I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Archive for the ‘carnivals’ Category

This week, I started a Carnival of Snowflakes.  The first edition will go live at Snowflake Revolution on Thursday, and is designed to highlight great snowflaking-related articles from the past few weeks.  Submissions must be directly related to and mention the snowflaking concept, but are certainly not limited to debt reduction in the least.   I’m looking forward to a fun carnival on Thursday!

In my “other” life, offline, I am a taekwondo instructor, and this week, that part of my life somewhat took over.  My head instructor hosted a tournament here yesterday and I have spent the majority of the past few days completely immersed in helping with that.  Besides being part of the host schools, I also am on the tournament staff for our region, so I had many hats to wear this past week.  So I really didn’t get a chance to read much of my feed reader at all and have a lot of great blog posts to catch up on this week!  I did want to mention a few articles that caught my eye this morning while I was starting to catch up:

• Plonkee Money:  Supercharging the Debt Snowball.  Plonkee explains how moving money can make the smallest balance also the highest interest.  I did a bit of this when I moved my credit card debt to a 0% interest card, but nowhere near the amount explained here.
• Mrs Micah:  How Micah Sent Me Roses In Italy For $30.  Awww.  New love is cute. 
• Single Guy Money:  Setting Up A Special Savings Account.  SGM is saving up in a special account for a few purchases - he’s using ING like my spouse does for his Playstation account.

Have a great Sunday and if you are having nice weather, take advantage of it!

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This week I entered 5 carnivals (well, one was a festival) and was happy to be included in all of them. I even was an editor’s pick in two of them, which brings my total for this year to 19. Hurrah! Let’s get to the roundups!

The Carnival of Personal Finance was at Gather Little by Little and was a tour of his home state, North Carolina. My post Sometimes it Is the Amount of Money You Make was included as an editor’s pick. Thanks Gibble! A post that immediately caught my eye were:

• Tales From The Road Less Traveled: Emotional Spending. For me it is always harder to resist emotional spending when it involves my kids.

The Carnival of Debt Reduction was at Credit Addict and my assertion that I’ll Do What I Want With My Economic Stimulus Check was also selected as an editor’s pick. Thanks Nickel! A post I might have a lot of fun with was:

• Blueprint for Financial Prosperity: Write Goals on Credit Cards. I don’t use my credit card but maybe if I wrote “Eradicate Debt” on the front of my debit card it would help me out when I want a Sonic limeade.

The Carnival of Money Stories was at The Baglady and included my submission about How I Started Snowflaking. I saw too much of myself in this story:

• Free Money Finance: Do You Buy Things And Never Use Them? I hate when I find things I bought and never actually used. Use your stuff or get rid of it!

The Festival of Frugality was at Rather Be Shopping and included my explanation of Why A Tailor is Frugal. Seeing the title, I had to read this:

• Destroy Debt: How to NOT Live on a Budget. Gives hacks and ways to budget without calling it budgeting.

And last but not least The Carnival of Money Hackers was at Be Thrifty Like Us and included my post about my wallpaper removal nightmare. Hey, I wonder if I won that drill? This title made me giggle:

• Finance Gets Personal: Oh Hail No! Do I Have The Right Insurance Deductible? I too have a $250 deductible for now. I know I “should” have a $1000 one and save $750 more for “just in case” but until the debt is diminished, that money is too precarious. I was happy it was only $250 when that stupid moving truck hit my parked car. I did get it back but I had to wait 3 months.

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This week I entered four carnivals that have gone live as of this posting, and in all four, my submission was an editor’s pick. Hurrah! Thanks to all the hosts for that great honor! This boosts my editor’s pick count for 2008 to 17, more than a third of the way to my 50 picks in 52 weeks goal. Yay! I entered one more carnival this week but it posts on Fridays so will be part of next week’s roundup or in my Sunday link love. On to the carnivals!

The Carnival of Personal Finance was at MoneyNing and my post about Budgeting on an Irregular Income was selected as an editor’s pick! Thanks so much!! Another post that I enjoyed from that carnival was:

• Free From Broke: Four Ways I Upgraded Out Of My Raises. For us, I don’t even know how we upgraded out of our raises. we just… did. This year will be different, I decided. Although, since we just raised the 401K contribution, my spouse’s raise might just bring his take home back to what it was a month ago, depending on what it is. But - we will not upgrade!

The Carnival of Debt Reduction was at Real World Really, and only included the editor’s favorite ten posts. Luckily, my submission, Earning More Doesn’t Help If You Don’t Spend Less, was one of them! Another of the ten that I particularly enjoyed the illustrations in was:

• Broke Grad Student: An Illustration of Why Saving Money is Harder Than Spending Money. Watch out for that cliff!

