Friday, August 24, 2012

Carnival of Financial Discipline - 6400 Personal Finance

My effective tax rate for the last couple of years has been lower than Mitt Romney?s. ?I have been employed in a full-time job for that entire time and my income is greater than the national average.

Just saying.

On that note I have a question for everybody: would you be more or less likely to vote for a candidate if you knew they (legally) paid an effective tax rate of less than 15%? How about if they paid an effective rate over 35%?

What about 23.8%?

Or how about answer D: the tax rate they paid wouldn?t influence your vote one way or the other provided they obeyed the law? ?Seriously, are we electing the leader of the (still mostly) free world or head of the high school accounting club?

See what happens when you disassociate yourself from the talking heads on TV? Thinking for yourself can take you to some pretty cool places.

And now for the (potentially disastrous) carnival.

Hold on to your seats folks because I am about to carpet bomb your eyes with blog posts. ?A lot of posts made it in to the carnival this week because I had an attack of the ?nice-ies?. I?ll leave it to you to decide if I was too nice as I sorted through all of the submissions. ?Once you look over this massive conglomeration (and end up only reading a fraction of the articles) you?ll see why I aim to keep the CoFD small. ?For you submitters you will see why I usually reject the majority of posts sent to me. ?By keeping this carnival tiny in size it ensures the readers aren?t inundated with stuff they won?t bother to read and it highlights authors who write quality content. ?I?ll get back to that format next week. ?For now, here is the ?mediocre is good enough? version of the CoFD.

I?ll work under the assumption that your chances of clicking something will decline the deeper you get into the carnival so I?ll make sure the best submission is first in line. ?Don?t Quit Your Day Job?takes issue with the common wisdom associated with investment risks, particularly as applied to bonds. ?Remember buy low, sell high? ?Look at this chart of the S&P 500 for the last three years and identify the best times to buy and sell based on that rule:

Now look at this chart of Fidelity?s Bond Market Index Fund (FBIDX):

So much for bonds being a safe defense against a rallying market.

Now for everybody else. ?Shorter blurbs this week because this is just a blog post, not an epic.

Jeremy at Modest Money writes about what should be on your mind when, ahem, considering, a career change. For what its worth my dad has had a half-dozen careers, two which required getting P.h.D.s. ?Oh, and his first job after college (he graduated in 1958) was a six-month active duty stint in the Army. ?Career changes have been around for a long freaking time, its not like we left the era of black-and-white TV and pensions from your employer of 30 years last week. ?Instead of treating these major shifts like huge unexpected obstacles how about you learn to adapt to the environment around you and be ready to take advantage of the opportunities provided to you?

Teacher Man from My University Money gives the lowdown on a topic somewhat beyond my limited expertise: Canadian student loans.

Darnell Brown from Excess Return makes it two weeks in a row with a post that is distinguished by an incredibly literal picture to match the title. ?The post covers how to minimize risk when investing with stocks and bonds. ?Nothing groundbreaking but still stuff worth knowing.

And then the bum rush of real-estate posts started:

Echo from Boomer & Echo puts forward a case study in how to actually do something right when it comes to personal finance: buying a house that was actually affordable. ?No word on how much his traffic dropped after that one.

Free Money Finance lays out his system for getting into rental properties. ?An actual plan? With rules? What?

Planting Our Pennies found out that using online sites like Zillow to get an assessment on their home?s value yielded some inconsistent results.

Teacher Man popped up again over at Young and Thrifty. ?Apparently the Canadian dream is to own a cottage. ?It confused me to learn this because it was my understanding that if you didn?t live in Toronto or Vancouver that you already lived in the middle of nowhere.

Okay kids, take a knee, face out, and drink water. ?We?re more than halfway through. ?Gather up whatever level of caring you have left while I try to bring this thing to a merciful end.

Dammit, another house post made it in. ?A guy named Kevin guest posted at Financial Highway and wrote about why you shouldn?t buy a house on a shoestring [budget]. ?Apparently he put more thought into it than I would have given that I would have just written ?because it is a stupid f***ing idea? and left it at that. ?He takes a more refined approach.

Dividend Growth Investor brings some quality back into the conversation by showing you how to identify companies that can be the base of your income portfolio. ?Short version: figure out who supplies the products that you use between getting up in the morning and walking out the door to work.

Ryan at Cash Money Life reviews his options for increasing his cashflow and then?makes a?decision. ?Holy crap, you mean there is a different way to end a post other than some version of ?no matter what I wrote in the preceding paragraphs you should do whatever you feel like doing??

Did you ever play the stock market game in school? ?I remember my class checking up on stocks a couple times in 5th grade and that was it. ?I didn?t learn a damn thing except that Playboy?s competitive moat had pretty much?disintegrated?by then. ?Some guy named Ted guest posted at Your Smart Money Moves about getting your kids into stock investing. ?I can buy into this for cash that is given as a gift but for cash that the kid earns let him make the choice on whether to spend it or invest it. ?With his own time and effort being involved he?ll be more interested in where the cash goes. ?And for god?s sake let him buy a candy bar every now and then.

Vytas Zilenas at Trend thinks you should buy gold. ?This is no mere bullet point post, the man writes in paragraphs. ?If you have any mental energy left take a look.

A few more posts were submitted right before the deadline. ?They might have had a chance until the guy who sends in six posts a week from all of his different blogs did his thing and killed my desire to stretch the carnival out a little farther.

No Ugly Ducklings this week, this post is too long already.

Oh, the $0 Workout of the Week? 5 mile run. ?Consider it a way to purge some of the more suspect samples of personal finance writing listed above from your mind.

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Source: http://6400personalfinance.com/2012/08/23/carnival-of-financial-discipline-00/

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