Another great week of personal finance posts have come and gone, now it is time to crown the best of the best. If you aren’t familiar with the Carnival of Top PF Posts, I think MLR @ My Life ROI covered it very succinctly:

Well, the average carnival has 40+ submissions. Who has the time to read through all of them?! With the Carnival of Top PF Posts, I do all the leg work for you. I read through all of the submissions, choose the 6 that I think are the best, and then let you, the readers, vote on them. At the end, a “winner” is crowned. Everyone saves time sifting through a carnival of 40+ articles and these 6 GREAT articles get the attention they deserve. -MLR

If you are a blogger, please consider using the Share This Poll link at the bottom of the poll widget to give your readers a chance to connect with the best PF articles of the week and cast their vote.

Best Posts July 13th 2009(Backup) :

Investing Money In Stocks, Mutual Funds and ETFs @ The Digerati Life

Dealing with Collection Agencies- Tips on Handling Collection Agencies @ Financial Highway

Emergency Fund Is For Emergencies ONLY – 6 Ways To Leave It Alone @ Deft Free Adventure

Employee or Entrepreneur? The Pros and Cons of Self-Employment @ Get Rich Slowly

The Three Most Influential Lessons From My Childhood @ My LIfe ROI

Saving Up And Paying Cash For The Things You Buy Makes The Purchase More Enjoyable! @ Bible Money Matters

Original content from The Happy Rock: Carnival Of Top Personal Finance Posts #11

Presenting the Carnival of Top Personal Finance Posts #1 complete with a brand new voting widget.

Please consider sharing the poll with your readers. The more people that vote the more likely the best content will be chosen the winner. Use the following code to place the current Top PF Blog Posts Carnival in a post of your own :

<div style="text-align:center"><iframe src="http://app.sgizmo.com/s/survey.php?id=G8QZ1M0ATND6E7WTHHH4ULBGIWN0I5-131270" frameborder="0" width="400" height="700" style="overflow: hidden" ></iframe></div> <p>



TopBlogPosts.net is a unique spin on the blog carnival that is designed to:

• Be a reader controlled filtering service for the fire-hose that can be a normal blog carnival. Instead of great links being lost within the hundreds of posts, only the best are highlighted.
• Make it easier for readers to connect with the best content.
• Draw more attention to the authors that are writing the best content.
• Make carnival content easily and instantly sharable across all blogs.
• Provide more traffic for the best articles.
• Monetarily reward the best content by giving a portion of the website’s revenue to the winners. This a future goal that will take a little while to work out the specifics.

The carnival accepts submissions through BlogCarnival.com and the host will select only the top few posts from the submissions and from around the web to be included in a poll that will be shareable between blogs. Readers will then select the best article of the week. The winner will be given a Blog Topper award badge(see picture) to display on their article page. The site is currently in Beta release phase, so please contact TopBlogPosts.net or follow TopBlogPosts.net on Twitter with any issues or suggestions. Of particular note, the voting widget may not display correctly on some blogs. Let us know so we can see if the problem can be corrected.

Finally, here is the Carnival of Top Personal Finance Posts homepage for those that are interested.

Original content from The Happy Rock: Carnival of Top PF Posts #1

After last week’s poor performance of the voting widget, TopBlogPosts.net is running a second test carnival before Beta release begins. Bible Money Matters was the unofficial winner of the first test carnival with the post: Days Like This Make You Realize What Is Important: It Isn’t Your Possessions

For those that didn’t catch the TopBlogPosts.net is a unique spin on the blog carnival that is designed to:

• Be a reader controlled filtering service for the fire-hose that can be a normal blog carnival. Instead of great links being lost within the hundreds of posts, only the best are highlighted.
• Make it easier for readers to connect with the best content.
• Draw more attention to the authors that are writing the best content.
• Make carnival content easily and instantly sharable across all blogs.
• Provide more traffic for the best articles.
• Monetarily reward the best content by giving a portion of the website’s revenue to the winners. This a future goal that will take a little while to work out the specifics.

