Finances & Money

Best finance articles from Carnival of Personal Finance #106

I was so busy planning to get a motorcycle this weekend that I forgot to submit to the carnivals this week. But I still slogged through all 91 entries in the latest Carnival of Personal Finance edition held by The Digerati Life and picked my favorites:

• 1MansMoney shows us how he got rid of a huge amount of credit card debt. Boy that’s liberating!
  
• Penny Nickel from Money & Values explains why she feels she owes her parents for her college education. My own parents paid for my housing, while I paid for tuition, books and entertainment. I never took money from my parents after my first semester as I wanted to be self-sufficient during college. Plus, they didn’t have the money. I feel that once I tackle my own student loans, I will then pay off my parents’ loans they took out for my housing.
• MoneyMonk discusses renting vs owning your lifestyle. The question to answer is “Do you really own that stuff that you say is ‘yours’?”
• Christine Kane tells a good story about a man haggling over postage that made her wonder whether we’re saving money or wasting time. This is an example of frugality at its worst, when the costs in time don’t outweigh the benefits in money.
• Matt at Finance is Personal gives us 5 meals you can bring to work for under $2.00. However, try to be cautious about the nutritional value of your lunches as well as the cost.
• Advanced PF gives us a nifty calculator spreadsheet to see how much we’re saving (or losing) to try to get cheaper gas. Really, is it worth driving a mile down the road to save 1 cent per gallon? Find out!
• College and Finance shows 7 ways to save serious cash in college. Here’s 1 way: Don’t get a credit card if you aren’t responsible enough!
• And finally, Kelly from A Girl Worth Saving treats us to an interesting story of how she was the victim of credit card fraud, and some tips for preventing and resolving the problem if it happens to you.