For most of 2009 I was completely healthy. In November I managed to get sick two separate times. That combined with an excess of work to do at work and a job interview, and my blogging has definitely slacked. On the bright side, I’ve made significant progress on my personal finance goals for 2009.

Personal Finance Goals

• Fully fund 2008 Individual 401k ($8,207.00/$8,207.00) – Completed in March.
  
• Fully fund 2008 Roth IRA ($5,000/$5,000) – Completed in April.
• Fully fund 2009 Individual 401k ($4,583.62/$5,264.00) - I have enough cash above my emergency fund level of $10,000, but I will wait until I calculated the exact dollar value that will need to go into my individual 401k. As of right now I consider this goal completely funded. I was able to make so much progress this month because I sold my Target stock. I wanted to take my taxable investments and turn them into tax sheltered investments.
• Fully fund 2009 Roth IRA ($5,000/$5,000) – Completed in November. My Target stock allowed me to complete this goal. I sold my Target stock at a level that was not much higher than the value when it was gifted to me, which ends up being my cost basis. The taxes I will have to pay on the minimal gain should be covered by my extra deductions for a full year of interest on mortgage payments.

Alternative Income Goals

• Turn blogging into a source of income – In November, I earned $0.00 from Microsoft Pubcenter, $00.00 from LinkWorth and $00 from Commission Junction. My total in October was $00.00. As the year is wrapping up and I am finally being given more and more work to do at my 9 to 5, I have surprisingly less motivation to work on my blogging income. I will continue to post my monthly updates and any personal finance related information that I find interesting, but I will no longer be focused on monetizing this blog. If I earn a commission every now and then I will be happy. So far I have earned a total of $269.03 through affiliate marketing and text ads.
• Increase monthly page views and subscribers – For now I will not be focusing on growing my blog. I will continue blogging about topics that I enjoy and posting my monthly updates. In the future, I do want to finish blogging about asset allocation as I change my current investments from target retirement funds, into a researched and tailered allocation. I suppose I will have to consider this goal a failure for 2009, but my interests have just changed since the beginning of the year.
• Replace tutoring income through a company with my own personal clients – If tutoring opportunities come my way I will not turn them down. For now I will focus my efforts on developing ebooks for specific subject tests to provide references for when I do start tutoring. For now this is a dead goal unfortunately.

General Goals

• Travel to two cities I’ve never been to – There are no new trips scheduled for this year. For work I should be traveling to Europe and/or Japan in the beginning of 2010, which should more than make up for the less than interesting cities I’ve visited in 2009.
• Get in shape – The colds have hampered my running for the past few weeks, but I before the colds I had a nice workout schedule. I hope to get back to that schedule. I also hope to add in some swimming. Get in shape is such an arbitrary goal. I know I set a specific weight goal that I would have liked to get to in 2009. I will attempt to get to that weight in 2010. I also might set a goal to do a triathlon, which should really put me in great shape.

I can’t believe how quickly my interests have changed over the past month or two. I just haven’t had the time or motivation to accomplish everything that I wanted to. I am extremely happy with my personal finance goals, which were the most important in my mind. I will have to think long and hard about my goals for 2010 to avoid these dead goals that I have no motivation to fulfill.

Post from: Personal Finance Start-Up Blog

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November was a great month for my net worth, even though I was sure it was going to be a rough month. I made some pretty big payments on my credit card for furniture. I also wrote a check for a chunk of physical therapy sessions that will hopefully allow me to run freely. To counter those larger payments, I received a rebate for property taxes that I overpaid at closing. My non-retirement savings took a major hit as I took the first step towards converting it into tax-sheltered accounts.

Cash

November saw a major increase in my cash asset for a very specific reason. I cashed out my taxable Schwab account by selling my Target stock and requesting a check be mailed. I have yet to receive the check, but the money is no longer in my Schwab account to I left it as cash, even though I will invest it into my two Vanguard retirement accounts. My cash also received a boost of about $1,200 from the builder of my condo. I large chunk of my closing costs went into an escrow account for property taxes, and only a small portion of it was used to pay property taxes. The rest of it was sent back to me, which was a welcome surprise. Next month I hope to have all of my retirement accounts fully funded and my cash back at $10,000.