The carnival will accept submissions through BlogCarnival.com and the host will select only the top few posts to be included in a poll that will be shareable between blogs. Readers will then select the best article of the week. The winner will be given a Blog Topper award badge(see picture) to display on their article page. The site is currently in Alpha release phase while we run a test or two PF carnival to work out any major kinks. It will quickly move into Beta release and settle into a nice rhythm.

Here is the Carnival of Top Personal Finance Posts homepage for those that are interested.

Here is the second test Carnival of Top Personal Finance Posts :

Voting widget had some issues last week, but hopefully the kinks are mostly worked out and voting goes smoothly.
If you have any questions or suggestions or problems, let me know.

Use this code to post the current Top PF Blog Posts Carnival in a post of your own :

<br /> <iframe src="http://app.sgizmo.com/s/survey.php?id=UA2DMJ9WWA71ZBGRBZWS5HVG07GT40-129245" frameborder="0" width="410" height="1000" style="overflow: hidden" ></iframe>

Original content from The Happy Rock: Carnival Of Top Personal Finance Posts Test Run #2

Welcome to the 160th Carnival of Debt Reduction.

This particular collection of posts related to debt reduction is dedicated to $700 billion bailout plan passed by the US government.  The dedication isn’t because the bill is a great piece of government action, because in reality it is an example of bill bloat, earmarks, and the government’s willingness to go into debt for us while taking more power away from us.  I say to heck with the bailout, let’s focus on being responsible for ourselves and use these posts to help bail ourselves out. In these rocky financial times it is even more important that you are in complete control of your money not banks and creditors.

Editor’s Top Picks

NCN writes How I Live Without Borrowing Money

FMF writes about Seven Brainless Borrowing Behaviors

FWP writes about Our new-to-us used truck (or, why pay $26k when you can pay $4k instead?)

PT writes about his Debt Target Update: September 2008

Other Posts

The Passive Dad writes $1500 Reduction In Property Tax. Help Your Friends And Neighbors Save Money

Michael writes about Consumer Debt Worst Offenders: Banks, Advertisers, and Advisors

The Smarter Wallet writes Think Before You Buy! 5 Basic Shopping Tips To Live By

Mr Credit Card writes about Credit Repair Tricks: Using CD?s and Personal Loans to Raise Your Credit Score

Cash Money Life writes Free Credit Score From Equifax – Limited Time Only

Kelly Tolman writes 5 Ways to Keep Your Credit Good In Hard Financial Times

Andy writes Announcing America’s Ten Trillion Dollar National Debt

J. Money writes When you overdraw your checking account does that effect credit??

Silicon Valley Blogger writes Save Money When Buying Those Cool Electronics and Gadgets You Hanker For

Ace Elliot writes Learning About Debt Relief Programs

Bankruptcy Access writes an Introduction to Credit Debt

KCLau writes about a Credit Counseling and Debt Management Agency: FREE Financial Education for Malaysian

Tom Tessin writes about A Simple Debt Reduction Plan

Original content from The Happy Rock: 160th Carnival Of Debt Reduction – Bailout Edition

If this is your first time visiting, feel free to look around. You can join the others by subscribing to my RSS feed or you can receive updates via email so that you don’t miss The Happy Rock’s articles!

Welcome to the 149th edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance! Below are 86 personal finance articles from the last week or so. In the articles you will find awesome information, but the real question is…”why do we care”? What motivates us to spend less and save more? Without being lead by our dreams and desires our enthusiasm and motivation can quickly fade, but if you figure out why you want to get out of debt or save money than it becomes amazingly easier to make wise money decisions. This is edition is dedicated to those dreams!

Without further adieu, here are all of the entries organized by category. Pay special attention to the Editor’s Picks which are listed in the first section. As you read through the carnivals, you’ll notice pictures that represent some of our common dreams to help inspire us to greater heights.

Editor’s Top Picks

• Frugal Babe presents The Choices We Make – Frugal Babe gives an inspiring snapshot of the money decisions that have set the foundation for their happiness and success.

• MomAdvice presents This American’s Dream – Amy Allen Clark shares an motivating post about their completed journey out of debt and what it means to their family.

• Free Money Finance presents The Spending Smart Philosophy: Controlling Spending is the Key to Building Wealth – FMF writes that controlling spending is the key to wealth. A long but energizing read.

