Weekend Personal Finance Review

What’s this – a new feature? Yes, I’m going to take a little time on the weekends to post some articles from other personal finance bloggers. It’ll work a lot like a Carnival (here’s an example if you missed it) where all the posts are from the last week. I can’t guarantee that I’ll have time for this every weekend, so it may be hit or miss.

• This first article is dear to my heart. Money Smart Life might as well just be writing to me, when he points out how absentee landlords can save thousands of dollars. I am an absentee landlord and I’m pretty sure they don’t have my new address. Just two weeks ago, I tried to log into my account and try to change my address, but there’s no contact or support information available on the website. After a lot of research this morning, I finally found out how to send them an e-mail. I wish they had some kind of phone support.
• While we are talking about saving thousands of dollars, let’s talk about car choice. Golbguru has an article on considering the total cost of a car. Looks like Edmunds approved it, so you know it’s going to be good.
• Continuing with the thousand dollar theme, The Digerati Life admits to Money Mistakes that cost her $1,000 each. I’ve made a lot of these mistakes myself, but I’ll only admit to one for now. I was in Amway for a year in college. It was a horrible plan.
• Binary Dollar gives us an article about investing in wind and sun power. While Matt leans towards wind as the better solution because clouds can block the sun, I’m not so sure. Even cloudy days bring solar power, but what if it’s just not windy out that day?
• While on the topic of the sun, I’d like to highlight The Sun’s Financial Diary and their article on the best investments in IRA accounts. I usually keep ETFs in my IRA accounts, which isn’t ideal, but then again, I don’t have any managed funds.
• I might have saved the best for last. Gen X Finance critiques Robert Kiyosaki’s assessment of the equity market. Kiyosaki takes a couple of recent hot investments like gold and oil and says that the Dow can’t compete. My take on this is that gold and oil isn’t a very diversified investment. A true comparison would be the entire commodities market vs. the entire equities market. Or alternatively, take the best commodity and compare against the best stock. It’s weird to compare an index of stocks against one of the best commodities, just like it would be wrong to compare the best stock against an index of commodities.