Finances & Money

Best Finance Posts from Carnival of Personal Finance #114

Trent at The Simple Dollar hosted this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance #114, which included my own article “Classifying your debt: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly“. Check out these other articles as well:

• One Snarky Chica with Issues writes about an interesting turn-around after discussing finances with her little brother. One thing she mentioned is especially enlightening, as I thought it’s common knowledge. However, I think I thought this same way when I was a teen:
  

  He did not realize that getting a loan for something meant that you ended up paying more for it than the cost

• Since we’ll be buying a car within the next year, we plan on saving up to try and pay cash (or mostly cash, and maybe a little 0% credit card) when we do buy. Saving with Me tells how Cash and pre-arranged loans are a dealer’s worst nightmare.
• I’m glad Teaspoon Finance wrote this one first. I don’t like having a bunch of cash sitting in an account only earning 5% when it could be in a retirement account or paying down our high debt. He writes about using your credit lines as emergency funds. I do, however, agree with commenter Plonkee that the thought of using credit as an emergency fund is a bit sickening. You need to have SOME money in savings to handle things that credit just cover.
• The Dough Roller details how to identify a scam. This is a good companion article to my own “Fixing your money mistakes: Don’t fall for those scams“.
• The Happy Rock and I have the same reasons for wanting to be debt-free. He writes 5 key strategies for getting out of debt.
• As I mentioned in our shopping spree article, it’s hard for Stacie to find clothes that fit. She’s had to resort to buying clothes in the kid’s section. Around the Sun writes about her own discovery of cheaper and better-fitting alternatives in the junior’s section.