• You Might as Well Burn $5! presents What If Rent Was Already in the Bank? – Margaret tells us how to reframe our emergency fund saving. Sometimes these little tricks can go a long when in seeing us through to the end.

• Greener Pastures presents The Psychology of Money-”I Have to Have It”-The Impulse Purchase – Lisa teaches us where impulsive shopping urges come from and how can we control them. The layout and insight here is helpful in examining our own spending foibles.

• Rather-Be-Shopping presents 5 Ways to Survive on One Income – Kyle James writes that having a parent at home with the kids is often more doable then you might think. These personal glimpses into lives of others provide a great backdrop to give us perspective about our own decisions.

• I‘ve Paid For This Twice Already presents The Psychology of the $1000 Emergency Fund – paidtwice shares his thoughts on why having a small emergency fund helps you attack your your debt. $1,000 is just the beginning, but it shares a big psychological and practical purpose.

Saving

• The Personal Financier presents How to Make Saving more Rewarding and Tangible: 5 Practical Tips – Dorian Wales writes that increasing the tangibility of your savings and rewarding yourself for achievements is crucial for success in this long term effort.
• The Baglady presents Is Inflation Eating Away Your Savings? – The baglady discusses protecting your savings from inflation.
• How to make $7 million in 7 years presents How much interest do you earn on one million dollars? – AJC writes teaches us why just leaving your money in the bank is a high risk strategy … you are much better off OWNING the bank!
• Blueprint for Financial Prosperity presents Laddering Your Emergency Fund – jim discusses maximizing earnings for emergency funds.
• Are You Going To Be This Way the Rest of the Time I Know You? presents How I Use My Bank Accounts to Manage My Bills and Save, Save, Save – BeThisWay shares about her banking setup.
• Smart Easy Money presents How I Save Money (aka Why I Have Seven Savings Accounts) – Shana writes about here savings setup with seven accounts.
• Sick of Being Poor presents Thank Goodness for My Emergency Fund – shelbug99 shares about needing to dip into her emergency fund.
• Saving to Invest presents I am NOT going to cut back on my cup of coffee – Andy S writes that life’s daily little pleasures like my morning cup of coffee have an intangible value to me which far exceed the $3 or so I spend on it.

Debt

• Dreaming of Ferraris presents Preparing for the Debt Attack – Foxie writes that it’s always good to have some idea of what you want to do in the future with your money. and outlines here own future plans for reducing my debt.
• LivingAlmostLarge presents Should you Pay off your student Loans? – livingalmostlarge asks should you pay off your student loans? Or are they last on the list after even a mortgage?
• Chic Saver presents Sharper Image? – Chic Saver shares how some business are using debt too much like herself and other consumers.

Career

• INDEBTED 2 YOU – Freelance and Contract Technical Writing Rates – Starving Artist presents an excellent personal look at trying to find out what your worth.
• The Digerati Life presents Get Hired, Get a Raise and Get Paid More By Improving Your Appearance – Silicon Valley Blogger writes about the effect that appearances can have on your income.
• Know The Ledge presents When Opportunities Knock You Better Be Prepared – Joe D shares his experience on being laid off and how he learned to prepare in the future.
• Think Your Way To Wealth presents Two of the Most Important Work Habits for Increasing Your Income – RC gives his insight on two solid career tips.
• Girls Just Wanna Have Funds presents Beat The Rat Race: Work from Home as a Virtual Call Center Agent – Ginger writes that opting out of the rat race is an eventual goal as I’d like to be ale to pursue different interests as long as I have an internet connection. However, there are a few considerations before jumping ship.
• Feminist Finance presents Equal Pay Day – f.f. shares about getting equal pay for women.
• HelpMyCashGrow presents Retirement Is Not For Everyone – Anthoney Grigsby shares how retirement isn’t what he is shooting for.