Retirement

My retirement funds increased based solely on increases in the stock market. I was unable to invest the money from my Schwab account before the end of the month because it is taking forever to get the check. Once I get the check the retirement asset will increase substantially.

Non-Retirement

My non-retirement assets decreased substantially as I sold all of my Target stock to move it into a tax-sheltered account. Now my tax-sheltered assets consist of a US Growth mutual fund through Vanguard,Sharebuilder account, Lending Club account and a Prosper Account. I don’t foresee any major contributions to my non-retirement accounts. I’m going to start using this monthly post as a reminder to add $25 towards my Lending Club and Prosper accounts. I really like these peer to peer lending sites as a way to diversify my investments.

Liabilities

My car payment and mortgage decreased by the standard amount. Even though I’ve had my new mortgage for a few months now, it still feels great to decrease that liability by such a large chunk. It really makes me feel like I’m adding significant equity to my condo.

Net Worth

My net worth increased by 3.0%, even though I thought November would be an interesting month. Despite the larger than normal credit card payments and the physical therapy bill, I was able to substantially increase my net worth. The stock market helped a bit, but it was mostly the unexpected check from my property tax overpayment. Next month in addition to my monthly financial status update, I will do a annual financial status update. Sometimes it’s good to take a step back and really look at your finances on a larger scale, especially since the ultimate goal of retirement is on such a grand scale.

Post from: Personal Finance Start-Up Blog

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Recently, I was asked to help somebody very close to me to get their personal finances in order. They didn’t know what to do with the money building up in a checking account. They didn’t know what to do about retirement saving. They didn’t know what to do about paying off liabilities. I was very happy to help. I enjoy planning personal finances and creating plans. I’ll walk you through how I created the personal finance plan in about twenty minutes.

Assets

The first step is to make a list of your assets. I’m partial to excel, but it’s also possible to do it with quicken online or pen and paper. I listed out all of the assets: checking, savings, brokerages and retirement accounts. The assets list is below.

The checking account is at a major bank with ATMs and branches all over. The savings account is a money market fund earning 0.02%. The IRA account is a traditional IRA that was a 401k rollover. The brokerage account is at the same bank as the checking account and is 80% bonds, which is ridiculous if you’re young (and old in my opinion). The municipal retirement is similar to a pension, where money is pulled out of your account and if you work for a certain number of years you get a pension. Otherwise, you get the money you put in back. The municipal retirement fund is mandatory, which is nice if you reach the number of years, but crappy if you don’t

Liabilities

The next step is to list your liabilities and the associated interest rate. Below are all of the liabilities:

The computer liability refers to a credit account charging 16.74% interest that a computer was purchased with. The interest on the student loans is on hold as a masters degree is  being pursued. Finally, the remaining car liability comes with a 4.90% rate.

Immediate Steps

After listing your assets and liabilities, it’s important to understand your goals. Do you want to maximize your net worth? Do you want to eradicate all debt. Do you want to focus on retirement savings? Do you have more immediate savings goals? Below is how I would first start out shifting funds around. This first part should be done in the first week or two.

As you can see I paid off the computer credit card first. The 16.74% was just ridiculous. Otherwise, I didn’t touch the liabilities. On the assets side, I transferred the savings account funds into the checking account. Earning 0.02% is worthless, you might as well have it in a checking account to have immediate access to it. I also opened a Roth IRA at Vanguard. I took the funds from the taxable brokerage and moved them into the Vanguard Roth IRA for a 2009 contribution. Finally, I opened a high yield checking account that earns 4.15% and moved all of the funds into it except for $1,000. This money is going to act as an emergency fund, an ATM fund and an easy way to deposit checks. The high yield checking account will be set up for direct deposit and most everything will be paid with this account.

Future Plans

I always recommend determining what your going to do with your excess money at the end of each month. For example, in the above example I set up the following future plans:

• Save $5,000 for 2010 Roth IRA contribution in January 2010.
• Keep $5,000 in Checking account for emergency fund, traveling, etc. (that puts $10,000 in high yield checking account until January)
• Anything over $10,000 ($5,000 after January) in the checking account goes towards paying off the car. If you have $11,000 in the checking account at the end of the month, you make a $1,000 payment towards the car.
• Once the car is paid off, excess money goes towards the 5.0% student loan.
• The next step is debatable, if you really dislike debt, pay off the 1.63% student loan, otherwise go to the next step.
• Retirement savings – Roth is already funded in full, so that leaves a 401k or a 457 for municipal workers.
• Finally, if you’re fortunate enough to pay off all debts and fund all retirement options, you can invest in taxable accounts.

