime.

Enjoy the carnivals and be sure to check them out!  Especially the Carnival of Snowflaking, I feel almost maternal towards it. 

This week at Prime Time Money I was an editor’s pick in the Carnival of Debt Reduction with how debt sometimes forces you to make the cheap choice. Thanks PT! Editor’s pick #24 this year hurrah!

• Another post I enjoyed was Making the Switch at My Daily Dollars.

I also entered several other carnivals (and a festival) where my posts were featured, including:

The Carnival of Personal Finance at Money and Values with my post about budgets not being an iron-clad contract.

• I also enjoyed I Just Paid a Stranger to Send Me $29 Worth of Worms at One Caveman’s Financial Journey.

The Festival of Frugality at The Financial Blogger with teaching a spender to save.

• I also appreciated Getting Back to Basics at Remodeling This Life.

The Carnival of Money Stories at College Of Cash with how free coffee would have cost me $3.98.

• Who thinks they can get childcare for 3 months for $100? FMF’s neighbors do… crazy!

The Carnival of Money Hacks at Moolanomy with information about delayed economic stimulus checks.

• I really liked this idea to email your goals to your future self at Debt Free Playbook.

Thanks to all the hosts and participants! Go check out some great carnivals!

This week I entered 5 carnivals and a festival, and was fortunate enough to be chosen as an editor’s pick in two of them, raising my year’s total to 23. Thanks to all the hosts who put the carnivals and festival together! I know from experience it is a lot of work to get everything organized and publish a carnival. Here are the great carnivals and festival you should make sure to check out this week:

• The Carnival of Personal Finance was at Money Under 30 and chose my post, You Don’t Need That!, as an editor’s pick.
• The Festival of Frugality was at Quest For Four Pillars and also chose my post, Craigslist Vs eBay, as an editor’s pick. Thanks!
• The Carnival of Snowflakes was at Dreaming of Ferraris and included my post about treating savings as a debt to yourself.
• The Carnival of Money Stories was at Money Walks and included my story about my $5 Starbucks gift card.
• The Carnival of Debt Reduction was at DebtFREE-Revolution and included my post about emergencies and frequency.
• The Carnival of Money Hacks was at Can I Get Rich on a Salary and included my post about the financing paperwork we didn’t need to sign.

Thanks again to all the hosts!

So what’s a blog carnival, and why should anyone care? One of the very first ways I found other bloggers who were working their way of of debt like me was through the Carnival of Debt Reduction. A carnival is simply a collection of recent, user submitted posts, on a particular topic. The links are collected together and presented by the host blog, which in most cases, changes every week. The topic can be very broad, like the Carnival of Personal Finance or the Festival of Frugality, or it can be very narrow, like the Carnival of Snowflaking that I recently founded. Whatever the topic, there is most likely a carnival out there with your interest in mind.

With that being said, I submitted posts to 5 different carnivals and a festival (like a carnival, just a more alliterative name!) that went live this week. In no particular order, here are links to each, my post from them, and another post that caught my eye in each:

The Carnival of Personal Finance was at Alpha Consumer and included my post about how stores will help you spend your economic stimulus check. T minus 1 day until I spend mine on a new furnace… If you haven’t gotten your check yet, make sure to avoid this stimulus rebate scam that MoneyCrashers alerts us to. And the hitman scam as well – yikes!

The Carnival of Debt Reduction was hosted by Rocket Finance who included my latest lament on Why Debt Stinks. No worries, I have even more to come. Besides accepting his invitation to include him in my blogroll, I was drawn to Picture of Wealth’s creating a financial plan, not a budget. I really think budgets and spending plans are two sides of the same coin, but more on that later. Thoughts still need to percolate. A Budget is a Spending Plan with a Bad Rap…. hmmm.

The Carnival of Money Stories is at Free From Broke and includes my entry about healthcare sometimes feeling like throwing money down a drain. And as I ponder my colonoscopy in June, I hope that it continues to feel like I am throwing money down a drain. Earlier I wrote about needing to use my economic stimulus check, and I am not the only one. Pinyo at Moolanomy is also glad his check is coming early.

The Festival of Frugality is at Frugal for Life and included my analysis of the new furnace and how I am becoming frugal instead of cheap. The cheap thing to do would have been to stick a new board in this furnace. My frugal choice will pay off for years to come. And I just couldn’t help it, I had to read Budgets Are Sexy’s post on how Starbucks just got sexier. Apparently you can get free stuff with a Starbucks card. I love and hate Starbucks.

The Carnival of Money Hacks is at Save and Conquer and included my post about how I cut some of my wedding costs. if only I’d cut more of them… but anyway. The very first entry from Oh My Aching Debts caught my eye with 8 ways to save money on a limited budget. I too am fond of #8, although I adore to count, I keep things separate and don’t count money for debt as money I have available unless there is an emergency.

And finally the Carnival of Financial Goals is at DebtFREE Revolution and instead of doing editor’s picks, Ana is inviting the readers to vote for their Reader’s Picks. So if you are inclined, feel free to vote for my entry, Shifting Priorities from Debt Reduction to Savings. I haven’t decided where my vote goes yet, but a contender is The Importance of Savings Goals at This Wasn’t in the Plan. I get too scattered to focus on specific savings goals, but I am doing okay at budgeting for them – so far. I cannot wait until I get rid of the debt and can think about something else concretely…

That’s a wrap for this week! Thanks to all the hosts for putting together the carnivals and festival!

Our yardsale yesterday turned out okay. Our neighborhood has two designated dates each year where the whole neighborhood holds their yardsales, and the housing association does all the advertising etc for it. All I had to do was open my garage and put out my stuff (although I did make a few signs for the event). It was a rainy weekend so not a great one to have a yardsale, but for minimal effort we did manage to sell some baby clothes and a few other assorted items, and came out with $44.10. Oh, and I am supposed to mention that my spouse sold $1.50 worth of computer junk he has been faithfully saving from yardsale to yardsale. This is supposed to make his not getting rid of it worth it. We have another yardsale in August, and he promises he will get rid of it after that (and I also will purge all the stuff we don’t sell then too).

So $44.10 to restart the student loan payoff fund, now that we’ve emptied it to buy a new furnace. Hurrah!

This link love is short and sweet, just where to find the carnivals I was in this week, because I’ve got more link love coming soon in the form of April wrapups. So why don’t you visit a carnival or four and see what else was going on around the financial blogosphere this week? Thanks to all the hosts that included me in their carnivals:

• The Carnival of Personal Finance was at Lazy Man and Money
• The Carnival of Debt Reduction was at Broke Grad Student
• The Festival of Frugality was at Sound Money Matters
• The Carnival of Money Hacks was at Money Hacks

Have a great Sunday morning!