Money Managment

• Debt Marathon presents The Freedom – Cynthia shares the freedom a budget has given their family is a wonderful thing!
• Alpha Consumer presents Debunking the Money Myth – Kimberly Palmer writes that Despite all the bestselling books, women really aren’t worse with money than men!
• Life Lessons of a Military Wife presents Place Oxygen Mask Over Your Face Before Helping Children – Veteran Military Wife writes Teach ‘em right so they don’t have a lifelong screwed up relationship with money.
• The Penny Mine presents On Intermediate Goals and their Importance – Hannah shares here success with setting intermediate financial goals.
• squawkfox presents Ten Things You Should Never Carry in a Purse or Wallet – squakfox writes that he opened my wallet and dumped my purse. The results are financially terrifying as I found ten things you should never carry in your purse or wallet!
• Saving Advice Blog presents When Staying In Becomes More Expensive Than Going Out – Jennifer Derrick shares an example of how not to manage your money.
• Move To Portugal presents Organising my paperwork – Laura shares how they organize their financial paperwork.
• My Dollar Plan presents Do You Back Up Your Financial Data? – Madison DuPaix shares his experience with backing up his financial data.
• The Financial Blogger presents How To Create An Alternative Source Of Income Part 7 – The Financial Blogger that administrating profit from an alternative source of income can become tricky.
• Ask Mr Credit Car presents Emergency Sources of Funds + Income Compliment Your Emergency Funds – Mr. Credit Card talks about various possibilities for backup emergency funds.
• Moolanomy presents eFinPLAN Online Financial Planning Software Review – Pinyo shares his initial thoughts on a trial run with some financial planning software.

Finance

• Master Your Card presents Banks vs. Credit Unions: Which is Better? – Jonathan gives us his take on the beauty of the credit union.
• The Wealth Accumulator presents Calculating your expected net worth – Enoch Ko teaches us to calculate our expected net worth.
• Tales from the road less traveled presents I’m Only On Page 7! – Momma shares how she has problems with the victim mentality of Suze Orman’s The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom.

Investing

• Thicken My Wallet presents Share Buyback or Dividend Increase – Thicken My Wallet shares a look into whether a share buyback is all that it is cracked up to be.
• Investing Lessons presents Are You Ready for the Next Bubble? – Mark Runta arms us with some information on how to protect ourselves from the dreaded ‘bubble’.
• Save and Conquer presents Protecting Downside – Stop Loss Order – Bryce teaches that a stop loss order is where you set a price for a stock at which it will be automatically sold. This is a very useful tool if you will be away from investing for a while, or want to limit a possible loss.
• Dividends4Life presents Who is Charles Mangum and Why Should We Listen to Him? – Dividends4Life says Charles Mangum is an interesting man with an excellent investing track.
• record.
• Canadian Capitalist presents Top Three Investing Mistakes – Canadian Capitalist explains why chasing performance, not paying attention to expenses and not focusing on the big picture were my biggest money mistakes.
• Quest For Four Pillars presents Early Excitement in New Investments – Mr. Cheap says that Mr. Cheap new investors get too excited!
• The Dividend Guy presents Do Stock Charts Have a Place for Long-Term Investors? – The Dividend Guy suggests that stock charts do have a place in long term investing.
• Mrs. Micah presents Spousal IRAs Make Sense for Stay at Home Moms (SAHMS) – Mrs. Micah talks about retirements planning for stay at home moms.
• ProBargainHunter presents Stocks investment strategy – buying on weakness – Yan discussing buying stocks on weakness.
• My Retirement Blog presents Guaranteed 4.625% Ain’t Bad – retirehappy talks about investing in treasury notes.
• financesimplified presents How to identify the quality of a share – sunitha writes about finding a quality stock.
• Asset Allocator presents Invest In The Long Tail: An Amazon.com Case Study – Kyle writes that the term long tail refers to a socio-economic trend away from a hit-based economy to a niche-based one. See how companies like Amazon.com profit from this trend by capturing the long tail of retail sales.
• Uncommon Cents presents High and Low: Keeping Perspective – Ryan Suenaga writes that eeping your head on straight whether the market’s soaring or diving is critical.

Budgeting

• TV Girl and Money presents Choosing Fight Over Flight – TV Girl shares about the day she decided to do something about here debt.

