Links: New Redesign Edition

You may have noticed that Lazy Man and Money and Lazy Man and Health have undergone a redesign recently. I have gotten some excellent feedback thus far, including my suggests on how to improve it further. I can always use more feedback, so if you have an idea, please consider sharing it with me via this web form. I hope to implement many of the subtle changes over the next week or two. In the meantime, here are a few of the changes and why I made them:

• Narrower content area – A person who I respect quite a bit noted that my content was very wide and it gave him headaches. I had never thought about this, but this is why newspapers have their typeface in narrower columns.
• Logo – I felt it was time to have a logo, something eye-catching for new visitors. I remembered that one of my readers and frequent commenters is a graphic artist. So I sent Amber Yount of Lost Spots an e-mail to send her some business. We worked on an idea that Plonkee contributed and the rest is history.
• Cleaner Overall Design – I lack the artistic talent to make nicely rounded corners and things of that nature. However, I feel like everything on the site now has “it’s place.” You’ll noticed that nearly everything fits into the overall color scheme. I hoped to address subtle details like the input buttons for subscribing or submitting a comment.
• Social Bookmarking – I want to make it easier for people to see and make use of the great social bookmarking tools at the end of each article. If you like the article I write, I hope you will use them.
• Behind the Scenes – I put a lot of effort into cleaning up the code and helping make sure search engines can index my content properly. This may mean nothing to the average reader, but if you run a blog you realize this can be signficant work.

With that out of the way, here are some of the stories I liked from other members of The Money Writers:

• The Digerati Life writes about how to make 10 ordinary things last longer. I found the flower tips the most interesting here.
• Generation X Finance had an unfortunate experience with a woman who refuses to roll over her 401k. This is why need to have personal finance taught in schools.
• Sun’s Financial Diary reviews the process of buying stock at ComputerShare. I have never heard of this company, but it sounds interesting.
• Brip Blap gives us the ying and the yang of consulting – 15 reasons to be a consultant and 15 reasons to NOT be a consultant.
• Money Smart Life’s college is selling his information. It’s things like this that make me not active in any alumni events.
• Million Dollar Journey says this is the best time to start investing
• My Dollar Plan has 30 Money Saving tips. I always like to look at how many of these, I’m not already doing. I found that I can use 7 or 8 of these tips.

And from other writers:

• Free Money Finance asks if he should include known liabilities in his net worth. I think potential future costs should be tracked separately.
• No Credit Needed is looking to recycle cans to buy a $1400 lawnmower. It sounds crazy to try to collect 175 cans a day. That said, I did collect cans with my father and brother which was used to help fund our first computer.
• Mighty Bargain Hunter says that you should check the unit prices at the grocery store. I do this, but sometimes they don’t update the unit prices if a product is on sale.