The Carnival of Money Stories was at The Financial Blogger and was really amusingly interspersed with what his old man would think about everything. My post, A Tale of Two Doctors, was also an editor’s pick here. Thanks old man! Being that my son is 3, this post spoke to me:

• Debt Free Playbook: Should A Child Spend the Whole Dollar? I say no. Maybe if that child is 15. At 3, I’m starting to teach my preschooler that we spend but we also save.

The Carnival of Money Hacks was at Mommy Gets PAID and featured my post, Head Emergencies Off At The Pass, as an editor’s pick as well! Four for four, thanks! Among the real life people named Hacker I found this gem:

• Think Your Way To Wealth: Avoiding the “Free Lunch” to Save Money. When is free not really free? And seriously that is one of my hugest pet peeves, when free isn’t actually free at all.

That is all for now, thanks so much for all the editor’s love! Make sure to check out the carnivals yourself and find some gems of your own!

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Welcome to the fifth edition of the Carnival of Financial Goals! The purpose of this carnival is to recognize and learn from each other’s financial goals and how we are doing achieving them, as well as learning how to set financial goals. That being said, of the over 80 entries this month to the carnival, only 12 have been included as being about financial goals to keep the carnival focused on on topic.

I’ve split the entries into personal goals relating to finance, and posts that help teach how to create a good financial goal, with an editor’s pick at the top of each category. Enjoy the carnival and be sure to support the goals of other bloggers!

Setting and Achieving Personal Goals:

• Editor’s Pick: Moolanomy looks back at the goals he set for April 1st and grades himself on how well he did as well as sets 2nd quarter goals in Updating My Goals And Shooting For The Stars.
• Being Frugal also goes through her 2008 goals and evaluates how well she did in March Goals Update.
• LIVING OFF DIVIDENDS reaches his passive income goals with Monthly Passive Income Crosses $2,000 Mark!
• My Family’s Money reviews his 2008 goals and the progress made with 2008 Goal Update: Challenge-ify or Die.
• Less Than a Shoestring breaks down how she meets her travel budget goals in Baring My Budget: London.

How to Set Goals:

• Editor’s Pick: Internet Business and Personal Success discusses one of the fundamentals in realistic goalsetting in Expectations and Measurable Results.
• The Human Imprint teaches us about the language of good goal setting with Setting objectives.
• Marketing and Fundraising Ideas makes the distinction between dreams and goals in Powerful Yet Reasonable Goals.
• Raag Vamdatt discusses how to achieve your goals through compounding with Start saving early and gain from Compounding - Early bird gets the worm.
• Get Financially Fit shows how to use goals to create a financial plan with Create a financial plan.
• Millionaire Money Habits explains that different people come at the same goal in different ways in How to Save a Million Dollars.
• Real Estate Investing Business Blog breaks down the concept of goals into bite size pieces with Small Actions = Big Changes.

Thank you to all the contributors and happy goal setting and achieving for April!

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This past week, my work appeared in six carnivals around the web, and in one, the Carnival of Debt Reduction, Small Changes Can Make a World of Difference was an editor’s pick bringing my 2008 total to 13! Thanks to the host, Motherhood101APlus! The other Editor’s Pick is an awesome post from No Credit Needed: Moving Debt is not the Same as Paying it Off.

Thanks also goes to the other carnivals that featured my posts this past week, with my pick from the carnival following my submission:

• The Carnival of Money Stories at Chief Family Officer included my Retirement Advice I Didn’t Want to Ignore.
  • Save and Conquer: Budget Tradeoffs. Some months, like the last one, I do a lot of this back and forth negotiating.
• The Carnival of Personal Finance at Stock Trading to Go included my Practical Illustration of the Power of Snowflaking.
  • Smart Spending Blog: Grow Your Investments One Snowflake At A Time. A guest post from My Dollar Plan about how snowflakes can grow your investment portfolio.
• The Festival of Frugality at Consumerism Commentary included my query Do You Save More With Automatic Savings?
  • The Digerati Life: Rent Instead of Buy - And I Mean Anything! This concept is so bizarre to me… but maybe I can rent out my kids toys hee hee.
• The Carnival of Money Hacks at Bible Money Matters included my post on How To Receive Your Economic Stimulus Check Faster.
  • Mommy Gets PAID: Personal Debts are the Worst. I’m no fan of debt - and I certainly am not a fan of taking advantage of people!
• The Carnival of Inspiration and Motivation at Positive and Successful Lifestyle Tips included my post about Taking a Catch-Up Day.
  • Think Happy Thoughts: 10 ways to Simplify Your Life and Find Happiness. Although if I did #1 I would be decidedly unhappy…

Be sure to check out the carnivals yourself and find your own favorites! Tomorrow I am hosting the fifth edition of the Carnival of Financial Goals so make sure to come back for that!

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