The Wealth Builder Carnival #62

Welcome to the sixty-second edition of The Wealth Builder Carnival. The purpose of this carnival is to collect articles from the blogosphere on building, preserving and keeping enough wealth for a comfortable retirement. For reference, I have tried to keep the carnival content tightly focused on wealth building and did not include submissions that were off topic. For reading convenience, the posts are listed with a brief summary or comment by the submitter and organized into seven categories: Earning, Insuring and Protecting, Investing, Living Frugally, Retiring, Saving and Taxes.

And now onto the Carnival:

Earning

Jon Elder presents Use your Personal Brand to Make More Money posted at Free Money Wisdom, saying, "If you’ve branded yourself as an expert, clients are less likely to micromanage and second-guess your decisions, which helps you retain clients when they don’t get the results they want. This is because they see you as a trust agent, somebody whose knowledge gives them credibility so that people take what they say about their area of expertise to be true. You can then use this to market yourself as an expert in your field and charge expert rates."

Sunil presents How Multiple Streams of Income Work & Why It Is Important to Have Them posted at The Extra Money Blog, saying, "The effect of multiple streams of income works just like a snow ball that is rolling down a snow hill. The longer it rolls, the more momentum it gains and picks up more snow (income in our case) along the way."

Jonathan from Debt Loans presents Top Five Ways to Boost Your Income Online posted at Wallet Watcher, saying, "The following is a list of the five best ways to help you boost your income from the Internet and reach your working goals."

Shamelle presents 8 Ways To Use YouTube Videos To Promote Your Products On Your Website posted at Promote Youtube Videos, saying, "Many marketers and entrepreneurs alike use YouTube to create inspiring videos to promote either themselves, their products and services or their websites even.
Here are a few ideas on how you can create videos for your company/website."

Insuring and Protecting

Rachel Cleary presents Insuring a Teenage Driver: Mitigating the Cost posted at Auto Insurance Quotes, saying, "Insuring a teen driver is extremely expensive. Depending on the age of the driver, the type of vehicle driven and applicable state restrictions, adding a teen driver can increase insurance rates as much as 100 percent or more. With the cost of insuring young drivers so high, it’s surprising that parents are even willing to license their teens."

Evan presents Can you eliminate PMI? posted at Smart Wealth, saying, "Until recently, I always thought that you had to get to 80% loan to value by either paying down your mortgage, or hoping that your home’s value rises and then refinance to eliminate PMI. However, there is another program you may want to consider instead."

Investing

Peter presents Lending Club Returns At 11.23% Despite My First Charged Off Loan posted at Bible Money Matters, saying, "While Lending Club had a good year, the returns I saw last year were good as well, better than I saw in my retirement or savings accounts. I think Lending Club and social lending in general are a great way to diversify your savings and investments especially in turbulent times like we’re going through right now."

Dividends4Life presents Dividend Growth Stocks: 9 Dividend Stocks Trading at a 20%+ Discount posted at Dividend Growth Stocks, saying, "Fair value is really a simple concept. Given some select information such as dividends, dividend growth, holding period, discount rate and few other inputs, one can easily calculate the fair value of a stock. As with most simple things, the devil is in the details - the inputs must be correct to calculate a reasonable fair value, otherwise, garbage in, garbage out."

Mike Piper presents REITs Are Stocks posted at The Oblivious Investor, saying, "Despite misconceptions to the contrary, REITs are simply a type of stock. And they're already included in most broad index funds."

Investor Junkie presents 2011 WTF Fund Update posted at Investor Junkie, saying, "As of January 5th 2012 I am up 14.5% from my initial $10,000 investment, mostly because of owning Apple (AAPL)."

Living Frugally

misst presents How to Save Money on Food Costs posted at Prairie Eco-Thrifter, saying, "If your finances are tight and you already have several credit cards with high balances, it is time to change your shopping behavior to save as much as possible. One of the first places you can start is on groceries."

DJ presents {Save Money} – Brand Names Versus Store Brands posted at The Family Wallet, saying, "If you just concentrate on food products to save money, you will find out that most store brands are very similar to brand names and usually are made from the same ingredients. The only thing that is different is the name."