Real Estate

• Funny about Money presents Home Inspections: Hire Your Own Craftsmen – vh shares advice on how to get around the home inspectors conflict of interest.
• Smart Money Daily presents Selling Your Home Series – Part One – FSBO – JS shares the pros and cons of For Sale By Owner selling.
• All About The Ben presents Save Money On Your Home Purchase With The Broker’s Commission – Jacob teaches us a about For Sale By Owner buying.
• Living After Foreclosure presents Why get foreclosed on when you can just “walk away” – mbhunter thinks that there will be a lot of companies doing this.
• Searchlight Crusade presents Retirement Account Contributions and Mortgage Loan Qualification – Dan Melson discusses the effects of 401k contributions on mortgage qualifications.

Taxes

• Don’t Mess With Taxes presents The out-of-control tax code – Kay writes that Congress talks a lot about making our tax chores easier, but every piece of tax legislation adds more pages to the tax code and turns into “The Accountants Full Employment Act.” This article is worth the read for the tax code size graph alone!
• FiveCentNickel presents Ten Things to Do With Your Tax Refund – nickel give us ten tips for using your tax refunds.
• Money Blue Book presents How To File A Form 1040X To Correct A Tax Return Mistake – Raymond share his experience about fixing his tax mistakes.
• FIRE Finance presents Short on Tax Money – Pay in installments via IRS’s OPA! – FIRE finance gives us information on filing for extensions or requesting installments for our US Federal taxes.
• Finance Gets Personal Next Year Will Be Different – Finance Girl writes that it is time to get organized for next year’s tax season!

Frugality

• Wealth Junkies presents Going Green In The Wallet – Alexander writes believe it or not, going “green” isn’t just good for the environment; it is great for your wallet as well.
• Sound Money Matters presents Six Affordable Summer Vacation Ideas – Aryn writes that you can still take a vacation without going into debt. Here are six ideas for affordable summer vacations.
• SavingFreak presents Cutting the Cost of Food – Paul shares his tips on how he saves at the grocery store.
• Hustlermoneyblog presents Free DVD Rental Every Monday – Hustler shares how to get some free Redbox rentals.
• Money Under 30 presents An Expensive Mistake: How I Overslept and Missed My Flight – David shares about his non-frugal mistake.

Credit

• creditaddict presents Beware the Promise of Interest Free Purchases – Credit Addict teaches us about some of the caveats with zero percent purchases.
• Not the Jet Set presents Ever Taken a Financial Beating? – NtJS gives us a look at the Universal Default policy and shares that some credit card companies seem to follow patterns of abuse.
• Trees Full of Money presents The Complete Guide To Protecting Your Identity and Credit – Ben Dinsmore shares his attempt to write the only identity theft prevention article you may ever need.

Reviews

• Dividend Growth Investor presents Rewards Checking Accounts Overview – An inside look at the mechanics of rewards checking accounts.

Economy

• Wide Open Wallet presents Are hybrid’s cheaper – Mom her analysis on why a hybrid isn’t cheaper for them.
• Journey To Financial Freedom presents Understand Recession in Simple Language – Harrison teaches us more about Recession with the simple language.
• Pinching Copper presents Being poor is a state of mind – Seb writes that some people are portrayed as poor in today’s society, and they live like kings.
• Beyond Paycheck to Paycheck presents Retirement for Gen X: Black Hole or Perfect Storm? – Beyond Paycheck to Paycheck writes that some experts blame Gen X’s high expectations for their financial challenges. Yet a recent study found that 43% of Gen Xers don’t ever expect to be able to retire. Sounds like pretty low expectations to me. Maybe the black hole of Social Security should shoulder some of the blame too?

