July 26 2007 Edition of the Carnival of Financial Planning

Carnival of Financial Planning - July 26, 2007 Edition

Welcome to the July 26, 2007 edition of the Carnival of Financial Planning.

The Carnival of Financial Planning takes a long-term view of personal financial planning for individuals and families. We focus on efficient and sustainable personal financial planning practices that can lead to lifetime financial security. This edition is arranged by subject heading, so that you can browse efficiently.

Enjoy!

The Skilled Investor

Budgeting

ISPF presents Campaign Against Financial Myths: Part 3 - Budgeting posted at Grad Money Matters.

Ryan presents 101 Ways to Trim Your Budget posted at Care One Credit.

Azmi M. presents Budgeting Everyday posted at Azmi M.

James presents Best Free Legal Resources Online posted at ZooLaw, saying, “Here is a list of some great legal resources on the web that can help you save on legal costs.”

Debt Management

Roshawn Watson presents Free Yourself From BabylonVision. posted at Watson Inc, saying, “The average monthly car note is $479 (Kiplinger, Feb 2007), and the average household owes nearly $10,000 in credit card debt with a payment of ~2-2.5% of the debt owed. Also, many people have an undergraduate student loan, where the average monthly payment being over $182. Now consider WHAT COULD YOU DO IF YOU DIDN’T OWE ANY PAYMENTS? Imagine how much money you could freely GIVE away. Dare to dream about a day where your financial abundance is so great that barring any tremendous economic upset, YOUR WEALTH WILL GROW INDEFINITELY WITHOUT ANY FURTHER CONTRIBUTIONS!”

Aaron Wakling presents Don’t Allow A Low Credit Score To Cost You Thousands Per Year posted at The Credit & Credit Card Blog, saying, “Did you know that a low credit score could be costing you hundreds and even thousands of dollars per year, and perhaps even more? What’s more, were you aware that there is something you can do about that?”

Save Money presents Step one to getting rid of debt posted at How I Save Money.net.

Tim Ramsey presents Debt Consolidation Loan To Deliver You From Debt posted at My Debt Relief Blog, saying, “High amount of debt needs a drastic solution and a debt consolidation loan is the best solution that can unburden your load of debt.”

Terry Dean presents From Debt to Financial Freedom posted at Christianity With Purpose.

Jason Elder presents Offshore Options For Bankrupts And Those With Poor Credit posted at A Bankruptcy Lawyer’s Blog, saying, “This is a great option for people with bad credit. It might be something you never thought about before.”

Estate Planning

Eric Hudin presents Estate - Don’t Be Left Holding The Bag posted at My Estate Planning Career Blog, saying, “Ned almost lost the farm that had been in his family for 8 generations! Make sure you dont make the same mistake Ned did.”

Financial Planning

Millionaire Mommy Next Door presents Create Your Treasure Map To Riches posted at Millionaire Mommy Next Door, saying, “Visualizing what wealth means to you shapes the way your mind thinks about money and your life. Your mind then sets in motion the actions necessary to begin achieving your goals. By taking the time to establish what real wealth looks like to you, you direct your efforts in ways that will make becoming rich, in your own terms, simple. Are you ready to embark on a fun and rewarding journey towards your own riches? Great! We’ll start with an exercise that is really fun. In fact your entire family will enjoy this one.”

KCLau presents Money Lessons from Tranformers movie posted at KCLau’s Money Tips, saying, “Transformers is an entertaining movie. It also teaches us about personal finance.”

George Courtney jr presents A Story about Planning posted at The Authentic Bartender Blog.

Nidhi presents Importance of consistent portfolio performance posted at Creating Wealth via Stocks, Options and ETFs, saying, “Why should you pay particular attention to the consistency of your portfolio. Lets review with an example how consistency is going to make a BIG difference.”

Logan Flatt, CFA presents Change the Game: Replace Your Credit Score with Your PowerWealth Debit Score™ posted at PowerWealth.com, saying, “Your credit score is an indicator of your ability to borrow, and borrowing can be damaging to your wealth. In contrast, your PowerWealth Debit Score is an indicator of your ability to lend, and … lending creates assets – loans – that you can own and use to increase your wealth over time. If one of your goals in life is to build enough wealth for you and your family to achieve true financial freedom and security, doesn’t it just make sense to place more of your focus, time, and effort on improving your PowerWealth Debit Score than on improving your credit score?”

Financing a Home

Tushar Mathur presents Save big on your Mortgage posted at Life of a Resident Alien….

Trent presents Building A Home Maintenance And Improvement Fund posted at The Simple Dollar.

R.Pettinger presents How do I pay off my mortgage fast? posted at Mortgage Advice, saying, “Paying off your mortgage early can make a big difference in saving significant amounts of mortgage interest payments. If you wish to pay off your mortgage early, these are some of the options for doing it.”

Financing Education

Brian Thibault presents 10 Ways to Pay for College with OPM (Other People?s Money) posted at Smart Shopper: Personal Finance Advisor, saying, “10 ways to go to college and pay later.”

Ted Reimers presents How to Prepare for College posted at CampusGrotto, saying, “Advice for those going off to college for the first time.”

Health Care Planning

Shaheen Lakhan presents “Sick” - Jonathan Cohns book on the healthcare crisis | GNIF Brain Blogger posted at GNIF Brain Blogger.

Income

Moneywise presents Stocks as Income Investments posted at The Real Returns, saying, “Stocks as income investments”

George Courtney jr presents Are You Ready for Aggressive Income Generation? posted at The Authentic Bartender Blog.

FMF presents The Best of College Learning May Be Outside the Classroom posted at Free Money Finance, saying, “College benefits your career more from outside the classroom experiences.”

