Archive for October, 2008

Halloween Will Suck This Year: Foreclosure Maps

Happy All Hallow’s Eve to everyone!
I came across this poignant cartoon on the Active Rain real estate network. It’s dark humor, I suppose, and marks the climate and mood we’re living in.

To many communities, this image hits close to home; while the foreclosure map below of the general area where I live [...]

E-Loan Savings Plus $25 Bonus Offer

Original Post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
E-Loan Savings Plus $25 Bonus Offer
Banks want your money and in order to get your money, they will pay you!
E-Loan just launched its own version of high-yield online savings account call E-Loan Savings Plus . To promote the new product, E-Loan is offering a $25 bonus for a new [...]

Related posts:

  1. $100 Bonus for Opening a Citi E-Savings Account with Offer Code
  2. Another $25 Citibank e-Savings Account Offer Code
  3. BoA Sweetens Its Offer For Savings Account
  4. Chase Freedom Card $250 Bonus Offer [Expired]
  5. Alive Again: OptionsXpress $100 Bonus Offer

How I Saved Money on a New Laptop

Earlier this week I bought a new laptop. My currently laptop is around 3 years old and it’s starting to show it’s age. It has 768MB of memory, much less than many computers have nowadays. When I have my 700 Firefox tabs open, it really slows down to a crawl. I [...]

Get 4% or More Return for Your Money

Original Post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
Get 4% or More Return for Your Money
If you have most of your savings in the stock markets, you won’t be happy with what’s going on now on the Wall Street. Nobody will. Somehow, I become numb to the daily closing numbers because what happened today isn’t much different [...]

Related posts:

  1. Understanding M*’s Total Return and Investor Return
  2. Year-to-Date 401(k) Return
  3. Keep My Money Safe and Let It Grow
  4. A Better Way to Invest in 401(k) and Get Better Return?
  5. Calculating My Personal Rate of Return

Ebates $5 Sign Up Bonus

It’s time to prepare for the holiday season. I already started my online shopping for holiday gifts. Before you shop, you should get your online cash back plan in order.
I’ll highlight a few of my favorite cash back programs over the next few weeks… because we all love Free Money.
Ebates
The first is Ebates. [...]

How to Find a Doctor, Accountant, or Plumber You Can Trust in a New City

People enjoy being comfortable, and moving takes us out of our comfort zone. We leave behind old friends, a familiar school district, the restaurants we love, and the advisors we trust. It can take years to to find and build relationships with quality professionals like our doctor, accountant, contractor, financial planner, and attorney.
It’s stressful and a [...]

Weekly Roundup: Contest Reminder Edition

The response to the the Frugal Dad tote bag contest has been great with nearly 200 of you leaving a comment to enter. If you are not already entered, you still have a little time left.  The comments section will close at 11:59pm tonight (October 31st), so leave an entry now, and then come back [...]

Weekend Reading - Halloween Edition

Happy Halloween!  When I was younger, I loved it when Halloween fell on a Friday.  The reason being is that I could stay out a little bit longer to collect more cavity inducing candy.  This will be the first Halloween in our new house, and we expect it to be a busy one as there [...]

A Tour of a Clothing Factory in Wuxi

Original Post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
A Tour of a Clothing Factory in Wuxi
Last week, I showed a picture of a building which we visited when in China and asked whether you have any idea what it is. I don’t know exactly what your answer is, but what I am going to tell you may [...]

Related posts:

  1. What Is This Building?
  2. AIG Failed, Taken Over By Fed
  3. I’m Back!
  4. Chinese Currency (RMB) vs. US Dollar
  5. Mattel Issued “Extraordinary Apology” for Damaging Reputation of Chinese Products

Guide To Roth IRAs and 401ks @ The Carnivals

It’s starting to get cloudy and gray around here now, which is a great thing! We here in California need the rains…badly (even if I’m not fond of this type of weather). These days, we are beginning to gear up for the holidays and preparing for the wetter weather and the flu season. [...]

The Social Security Administration’s Windfall Elimination Provision

This is a guest post by Tanesha Morgan, writer for Personal Finance Analyst. Personal Finance Analyst is an online community of bloggers dedicated to taking the mystery out of money and helping you to live a happier, more successful life with the money you have.
The Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) has been around since the [...]

The Future of My Dollar Plan is Up To You!

