I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Archive for the ‘M-Network’ Category

Don’t forget to go vote in Free Money Finance’s March Madness competition if you have not already! There are a ton of great posts you can discover as well! I’m not sure how long the first round lasts but I know as of right now, there is still time to vote for your favorites in the first 8 games!

Another nifty thing going on this weekend is that Credit Withdrawal is giving away copies of Quicken to some lucky winners! Head on over there to enter to win! excellent!

On to the link love, this is a mix of last week and this week and some of my favorite posts from then – I was too sick to read much last week so I just collected everything up today. Enjoy!

• Gather Little By Little: Save Money – Buy an Engagement Ring Online!
• My Two Dollars: The Affordable Monthly Payments Syndrome.
• Being Frugal: The Evolution of my Budget
• Cash Money Life: Refund Anticipation Loans Suck
• Plonkee Money: Living on One Income – The Single Life.
• Dough Roller: The Seven Habits of Wealth.
• No Credit Needed: Breaking the Cycle of Borrowing and Paying Interest.
• Mrs Micah: Why Cash Registers Need To Be More Like Computers.
• Four Pillars: Role Playing Games and Personal Finance.
• The Good Life on a Budget: How I Got Into Debt.
• Odnal: Save $350/Year on Cell Phone Service

And there’s a blog that i just discovered when she signed up for the Snowflake Revolution – Antishay Ventenne – and she has a lot of great stuff there! My favorites include Why I Don’t Buy Cheap and Goal Setting Philosophies.

Have a great week!

The flu has hit our house hard, and frankly, I feel like I was run over with a truck. I can’t wait for winter to be over!

This usually wouldn’t cause too much of a hiccup in posts to the blog, because I write a bit in advance, but the weekend posts are generally ones I write and post right away (shopping and this link love). So the blog’s been quiet this weekend, but it’ll be back to normal soon. And hopefully as an added bonus, by tomorrow I won’t be sick!

I can’t bear to sit here and type very long so for this week’s link love I want to direct you to Free Money Finance’s Personal Finance March Madness bracket. Personal finance bloggers submitted what they thought were their best posts of last year, and they are going head to head to play for $500 to the charity of the winning bloggers choice. You can download the bracket here, and make sure when the contest starts, to go vote for my Snowflaking: A Primer post. I am playing for the Make A Wish Foundation, a charity near and dear to my heart. There are entries from other great bloggers including:

• No Credit Needed
• Chief Family Officer
• My Dollar Plan
• Cash Money Life
• Lazy Man and Money
• Moolanomy
• DebtFREE-Revolution
• Mighty Bargain Hunter
• Blueprint for Financial Prosperity
• Being Frugal
• Prime Time Money
• Single Guy Money
• Brip Blap
• The Digerati Life

and many more! 64 begin, but there can only be one champion crowned. Hopefully it is me.

Have a great rest of your weekend and hopefully my flu is on the way out the door!

Hope your Sunday morning is mellow and relaxing! Here are some posts from the M-Network and around the web I really enjoyed this week:

Gather Little By Little: The Path To Bad Decisions. Sometimes it is a very short path.

Being Frugal: You Tell Me – What’s Your Weakness? Can I have more than one?

My Two Dollars: You Are Not Your Stuff, Your Stuff Is Not You. Exactly.

Plonkee Money: Sadly, We Don’t Have Time Machines, But We Can Start Now. I completely agree. I’ve felt this way for a long time.

Cash Money Life: 2008 Economic Stimulus Package Explained. There was a lot of debate about this on my blog last week, so i found this great summary to understand it.

Dough Roller: Slow Motion Retirement – A Way To Look At The Rest Of Your Life. I just love this train of thought. Retirement isn’t just a destination it is a journey.

Moolanomy: Stupid Tax – Car Inspection, Commute, and Margin Interest. I am prone to the stupid tax on occasion as well.

Single Guy Money: Modern Day Bartering To Save Money. I do this with a lot of things.

Credit Withdrawal: Joe Sixpack and the Attack of the Ninja Bills. Ninja bills! like my nasty car repair. Be prepare for the ninjas!

We’re In Debt: Buy Whatever You Want – After You Save Up. Amen. But King takes a radical approach and says save for it times 3 first.

Remodeling This Life: Dare To Be Different – Stay True To Yourself. So hard to follow always but also so true, and said very well.

This Wasn’t In The Plan: What Do You Freeze? Cheese? I can freeze cheese?

Odnal – Building Wealth Bit By Bit: The Rule of 72. This has been explained elsewhere before but retirement is on my mind and I like the chart for 69.3 (the real rule, apparently) as well.

Advanced Personal Finance: The Reality of Negative Real Interest Rates. Argh. Yikes. Help me….

My Dollar Plan: What Does Your Life Mix Pie Chart Look Like? This really made me think about my own and what I use my time for, and therefore value.

