Twelve Posts of Review – January 2007

[In this series, I’m reviewing some of my better posts of 2007. If you started reading this blog in the middle of the year, this is a good time to catch up.]

I started last year with $50 of alternative income for the month. I’m amazed to realize that I’ve made $1800 for the month of November 2007.

I wrote about my second pet peeve of personal finance – #X tips that will save you $Y. I’ve come to appreciate tips about saving money, but I still don’t quantify the savings for the end user making the assumption that they don’t do them already.

I wrote about my five favorite personal finance bloggers. When I go back and look at that list, all the names still stand up as great sources.

I found a magazine article where a person hadn’t thought about inflation and it greatly impacted their financial outlook. I still wish more time was spent to educate people about inflation and not just compounding interest.

I gave some great resources for new personal finance bloggers. There’s a lot of new personal finance bloggers and they could probably learn something from this list.

I took a trip back to my home in Boston and minimized costs along the way. It’s hard for me to believe that I haven’t been back for a vacation since.

I wrote an article that got the attention of the folks at Prosper.com. My analysis was less than stellar, I’ll be the first to admit. This was the start of a relationship that would flourish throughout the year until I scored a writing gig on Prosper.com’s blog.

We looked for a good deal on mattresses, and finally found a great one at Costco for around $300 – a fraction of what we thought we’d have to pay.

We looked at ways to reduce to reduce wedding make-up costs from $1400 to a more reasonable amount. I think we finally got it to about $800. For the number of people, that’s a little more acceptable, but still extremely expensive.

I took the $10,000 Challenge from Free Money Finance and it looks like I’ll meet the goal, largely through blogging income by $500.

I wrote about the text messaging scams of the today’s prime time game shows. I really thought this article was under-loved. Deal or No Deal does the same thing charging people money to effectively enter a contest. Be smart and enter online for free.

At the end of the month, I wrote about RateLadder.com. Never underestimate the power of networking. Today, I continue to write Kevin from RateLadder a couple of times a week.