Almost a year has gone by since the beginning of My Dollar Plan. With 1700+ readers strong, we have lots of ideas, stories, and opinions on personal finance. I want to hear from you!
Personal Finance Topics
The topics of my articles come from various sources: reader questions, my own financial situation, things I read about in [...]

a zero-sum worldview

In game theory and economic theory, zero-sum describes a situation in which a participant’s gain or loss is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the other participant(s). If the total gains of the participants are added up, and the total losses are subtracted, they will sum to zero. Cutting a cake is [...]

Moving Expenses - Paying Bills On Time & Avoiding New Fees

When you’re caught up in the mayhem of a big move, the thought of setting up a new utility account or closing out a cable bill may be one of the last things on your mind. It seems there are always additional expenses when closing out old accounts and opening up new ones, and many of us [...]

How Much Is Debt Costing You in Opportunity?

 
Photo courtesy of Afroswede
While perusing my ever growing backlog of feed reader favorites I ran across an article that caught my eye from One Caveman’s Financial Journey.  He makes the point so many of us who have been paying off debt for some time have all thought:  I Could Be Rich If I Didn’t [...]

October 2008 Net Worth Update (-0.26%)

Welcome to the recurring monthly net worth update - The October 2008 edition.
Before I started writing this update, I was actually quite nervous about the result as my portfolios are deep in the red for the year.  This dramatic correction is the largest of my investing career and it comes with mixed feelings.  The good [...]

Fun, Cheap Halloween Costumes To DIY, A Photo Gallery

One of the easier DIY projects around: go frugal by making your own unique, fun, cheap Halloween costumes.
We’ve been way too serious around here lately discussing the financial crisis and the upcoming presidential elections with some depth, and I’m quite certain we’ll be returning to those staple topics later on. But for now, [...]

Eligible People Not Getting Food Stamps?

Today on the news I heard that 67.8 percent of eligible people in 24 large urban areas studied participated in the program in 2006. While it would be interesting to know if more people are taking advantage now, the data isn’t there. I can’t think of an impetus for why the they’d suddenly [...]

5 Tips For Reducing Your Moving Expenses

Recently, my wife and I made a long distance move from Jacksonville, Florida to Orlando, Florida. We were no strangers to moving, it was our third time making a move in four years. Hopefully, it will be our last move for a while!
Through our many moves, we’ve lived and learned about things to do [...]

TradeKing Promotion Extended: Get $50 Bonus In November When Opening an Account

Original Post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
TradeKing Promotion Extended: Get $50 Bonus In November When Opening an Account
When TradeKing announced its special $50 new account bouns promotion early this month, the offer was set to expire tomorrow. Now, it looks like the discount broker has decided to extend the promotion one more month into November, [...]

Related posts:

  1. TradeKing Promotion: Get $50+$20 Bonus When Opening a New Account
  2. TradeKing Promotion: Get $50 Bonus in October
  3. Zecco Referral Bonuses Distributed, $100 OptionsXpress Bonus Received, and Account Transfer to TradeKing Completed
  4. Another $25 Bonus for Opening an ING Direct Oragne Savings Account
  5. Reminder: $70 TradeKing Bonus Still Available

Political Donations Aren’t Tax Deductible?

This is a guest post by J. Money covering for me while I’m on vacation. J. Money writes for budgetsaresexy.com - A laid back finance blog of a guy just trying to spice things up a bit. He also finds budgets….well…sexy!  You can sign up to his feed here if you like what you see.

Man, thank [...]

An 866% Return and Debating Taxes

Andrew Lahde
Did you hear about Andrew Lahde? He was a hedge fund manager until about two weeks ago. His fund was only a year old and returned 866%. He bet against the sub prime collapse. And now he’s calling it quits.
Obviously, it’s nothing that any of us can repeat, but there is an [...]

TradeKing Brokerage $50 Bonus for New Accounts

TradeKing’s $50 bonus for opening a new account promotion has been extended through the end of next month.  TradeKing sent out an email last night talking about how the current economic conditions have effected the volume of trading and that despite the uncertainty in the market they’re seeing a lot of new people trying out [...]

the riddle of steel

“He is strong! If I die, I have to go before him, and he will ask me, ‘What is the riddle of steel?’ If I don’t know it, he will cast me out of Valhalla and laugh at me.” … “That’s Crom, strong on his mountain.” ~Conan the Barbarian
Over the last couple of months we’ve [...]

How to Cut Your Moving Costs

Packing up and moving to another part of town or to a new city can be an expensive experience if you don’t manage your moving costs.
Of course the average moving expenses will vary depending on factors like how far you’re moving, how much stuff you’re taking, and whether you hire a moving company or not; but [...]

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