And in the PaidTwice Rewind: Where Was That Time Machine, Anyway? Yeah… where was it? Argh.

The Superbowl of Personal Finance, that is!

The voting is in, and the results are:

Overall MVP, with 15 votes:

• 8 Reasons Why Small Houses Are Better Than Big Ones – Plan Your Escape

Very close runners up:

• 50+ Frugal Tips, Ideas, and Resources – Moolanomy (14 votes)
• The Importance of Delayed Gratification – Cash Money Life (12 votes)
• Investment Snowflaking – My Dollar Plan (12 votes)

Congrats to Plan Your Escape and the runners up!! The overall tally was Team Finance: 48 votes and Team Frugal: 39 votes… so yay! We won! :celebrate: Thanks everyone who voted and played along.

Here are some other posts I found interesting over the past week from the M-Network and beyond:

• Being Frugal: My Grocery Shopping Method. Just… wow.
• Gather Little By Little: How Can They Afford That? What’s your take on this frugality issue in a popular crime drama?
• My Two Dollars: Should You Do Your Taxes Yourself And Fire Your Accountant? I do mine myself, but I am seriously thinking of hiring an accountant next year as things seem more and more complicated.
• Cash Money Life: Roth IRA vs Traditional – Which is Better? This is timely for me because I am again considering if the traditional was best for my spouse or if we should open a Roth for him in the future.
• Moolanomy: Ask The Expert with Larry Swedroe. I always like this column – I’ve even asked questions myself!
• The Dough Roller: How to Buy Partial Shares of Berkshire Hathaway with Sharebuilder. Maybe I will too.
• Plonkee Money: How Much Money Do You Keep In Your Main Account? I’ve been rethinking this strategy lately…
• Single Guy Money: My Credit Card Companies Miss Me. Mine miss me too.
• No Credit Needed: Living on a Budget: Don’t Knock it til You’ve Tried It. I agree!
• Brip Blap: Job Jumper Tip #3 – It’s Not All About the Money. Money isn’t everything, and more money isn’t always as much as you think after all is said and done.
• Blogging Away Debt: Glorious Special Stickers – How I Love Thee. I love them too! I am going grocery shopping today and maybe I’ll find a great special…

And in the PaidTwice Rewind: sometimes I write tongue-in-cheek posts I think are just kind of amusing, and they turn out to really strike a nerve in a lot of people (good or bad). The post yesterday about stimulating the economy was one of those. A while back, like Single Guy, my credit cards missed me… and that was another.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend!

This past week, thanks to a post that really spoke to a lot of people out there and garnered almost 10,000 visits all on its own, my blog passed 100,000 unique visitors and 200,000 pageviews from August to today. I’m also terribly close to entering the 4-digit realm with subscribers, yesterday I was even up to 988. All these big milestones amaze me and I thank you all very much for reading, commenting, and subscribing!

In the link love tradition, here are some posts that really spoke to me this week:

• Gather Little By Little: Confessions of a Personal Finance Blogger. Glblguy opens up and shares that he hasn’t been practicing what he preaches lately, and swears to get back on the wagon. Good stuff.
• Being Frugal: Your Past Influences Your Present. I really feel this way as well – a lot of “gut instincts” I feel are really remnants of my upbringing.
• My Two Dollars: Interview with Lynnae of Being Frugal. I thought this was a cute idea and I loved Lynnae’s interview! Look for my own interview in a few weeks…
• Cash Money Life: What Does Being Frugal Mean to You? Some good thoughts and ideas here!
• No Credit Needed: Back to the Basics: How to Get Out of Debt. NCN was one of my very first bloggin inspirations, and he continually relates back to the very core of his readers – the in-debt and need-help ones.
• Remodeling This Life:  What Makes a Winner?  Being able to let go of failure and come out and do it again.
• Blueprint for Financial Prosperity:  I’m Not an Early Adopter of Technology, Are You?  Nope, I am so not.  Part cheap, part frugal, part lazy,part broke… I never have the newest it thing.

And instead of a PaidTwice Rewind, I’m rewinding to a series I took part in, the Money Matters For All Ages Project! it wrapped up this week, and here is the complete list of topics and participants:

• Introduction at My Dollar Plan
• Preschoolers at I’ve Paid for This Twice Already
• Children and Pre-Teens at Being Frugal
• Teenagers at DebtFREE-Revolution and Gather Little by Little
• College Age at Mrs. Micah
• The Twenties at Remodeling This Life and Cash Money Life
• The Thirties at Moolanomy and My Two Dollars
• The Forties at Credit Withdrawal
• The Fifties at Millionaire Money Habits and Credit Withdrawal
• The Sixties and beyond at Chance Favors and Rocket Finance
• Retirement at Four Pillars and Plonkee Money
• Wrap up and highlights at My Dollar Plan

Have a great week and do some deep thinking of your own!