List your assets, liabilities and future goals then use that information to develop your plan. Your first stab shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes. The next step of opening accounts, closing accounts and transferring funds takes a week or two. Afterwards it’s a month to month grind to work towards your goals. You’ll be surprised how quickly you can achieve your goals once you’ve developed an appropriate plan. Good Luck.

Post from: Personal Finance Start-Up Blog

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Peer to peer lending ( p2p lending) is gaining traction as a legitimate investing vehicle. All of my favorite investing books break investing down into stocks, bonds, CDs, mutual funds, etc. P2p lending is carving a niche for itself. P2p lending allows individual investors to borrow and lend money without the help of a financial institution.

Instead of the bank taking my money and lending it out while I earn a small interest rate, I can lend my money directly to another individual. P2p lending does involve more risk to the individual. The two major p2p lending sites are Lending Club and Prosper.

Prosper

Prosper claims investors can earn between a 7% and 13% return on invested money. Similarly, as a borrower, Prosper claims you can secure a fixed rate loan for as low as 7.5% APR.

As a borrower, you can list a loan for an amount between $1,000 and $25,000. The borrower then sets the maximum rate they are willing to pay and writes a story about why they want a loan.

As a lender, you decide the amount of money you want to lend and the minimum interest rate they want as a return. The lender then uses criteria like credit history (minimum 640 credit score), combined with the borrowers personal story to pick loans to bid on.

Prosper takes the bids with the lowest rates, does some sort of combinatorial magic and lumps all of the loans into one easy rate for the borrower. Notes are then awarded to the winning bidders. Because Prosper uses an auction system, the borrower ideally gets to watch the interest rate decrease as more people bid on the loan.

Prosper services all of the collections from borrowers and makes payments to the lenders. Prosper charges a lump sum fee up front on the borrower and a servicing fee of 1% to lenders.

Sign Up to Prosper

It really is as simple as that. It took me 10 minutes to set up my account. They ask for all of the standard account opening information and even assign you a random screen name (mine was liberty squirrel). If you sign up now, for a limited time, Prosper will give you $50 to start.

My Experiences

So far I have two bids that are waiting for the auction to end. The process for finding loans was extremely easy. I used the advanced search to find AA borrowers (borrowers with the best credit score) with a low debt/income ratio. I then looked for a rate around 10.00% with an interesting story.

Currently, I bid on a loan to somebody who is raising money to pay for a medical procedure for his wife. He is setting aside $2,500 a month as it is to fund this surgery, and requires the loan to have the surgery earlier. They should be able to easily afford the monthly payments if they were putting away $2,500 a month.

Also, I bid on a loan for a budding web entrepreneur who wants to hire a web publisher. They are already making enough money through Adsense to cover the monthly payment. They believe the addition of a publisher will help the web site grow exponentially.

The bottom line is I bid on two loans that could earn me 10.00% when both of the borrowers appear to be able to easily cover the monthly payments.

I highly recommend p2p lending as a part of your investment profile. I’ve mentioned adding $25 a month to my Lending Club account and may decide to do the same to my new Prosper account.

Post from: Personal Finance Start-Up Blog

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Last month I posted my monthly expenses for the first time. I want to post my monthly expenses to force myself to understand just how high my expenses are. October was a very interesting month with all of my work traveling. When I travel for work, all of my food is expensed. Whenever I have a rental car the gas is expensed, however, when I use my own car, I don’t get to expense my gas. Instead, I get reimbursed $0.58 for every mile I drive, which is supposed to cover all car expenses.