Eric Stanley presents Need a Money Making Idea? posted at Personal Finance Blog Articles, saying, “There are so many money making ideas you can choose from online that anyone, no matter what skill level, can find something.”

Investing

Josh presents Systematic Investing Could Yield Greater Returns posted at The Mad Money Analyst.

Trent presents The Market Value of a Bond posted at Financial Education.

KCLau presents Asset Allocation Application in Unit Trust Investment posted at KCLau’s Money Tips, saying, “Asset allocation involves dividing an investment portfolio among different asset categories, such as stocks, bonds, and liquid cash. The right mix for a person is actually very personal.”

Roshawn Watson presents Investment Check-up: Are YOU Ready?Investment Ser… posted at Watson Inc, saying, “One big controversy in investing is whether people should be debt-free before they start. The most obvious reason to wait is that you will actually have more money to invest. Another less intuitive reason to wait is that you will be assuming less risk.”

WBL presents Wealth Building Lessons » Blog Archive » What’s Asset Allocation? posted at Wealth Building Lessons, saying, “Whats all the fuss about Asset Allocation?”

Dax Desai presents How to earn 12.28% in a 4.5% World posted at Dax Desai, saying, “How to safely use international bonds to earn 12.28%”

Jeremy Wong presents Dollar Value Averaging posted at Personal Finance Guide | FinanceMind.

SS Quah presents Are Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) for you? posted at It’s All In The Planning!.

Jeremy Wong presents Dollar Value Averaging Better Than Dollar Cost Averaging posted at Personal Finance Guide | FinanceMind.

Cade Krueger presents A Few Ways To Save Money With A Small Business Opportunity posted at Write To Right, saying, “When starting a business there are always some bumps in the road and many people face a great deal of overhead toward their steps toward financial freedom. With many people these obstacles become too much to bear and many quit. I would like to discuss a few ways that you can help your business get started during it’s growing pains while you learn how to get it on track.”

J at IHB and HFF presents Beware Vanguard 500 Faulty Logic & False Performance Measures for Investments posted at Home Finance Freedom, saying, “The Vanguard 500 S&P500 index fund is popular in the buck-o-sphere (PF blogosphere) and bloggers often cite its historical annual rate of return of 12% since inception in 1976. However, besides the usual caveat that past performance is no guarantee of future performance, too many people ignore another vital factor. The Vanguard 500’s real performance is not nearly as stellar as many believe.”

Warren Wong presents How To Find A Good Investment posted at Personal Development for INTJs, saying, “Wondering what kind of business to invest in? Here’s 4 important criteria for evaluating any potential business investment.”

Tyler presents Dividends You Can Bank On! posted at Dividend Money, saying, “A look at Canadian Bank Stocks and why they must be a part of your portfolio!”

Josh presents When is The Right Time to Sell an Investment? posted at The Mad Money Analyst, saying, “We’ve all cut a few corners and followed a hot tip or the “squawk” on the street and bought a stock with little or no research. Unfortunately most of the time, as luck would have it, these hot tips won’t pay off, so you have cut your losses and sell…”

Trent presents Value Investment Styles posted at Financial Education, saying, “Anyone can see that a stock is cheap. Successful value investors need to understand why a stock is cheap.”

Retirement Planning

Tushar Mathur presents Investing in a Tradtional IRA posted at Life of a Resident Alien….

Super Saver presents The Wisdom of Yogi Berra - A Nickel Ain’t Worth A Dime Anymore posted at My Wealth Builder, saying, “Unless on track to save over a million dollars by retirement, don’ t even consider the possibility of “saving too much.”"

Thomas Humes presents Retirement - The Real Cost of Procrastination posted at Wealth Building World, saying, “If you want to accumulate $1,000,000 when you are 65, how much would you have to save? It all depends on when you get started.”

Praveen presents My Simple Trading System: Americans Overestimate Retirement Resources posted at My Simple Trading System.

Savings

ChristianPF presents How to make more money with your emergency fund posted at Money in the Bible | Christian Personal Finance Blog, saying, “A quick how-to showing you how to use an emergency fund to save more money and increase it’s growth rate.”

Frugal Panda presents Top 50 Frugality Bloggers posted at Frugal Panda.

The Skilled Investor presents Pre-retirement savings rates for renters — with and without investment cost improvements, saying, “When Fran and Fred had projected to pay “average” investment costs in their baseline lifetime financial plan, their required annual pre-retirement savings rates were much higher. There is roughly a 6 percentage point difference in their required annual savings rate between the “average” investment cost scenario and the low investment cost scenario. By reducing their investment costs they greatly reduce their savings requirements, yet they could end up at the same goal, which is to have adequate financial assets through age 95.”

Taxes

The Skilled Investor presents Summary Table of Traditional IRA and Roth IRA Tax Rules, saying, “For your convenience, the table provided summarizes 2007 rules for traditional IRAs and Roth IRAs. The table has a left-hand column of questions and 12 columns of information. Read the first four questions in the first four rows to determine which of the twelve columns would apply to you. Once you have done this, you should have found one “traditional IRA” column and one “Roth IRA” column that apply to you. Read the remaining questions further down the table to compare the various traditional IRA and Roth IRA rules that affect you. Be careful to distinguish between the rules about whether you can make a contribution and whether an allowable contribution is tax deductible.”

Miscellaneous

MoneyNing presents Car Ownership Cost Goes Beyond the Purchase Price posted at Money Ning, saying, “Car costs goes way beyond the ticker price. Check this article out for what it entails.”

George Courtney jr presents Millionaire Making Assets posted at The Authentic Bartender Blog.

Alfa King presents China-Mauritius cooperation – another milestone « Alfa King Memories posted at Alfa King Memories.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of Carnival of Financial Planning using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Technorati tags: carnival of financial planning, blog carnival.