Other

• Prime Time Money presents My Interview with United States Postal Inspector J. Krafels: All About Identity Theft – PT shares a a great interview packed with identity theft information.
• Chief Family Officer presents Teaching our children value and to accept – Chief Family Officer shares teaching children the value of money and potentially saying no to paying for college.
• Cash Money Life presents Spending Money is Good – Patrick writes that sometimes it’s easy to forget that spending money is a good thing.
• MoneyNing presents Being in Las Vegas and not Gamble – MoneyNing shares how he is in Vegas and not gambling. How do you treat gambling?
• Living the Cheap Life presents How to work at McDonald’s and retire rich – Mike runs some numbers on being able to retire while only working for McDonald’s.
• Lazy Man And Money presents Monavie scam? Was my wife recruited sell snake oil – Lazy Man writes about a multi level marketing drink sale that his wife was presented with.
• Growing Money presents My Goals and Project Statuses April 2008 – Smarty discusses how we plans to make his money in the upcoming year.
• Mighty Bargain Hunter presents Why PayPal makes it a chore to pay by credit card – mbhunter talks about the hoops PayPal goes through to keep people paying by checking account.
• Can I Get Rich On A Salary presents The 9 Or So Paths To Getting Rich—And My Purported Analysis Of Them(Part 2 of 2) – GBlogger writes about 9 paths to “get rich,” what are the upsides, downsides, risks, andtimelines of each path?
• Millionaire Money Habits presents Title: Teenage Millionaires – Ryan Taylor writes that making millions even for these teenage millionaires did not happen overnight. Maybe it was a bit of luck or being at the right place at the right time, but these kids found a way to provide something of great value and capitalize on it.

Advertisement

Common examples of secured loans are car and home loans, or mortgages. GE money, formerly purple loans is one of the top UK lenders offering homeowner loans in partnership with loans.co.uk.

Original content from The Happy Rock: 149th Carnival of Personal Finance – Chasing Dreams Edition

Just a reminder that The Happy Rock is hosting the 149th Carnival of Personal Finance. Come back on Monday to view a collection of 100 or so of the best personal finance articles from the last week. The guidelines for submission can be found here. Use this form to submit your articles.

I also have a special request to help support the theme of the upcoming article. If you could post a short comment on what your reasons are for trying to get on top of your finances? What dreams are you chasing? I appreciate the help.

Original content from The Happy Rock: Hosting The 149th Carnival Personal Finance On Monday

The 104th Carnival of Debt Reduction – Digging Out Edition

Getting out of debt requires intense personal action on our part. Sometimes we like to try and dig our way out of debt by using a small shovel, but the best results will come when we make drastic life changing actions. Instead of a shovel, use a back hoe or a bulldozer! Be willing to make major changes, and bury that debt.

My editor’s pick is an example of a bulldozer decision, freezing your credit cards!

My Credit Cards are Frozen! by Lynnae @ Being Frugal

Here are the rest of the debt reduction articles :

Good Debt, Bad Debt: The Differences, Illustrated by Silicon Valley Blogger @ The Digerati Life

How I Got Out Of Credit Card Debt by Kyle James @ Rather-Be-Shopping.com Blog

What’s your tipping point? by paidtwice @ I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

I Had No Clue You Could Shift Credit Limits Around! by Tricia @ Blogging Away Debt

Necessities You Can Live Without by Meredith H. Kaiser @ Saving Advice Blog

Do You Pay Cash for Your Cars? by FMF @ Free Money Finance

Are You Ashamed of Your Debt? by King of Debt @ We’re In Debt

Finding A Fix: 10 Tips For Resolving Financial Disputes by Ryan @ My Money Thinks

Debt Relief: Myths & Realities by Wesley @ CareOne Credit Counseling

FICO Roller Coaster – Part 1: FICO Freshen Up in 3 steps by Teaspoon @ Teaspoon Finance

My Plan After Graduation by Jason @ The Amatureist Financial Journey

Best Credit Card Balance Transfer Offers For Debt Reduction by Mr Credit Card @ Ask Mr Credit Card’s Blog

Original content from The Happy Rock: The 104th Carnival of Debt Reduction – Digging Out Edition

A blog carnival is a periodic round up of blogger’s recent best posts related to a specific topic.

The 104th Carnival of Debt Reduction(CoDR) will be hosted here on Monday. The carnival will be an excellent source of information on getting out of debt.

Submissions are due by Sunday at 5pm eastern time and should be relevant to the topic of debt reduction. Off topic posts will not be accepted. Please submit your articles using the CoDR submission link.

Here is the link to the 104th Carnival of Debt Reduction.

Original content from The Happy Rock: Hosting the 104th Carnival of Debt Reduction on Monday