My expenses for October are as follows:

• Home (+0.0%) – consists of my mortgage payment, association fees (water, trash removal, heat, gas, etc), electricity, cable/internet and condo insurance. Some of these expenses fluctuate monthly, but not enough for me to bother tracking.
• Car (+5.4%) – consists of my car payment, auto insurance and gas. I ended up spending more on gas in October because of my trip to Indianapolis. I drove down in my own car and will be reimbursed. Basically I filled up three times instead of twice. I have less than a year remaining of car payments. When I complete my car payments this category will drop by more than half. I’d also like to change my car insurance and drop that payment.
• Food (-48.6%) – consists of groceries and going out to lunch during work. My groceries will fluctuate a lot from month to month. I don’t go to the grocery store consistently and I tend to buy food that doesn’t expire quickly. This month I only went twice and one of the times was for only $12. Also, with all of my traveling I was able to expense a lot of my food for the month.
• Luxuries (+0.0%) – consists of my netflix and zune subscriptions.
• Phone (+0.0%) – consists of my cell phone. There are some minor fluctuations in the monthly bill for my phone, but not enough for me to bother tracking.
• Free Money – I was able to push my free money up over $1,000 in October, which is good because I bought just about that much in blinds and furniture for my condo. I also spent nearly $1,000 for about three months of physical therapy that will help me run pain free.

I don’t know how boring it is for you all to read about my expenses, but I find it a very useful exercise. I recommend doing some sort of expense monitoring if you don’t do a formal budget.

Post from: Personal Finance Start-Up Blog

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October was another less than stellar month for my self-employed aspirations. I started traveling for my company, which limited my time to work on my projects. I’ve also been super busy at work when I haven’t been traveling. For the past few months I was able to work on a few projects, but I haven been unable to do that this month. I will detail my “progress” below and outline my plans for November. I have regained some of my motivation and promise to do significantly better next month.

Marketing a new sports drink online

During October I accomplished nothing on this project. I originally wanted to write 10 ezine articles for article marketing, but I don’t want to do this until I know the email address to send orders to. I would find it highly embarrassing to have orders and not be able to fulfill them.

I will put this project on hold until we acquire that email address. Once the email address is acquired I will begin my article marketing campaign. Additionally, I discovered a wordpress plugin that makes it easy to set up an internet store. I want to learn more about this free plugin and implement it if it will make managing my store easier. Here are my goals for this project for November:

• Complete 10 keyword rich ezine articles pointing to the site (as soon as we get the email address)
• Research the wordpress plugin and implement it if beneficial

Writing ebooks for academic subject tests

Most of my progress in September was done while I was at work, and this month left no time to do anything at work besides work. Unfortunately I have accomplished nothing on this project. It is not the highest priority, but I expect to make a little progress on this project each month. I will do better next month. My current action plan:

1. Finish setting up website
2. Develop outlines for ebooks
3. Begin creating content as blog posts
4. Develop tutoring credentials page
5. Develop contact page

Affiliate marketing campaigns

The lack of progress on this project is what bothers me the most. I’ve made the most money in 2009 with affiliate marketing, which is why I should be putting the most time into this project. I did not spend any time on this project in October. On a positive note, I did make another sale from a One Week Marketing campaign I set up previously. This passive income is the exact reason why I have to put more time into this project. My November goal (and I will accomplish it this time):

• Complete a One Week Marketing campaign for 10 different products

Ebook about taking ideas to products

My Dad expressed some interest in starting up this project again. As far as I’m concerned I can’t do any further work until my Dad completes the outline. I will try to push him to accomplish that soon. So far I have already done some keyword research and decided on a website name for the sales page. I also developed an outline based on some minimal research, as well as a slogan for the product.

Monetize Personal Finance Start-Up Blog

So far my current monetization efforts come from content ads from Microsoft, affiliate marketing (Lending Club, TradeKing, etc.) and text ads. For November I want to do some research and develop a plan to drive traffic to my site. I want to identify five keywords that I want to rank highly for. Ideally these keywords will have little competition and a high search volume, as well as have products that I can promote for profit.

Create a fantasy sports membership site

No Updates

I have yet to do anymore on this site. I have a domain name reserved. I don’t know if I will be able to pursue this project much further until I have time to consistently blog about baseball and football. If I’m not consistently blogging with this site I will not be successful. I am targeting the beginning of fantasy baseball 2010 as my starting point. Until then I will be trying to develop the website so that all I have to do when 2010 baseball rolls around is write articles.

Income for October

• Personal Finance Start-Up blog
  • August – $104.85
  • September – $10.93
  • October – $12.98
• Affiliate Marketing Campaigns
  • August – $21.57
  • September – $0
  • October – $29.41
• Total
  • August – $126.42
  • September – $10.93
  • October – $42.39
  • 2009 – $179.74

October was a complete waste with regards to my self-employed projects. November will be better. My motivation has returned. I also have a ton of personal and vacation days left that will be used in either November or December since they don’t carry over into 2010. When I use them will depend on when our product launch occurs and the work pace slows down.

