The Money Writers

I found myself face-to-face with another meme, thanks to My Daily Dollars and this time, this meme is requiring me to write a 6 word memoir. I wasn’t exactly sure what this meant, so I dug up the rules of this particular request:
The rules of the meme:
1. Write your own six word memoir
2. Post [...]

Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
Do you need an ING Direct Orange Savings Account?
This product has been around long enough (probably one of the oldest online savings accounts) and I feel that anyone who wants to have an account probably already has one. Though their rate (3.0% APY) isn’t that great right now as [...]

Yesterday, I woke up excited for the NFL draft. It had been heavily publicized for the last two months. I was disappointed to find that Comcast, my cable television and Internet provider, was experiencing an outage. Right before the draft, they got the television working, but the Internet was down all day. I finally called Comcast late last night to find that when they fixed the outage, the cable modem needed to be recycled. I lost a days worth of work with the Carnival of Personal Finance due out tomorrow because they didn’t tell me [...]

Today when I woke up before I dawn, I realized it was my first day of being a full-time problogger. I’m still in the corporate mentality of thinking of Saturday as a “day off,” though. I realized that might be one of the first things that has to disappear to make that corporate [...]

Gas credit cards can earn you rebates or cashback to help save money on your gas bill.  We’ve recently looked at ways to make more money during bad economic times but the other side of the accounting equation is obviously to spend less money.
With high gas prices continuing to climb, saving money on gas is important to [...]

Home buying: when should we step into the market? Too many are still wary.

Shouldn’t we be thinking about buying when everything is tanking? Unfortunately, the uncertain economic climate isn’t encouraging too many people to play contrarian right now. Many people aren’t quite ready to step up and buy just yet because [...]

Here are some highlighted articles from The Money Writers over the past week.
My Dollar Plan has updated their personal finance site rankings by RSS numbers.  MDJ has moved up to 14th spot!  If you like to subscribe to MDJ, you can subscribe via email or RSS here. 
Brip Blap announces that he is the newest problogger [...]

Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
A little over one year ago, I bought a Buffalo gold coin when the price was around $640 an ounce. Somehow, I never considered that as an investment, though gold has gained a lot in the past year. Currently at $885, gold actually made a good investment
Since [...]

It’s a statement often dished out and applied to people who attempt to do something they’re not very good at, a statement made to discourage those who are seeking out an alternative career path: “don’t quit your day job”.
In the entrepreneurial world, this saying couldn’t be any truer or more practical, especially if you’re about [...]

Cash shortages are common during a recession.  What similarities do you notice in the cycle below:

Consumers Spend Less Money
Businesses Earn Less Money
Businesses Stop Hiring/Start Firing
Laid off Consumers Spend Less Money
….

When the economy stops expanding there is less money to go around. Everyone tries to get more out of less.  We pay less for products and [...]

This Tuesday, I’m heading to Finovate Start-up hosted by Jim Bruene of NetBanker fame. There are a ton of companies presenting there. Some of the highlights that I’m looking forward to are Buxfer, Loanio (are they ever going to launch), Mint, Prosper, SmartyPig, Wesabe, Zecco, Zopa. I’m disappointed that Geezeo isn’t going to be there. Lending Club bowed out, which is reasonable considering their quiet period.
I’d like to single out Vestopia and SmartHippo (not to be confused with SmartyPig or my upcoming start-up SmarterBoar). These companies have contacted me for one-on-one interviews. I’ve been [...]

Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
When the Economic Stimulus Payment schedule was initially announced on March 17, IRS said the first check will be made on May 2 to taxpayers who selected to receive the payment via direct deposit and on May 16 for those who choose to receive paper check instead.
Now, the schedule [...]

Yesterday, I wrote about my techno-lust with the Asus Eee. Not long after the post went live, the lowest possible version on Craigslist for $200. That’s $100 less than retail, and $40 less from any other price I’ve previous seen. I jumped at the opportunity to own it. I figured that in the worst case scenario, I could sell it for a very small profit on Ebay tomorrow. I love when I can try “new-to-me” technology with little or no financial downside.
So now I get to “the catch…” It is the pink version. [...]

It’s Friday! You know what that means… time for free money! There’s a benefit to having 181 accounts, it’s easy to find free money among the accounts I have. Today I found one that I opened about 10 years ago for the bonus…. and they are still offering the signup bonus! GE Interest Plus
Details: The account [...]

I had an interesting question from NH Mom of 3 about my WIDD idea. A WIDD, in case you don’t remember, is a “what I done did” file - a record you keep of all of the projects and details of your past positions.
“I wonder, is there a way to “cram” and get down [...]

The New Look 
For the readers who visit the site often, you may have noticed that MDJ has gone through a face lift.  The goal of the new design is to have the same features as the old layout, but with a cleaner feel.  What do you think of the new look?  Have you noticed any [...]

Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
Then come to New Jersey!

And fill up at gas stations along the Garden State’s pay road!
With national average of regular gas at $3.574/gallon (Gasbuddy.com), NJ’s $3.374/gallon average is the second lowest (only Wyoming has cheaper gas). However, $3.374 per gallon is NOT the cheapest you can find in the [...]

I’ve got a couple of pieces of carnival news that may be of interest to other personal finance bloggers. (Readers who are not bloggers, might wish to move on or read about my new techno-lust.)
The Carnival of P2P Lending is looking for bloggers to host upcoming carnivals. It’s usually a small carnival making it a very small commitment. The small size lends itself to a creative and entertaining carnival. Lastly, the Carnival of P2P Lending has a five day window from the last submission until it is due to run. This means you won’t be [...]

The foundation of My Dollar Plan is actually the same as the name… it’s based on our dollar plan. Readers wanted to know what it looks like, how we created it and how we manage our finances to it. So far I’ve only mentioned it in theory and haven’t explained the nuts and bolts. Today we’re [...]

The real estate bubble was several years in the making and has been deflating for a year or two now.  It’s hard to say exactly when it popped because the real estate market is so regional but it’s pretty evident that billions of dollars of bubble money have evaporated from bank balance sheets and home owner’s [...]

A year ago, I was looking for a portable computer that could allow me to blog from places like Aruba. I thought I found an acceptable solution with a PDA and bluetooth keyboard. It didn’t work quite as well as I hoped. As two pieces, you can’t put it on your lap and type. The PDA had some difficulties connecting to WIFI access points. The small screen with 640×480 resolution made web navigation, and blogging difficult. In the end, I realized I had to bring my real computer making that travel computer a poor [...]

photo credit: daviddesign
 
Here’s a question for you, to see where you fall on the health/hygiene versus the environment scale. Ladies, sorry but I’ll be referring to a purely male institution so bear with me.
In the office I’m working in we have urinals. They are the old-fashioned kind where you have to yank a [...]

As the tax deadline is approaching, the procrastinators out there are scrambling to get their receipts in order to file their income taxes.  Yes, I am one of those procrastinators, but this year tax preparation has been easier than previous years.
There have been years where my receipts were a mess and difficult to locate.  This [...]

Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
Yesterday on my way to home, I heard on radio that some Costco stores in the California’s Bay area are setting limits on how much rice and flour a customer can purchase. According to Costco’s CEO, the limits were put in place after what he saw as “unusual demands” [...]

I was excited to find out that one of my fellow money bloggers (or shall we say “Money Writers“!), Steve aka Brip Blap, has just announced he’s going to give PRO-blogging a whirl. I suppose he’s going to try it out to see if it suits him. Excellent! Kudos to him [...]