This Weekend in Personal Finance

I’m very busy this weekend figuring out how to use some of the gifts received from my wedding… Thus the biggest winners are the Bissell SpotBot and a George Foreman Grill with the removable plates for easy cleaning.

Ben at MoneySmartLife has a way to get a free $125. It requires signing up for a credit card. I’ve tried these things in the past, but I end up not keeping everything straight and executing. For instance, I have a Sharebuilder account that I started for the bonus and I never think about it. I probably have to make a trade to get the bonus and I haven’t done that.

Golbguru wrote an article that drew some controversial comments – Think About Your Finances Before Having (More) Children. I think it’s a wise plan for the child’s sake. Like him, I’ll avoid all issues (religious and otherwise) about when to have children. There are many other factors to consider, but I think finances is one that’s often overlooked.

Silicon Valley Blogger has a ton of various historic market and commodity charts. The most interesting one to me is the Nikkei index. Those of us in the US have been conditioned to expecting 8-12% in the stock market over the “long term.” What you consider long term may vary, but if you invested money about 20 years ago, you’d break even and that’s after a run-up from since 2003. Once again, I would invest internationally to limit the risk of this happening in United States.

The Sun’s Financial Diary talks about his Buy-and-Sell activities on Amazon. I’ve thought about doing this for a little while, but I’m just a little too lazy to keep up with it. I’d rather work on a business that grows than something that’s probably forever going to be hit and miss taking my time.

While Generation X Finance was on vacation, Danny from MoneySocket.com wrote, “Don’t Think About It, Just Start Saving Now“. It’s a good philosophy. I wrote some tips that will help with this earlier this week.

Henry at Binary Dollar writes about Geezo – a new financial website. I love text messaging – as long as it’s free – and think it’s a great way to get information on the go. I can definitely see how this would be useful for students.

Jim at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity lists Five accounts you must have and four you don’t. I usually get all set to find the exception or the missed account, but I found this to be dead-on. I’m working with about 4 checking accounts to different PayPal services for different reasons. I really need to take some time and consolidate them.

FreeMoneyFinance asks if coupons are a Waste of time. In a lot of cases, I believe this is the case. Why? Because I save money using store brands. I will use coupons in the rare case that there’s no store brand, but that’s the exception, not the rule.

Mighty Bargain Hunter writes that you can now get a Martha Stewart house. If you want to pay more for a house designed by a convicted felon, this sounds like a great idea. That might have been a little too harsh. There’s a mention in this game about Atari and I’d say that Atari went out of business due to increased competition for a variety of sources while not improving their product. I don’t think it was due to one E.T. game (which we did have when we were little – it was not that bad if memory serves).

Five Cent Nickel uses Yodlee to log into his TIAA-CREF account. I love his problem solving ability – it’s a great workaround. Better yet it reminds me that I’ve had a Yodlee account since around 1999 and I haven’t logged in. I wonder how many T.G.I. Friday’s GoldPoints I have in there now. If they only earned interest…