Post from: Personal Finance Start-Up Blog

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October was a very interesting month. I began traveling some for work and while I haven’t been traveling, I’ve been swamped at the office. I’m definitely not complaining about being busy at work because it makes the days go by so much faster, but it leaves less time for me to work on my goals. I wasn’t able to move my non-retirement assets into my retirement accounts, but it will be accomplished within the next week or two. n to the update towards my goals for 2009.

Personal Finance Goals

• Fully fund 2008 Individual 401k ($8,207.00/$8,207.00) – Completed in March.
  
• Fully fund 2008 Roth IRA ($5,000/$5,000) – Completed in April.
• Fully fund 2009 Individual 401k ($2,583.62/$5,264.00) -Previously I decided to keep my emergency fund at $10,000 because of my increased mortgage payment. I had a surplus of cash above the emergency fund level to put towards my retirement funds for 2009, but I made a few major purchases in October, which will be paid for in November. After paying for these purchases, I’ll be lucky to be at $10,000 for my emergency fund. When I sell my Target stock, I will fund my Roth IRA first and then put whatever is leftover in this account. The reason for this is I don’t know exactly how much I will be able to invest into this account. At the end of the year I will calculate the final value. My Individual 401k account goal for 2009 may increase every month as I realize more self-employed income.
• Fully fund 2009 Roth IRA ($0/$5,000) – At the end of November I will have fully funded this account with funds from my Target stock. I will not incur a lot of capital gains taxes because the stock price today is not much higher than the value of the stock when it was gifted to me. Also, since it will be the first year I deduct mortgage interest and property taxes, I should be fine.

Alternative Income Goals

• Turn blogging into a source of income – In October, I earned $2.48 from Microsoft Pubcenter, $10.50 from LinkWorth and $00 from Commission Junction. My total in October was $12.98. I have to work harder to make my income from this blog more consistent. So far I have earned a total of $269.03 through affiliate marketing and text ads, which is already enough to cover the $35 for my first year of hosting and the domain name. My overall goal is $565, which also covers my new laptop.
• Increase monthly page views and subscribers – My traffic has definitely plateaued, if not decreased, since I started working harder on my self-employed income. To combat this I will set a goal of writing 5 articles that will rank highly in the search engines and point towards my site. This month I will also develop a plan for improving the traffic. I want to develop at least 5 keywords that I think I can rank highly for that will drive good personal finance traffic. My monthly page views decreased from 856 to 734. I hosted a carnival for the first time during October and unfortunately did not see the spike in traffic that I was expecting.
• Replace tutoring income through a company with my own personal clients – If tutoring opportunities come my way I will not turn them down. For now I will focus my efforts on developing ebooks for specific subject tests to provide references for when I do start tutoring. For now this is a dead goal unfortunately.

General Goals

• Travel to two cities I’ve never been to – Unfortunately I will have to rely on my work travel to fulfill this goal. In the past month I traveled to Madison, Indianapolis and Tampa. I should be traveling through the rest of the year. I’m also holding out hope that I will make it to Nebraska to visit my cousin.
• Get in shape – I’ve been maintaining my weight while trying to pick up running again. It’s become too cold to bike, which leaves running and swimming. I will do some swimming, but what I really want to do is get my running going again, pain free. I decided to go see a physical therapist for my plethora of injuries, which will cost a pretty penny, but if I am running with no pain in the near future it will be worth it. Unfortunately I don’t think I will reach my weight goal, but if I can continue running it won’t be long into 2010 before I hit my goal.

Only two months left and I’m striving to meet as many goals as possible. Pretty soon I will have to plan my goals for 2010. Hopefully I do a better job than this year as at least one of my goals is dead due to a switch in priorities. How are you all doing on your goals for 2009?

Post from: Personal Finance Start-Up Blog

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Time continues to fly and October was a very interesting month. I haven’t posted as much as I wanted to because I’ve been traveling for work, which has been fun, tiring and time consuming. My net worth increased marginally and was largely driven by decreasing my liabilities. My 15-year mortgage is already paying dividends. I finally invested some fresh funds into my retirement funds, although I hope to do so much more in November.