Marie presents Getting The New Year Off To A Good Financial Start posted at Money Spending Mommy, saying, "Here are a few tips for improving your financial health this year:"

Lazy Man and Money presents Top 10 Couponing Tips from the Lazy Couponer posted at Lazy Man and Money, saying, "Last month I was in the bookstore and I happened across a book called The Lazy Couponer by Jamie Chase. Chase's approach is novel in that you can get the results, free stuff, without all the hours and hours of planning."

Lisa presents Living on a Budget and Your Pet’s Last Days | posted at Thriftability, saying, "Becoming aware of your pet’s condition can give you both the peace and insight to make such a decision – if it is right for the pet. It may not be: you might have a good treatment option available, or your pet might be best living out his or her final days. In other cases, putting your pet to sleep can put a peaceful and calming end to his or her life, and can be best."

SavingMentor presents The Best Price Comparison Sites In Canada posted at HowToSaveMoney.ca, saying, "Using price comparison websites is one of the easiest ways to save money when shopping online. They also come in handy when shopping offline because prices are usually identical for stores that have both an online and an offline presence"

Nick presents 5 ways to slowly but surely become a millionaire posted at Step Away from the Mall, saying, "Five things you can do to retire a millionaire assuming you only mirror what the Dow Jones Industrial Average has done over the last twenty years."

Judy Blackburn presents How To Get Out Of Debt-The Smart & Quick Guide posted at Debt Consolidation, saying, "The holiday season is just about behind us and what lies ahead for many is the mounting piles of bills left over from the spending- and over spending- that frequently goes on this time of year."

Andy Boyd presents How to Save Money as the Cost of Living Keeps Rising: 10 Tips posted at Credit Cave, saying, "A post listing 10 tips to keep your costs down, even as the cost of living is rising."

Theresa Torres presents Jan 4, How Granny's Beauty Tricks Can Save You Money posted at Look Great, Lose Weight, Save Money, saying, "With the high cost of beauty products these days, we have to be wise and look for affordable ways to help us look great. Here are some tips and tricks from Grandma."

Will presents Control Your Spending Without Making A Budget posted at Former Banker, saying, "How to keep track of your money even if you hate making a budget"

Retiring

Mr. Money Smarts presents Double Check Your Employer’s Retirement Plan posted at Smart On Money, saying, "When you work for an employer, you might have access to benefits, including a retirement plan. Your company’s retirement plan — usually a 401(k) — can be a way to help you build your nest egg through the power of investing and compound interest. However, you want to double check to make sure that your employer’s retirement plan is what you want to be devoting your resources to."

Saving

B.B. presents Start 2012 Off Right - Beating Broke posted at Beating Broke, saying, "Setting specific goals and being diligent about tracking and saving towards those goals is a great way to improve your financial situation. Even if you’re not sure that you can do it, I encourage you to give it a try with a few small goals."

Taxes

Robert Moore presents Should I File A Tax Return This Year? posted at 2011 Tax, saying, "The law requires you to complete a tax return when you have income above a designated amount."

Tushar presents Can You Deduct Moving Expenses When You File Your Taxes? posted at Everything Finance, saying, "Like many people, you may have moved last year to start a new job. If you did, you may qualify to deduct any moving expenses your employer does not reimburse on your taxes this year. However, there are a few requirements you must meet to be eligible to deduct moving expenses."

Tim @ Faith and Finance presents States With No Income Tax posted at Faith and Finance, saying, "Looking to eliminate state income tax from your vocabulary? You're in luck! Seven states don't have state income tax - do you know which ones they are?."

Steve presents House Republicans Agree On Short-Term Renewal Of Payroll Tax Cuts And Other Benefits posted at FastSwings, saying, "Republicans in the House of Delegates caved on Thursday to the President's, congressional Left wingers ', and fellow Republicans ' demands for a renewing of payroll tax cuts for employees."

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of The Wealth Builder Carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

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This is not financial, earning, insuring, investing, living, retiring, saving, tax, or wealth building advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

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