Cash

In October I had my first mortgage payment after refinancing and it really shows in my mortgage liability. I also transferred everything above $10,000 at the end of September into my solo 401k, which is why my cash asset decreased this month. The goal is to have over $10,000 in cash assets at the end of every month. Normally I would roll over the extra amount ($338.71) into my retirement funds, but I made a couple major purchases in October that will be paid for in November. I bought a shelving unit and blinds, both of which improve the appearance of my condo significantly, as well as add some awesome functionality. I can now watch TV between 5 and 7 pm. I will be very happy if I still have over $10,000 for my emergency fund.

Retirement

My retirement funds increased because of the added funds, however, the stock market dropped for the first time in three months. During the month of November I hope to sell my Target stock (non-retirement asset) and put the money into my retirement funds. The idea is to convert non-tax sheltered assets into tax sheltered assets.

Non-Retirement

My non-retirement account increased as Target stock increased, while the overall stock market decreased. My non-retirement accounts consist of my Target stock through Schwab (for only a little longer), US Growth mutual fund through Vanguard, Sharebuilder account and Lending Club account. I don’t foresee any major contributions to my non-retirement accounts. I would like to start adding $25 into my Lending Club account every month, I might start doing this in November.

Liabilities

My car payment decreased by the standard amount and my mortgage liability decreased for the first time under my new refinanced mortgage. Adding $850 to the equity in my condo feels great. It takes the sting out of making such a large mortgage payment. I’m anxious to automate my mortgage payments again. It really is a burden to have to remember to make this payment on time every month.

Net Worth

My net worth increased by 0.9%. I’ve increased my net worth in many ways since I started tracking it. I suppose now it was time for my liabilities to do the heavy lifting. Next month will be interesting as I have to pay off two large purchases, plus I should have a rather large expense check coming in from all of my traveling. The nice part about traveling for work is getting all of your meals paid for. I should continue traveling through the end of the year, which should help me save some money.

Post from: Personal Finance Start-Up Blog

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Ever since I refinanced into a 15-year fixed mortgage, I wanted to start tracking my expenses. My new mortgage will save me a lot of money in the long run, but it comes with a higher monthly payment. I decided to begin tracking my expenses to make sure I wasn’t over spending and still had enough free money to meet my financial goals.

A lot of people use budgets, which requires a good deal of planning. I dont’ want to spend that much time, but I do want to track my spending. I’m going to tally up all of my expenses every month except unique purchases like furniture or airfare, etc. The goal is to get an idea as to how much free money I have spend on furniture, airfare, savings and generally any other wants I have.

My expenses for September are as follows:

• Home (68.9%/52.9%) – consists of my mortgage payment, association fees (water, trash removal, heat, gas, etc), electricity, cable/internet and condo insurance. There isn’t really too much I can do to reduce these expenses. I just have to remember that a lot of it is going towards principal on my condo.
• Car (16.1%/12.3%) – consists of my car payment, auto insurance and gas. I have less than a year remaining of car payments. When I complete my car payments this category will drop by more than half. I’d also like to change my car insurance and drop that payment.
• Food (11.4%/8.8%) – consists of groceries and going out to lunch during work. I’m not looking to reduce this category, but it will be interesting to see how much it fluctuates.
• Luxuries (0.7%/0.6%) – consists of my netflix and zune subscriptions. I enjoy movies and tv shows both streaming and through the mail to cancel my netflix subscription. I’ve actually been thinking about upgrading to the two at a time plan.
• Phone (2.8%/2.2%) – consists of my cell phone. Self-explanatory, although it also acts as my buzzer for my condo. If I didn’t have a cell phone I’d have to get a land line.
• Free Money – I’m relieved to see that I have almost $1,000 to spend how I wish after all of my expenses are taken out. This amounts to 23% of my income, which is much more than I thought I had available. Now I have to increase my income and decrease my monthly expenses.

It’s interesting to note that if you remove my car payment and mortgage payment I would only have barely over $1,000 in expenses. If only I could pay those both off, I could nearly retire.

Post from: Personal Finance Start-Up Blog

• The Process of Purchasing a New Construction Condo
• The Personal Finance Start-Up Blog Begins
• The Conclusion To My Mortgage Refinancing Journey
• End Of December and 2008 Financial Status
• The Final Chapter Of My Mortgage Refinancing Journey, Hopefully

• Not paying off 30-year mortgage a good deal?
• Private mortgage insurance companies to the rescue
• 5 ways to save money now
• A credit card for debt reduction
• Budgeting Worksheet for Teens

Welcome to the Carnival of Twenty Something Finances – MLB Playoffs Edition. This is my first time hosting a carnival and I’ve decided to throw some of my own personal flair into it by using the MLB Playoffs as my theme. Even though my favorite team (Braves) didn’t make the playoffs, I can still root for my second favorite team (whoever is playing the Yankees).

To parallel the MLB Playoffs I’ll pick 8 articles for the division series, 4 articles for the championship series, 2 articles for the World Series and 1 article for the champion. Enjoy.

Division Series

Silicon Valley Blogger presents myFICO Promotional Code and Review. There is nothing more important to a strong personal finance foundation than a good credit score. Silicon Valley Blogger provides you with a number of ways to monitor your FICO score.

The Smarter Wallet presents an Online Business Guide. For any of you young entrepreneurs, this online business guide provides the structure to start you own online business.

OneMint presents Retirement Planning Calculator: Some More Thoughts. It is never too early to begin planning for your retirement. In fact, retirement planning works best the earlier you start.

Get Rich Slowly presents Money is More About Mind Than it is About Math. J.D. discusses the psychology of money, which is super important to understand before you can quit compulsive spending.

Debt Kid presents How to Make Your Hobby Work For You. Do you have any hobbies that can earn some extra money on the side? It’s a great way to start building up that retirement fund at a young age.

Accredited Online Degrees presents Top 20 Personal Expenses You Can Cut This Year To Save $1,000. There are two ways to free up money for retirement saving, making more money or cutting back on expenses. Cutting back expenses is usually the easiest way.

Darwin’s Finance presents Verizon FIOS is Way More Expensive Than You Think. When comparing services always match them up so the quality is equivalent. Compare apples to apples.

Bill Eater presents How to Determine the Best Debt Elimination Strategy. Unfortunately, many young adults find themselves in debt. A good debt elimination strategy is a must.

Championship Series

Money Ning presents Lifestyle Inflation Is About More Than You. Lifestyle inflation is something that every young adult should be aware of. Preventing lifestyle inflation is a great way to make your money go further.

My Wealth Builder presents Why Stocks Still Make Sense To Me. Historically stocks have always been the best long term investment. Learn from this recession and remember that the market will always bounce back.

The Dough Roller presents a List of No Penalty CD Rates. If you’re a young investor it would be a wise decision to familiarize yourself with CDs. I used a CD to invest my down payment money to safely earn a guaranteed rate.

Gather Little By Little presents Do You Ever Fast? Fasting is usually tied to religion, but Gather Little By Little recommends you start thinking about a few personal finance fasts.

Christian Personal Finance presents the Basics of Stock Market Investing: 3 Traps to Avoid. It would be wonderful if we knew when the stock market had hit a peak or a valley. Since we can’t do that pay close attention to Christian Personal Finance’s 3 traps to avoid.

TipGuy presents Long Term Investing – Don’t Create Your Missed Opportunity. The earlier you start long term investing the larger your retirement fund will grow. TipGuy lets you know exactly what Long Term Investing is, Buffet Style.

Champion

PT Money presents Is Your Emergency Fund Big Enough? Emergency funds should be one of the first things you think about when getting started in personal finances. PT Money has everything you need to know about emergency funds.

Other Good Articles For Twenty Somethings

How I Save Money presents How Much Do You Make? It’s always a good motivator to learn how much other people make at a certain age.

Bargaineering presents What Constitutes Debt Validation? Understanding debt validation is another topic that might be useful for the twenty somethings in debt.

Thanks to everyone who submitted an article.Submit your blog article to the next edition of twenty something finances using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Post from: Personal Finance Start-Up Blog

• Links
• My Favorite Blog Articles of the Week
• End of October 2009 Financial Status
• A Measurement of my Financial Health
• Links

• Financial Plan for the Young and Single
• The US Has A Spending Problem, China Has A Savings Problem
• Money Hacks Carnival #97 - End Of 2009 Edition
• Yakezie Carnival #3: Benefits Edition
• Reduce Debt Vs Saving For Retirement