The Wealth Builder Carnival #1

Welcome to the inaugural 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 this carnival, I have organized the posts in seven categories: Earning, Investing, Insuring and Protecting, Living, Retiring, Saving and Taxes. I have acknowledged bloggers who are in Technorati's Top 100 Finance blogs by showing their 8/10/2010 rank in parentheses. Finally, for some submissions, I have added my perspective and comments relative to the post topic.

And now onto the Carnival:

Earning

FMF (#6) presents How to Ask for a Raise posted at Free Money Finance, saying, "One sure way to grow your income is to ask for raises when appropriate. This post tells you how to do so." A great article. Making more money is a necessary ingredient to building wealth.

passive family income presents How To Earn Passive Income At Home posted at Passive Family Income, saying, "In these tough economic times many people wonder how to earn passive income at home. When you consider the global economy, the growing job reductions, and the fact that a lot of companies are downsizing their operations to keep their business afloat it’s no wonder that we are looking for a better, and easier way to live." For some, when earnings become large enough, passive income activities can become the main job, with perhaps more flexibility.

MoneyNing (#11)presents Three Reasons Stay at Home Parents Should Consider Working Part Time posted at Money Ning, saying, "Working part time is not as bad as it seems, even for stay at home parents!"

Investing

Super Saver (#53) presents Where to Invest? posted at My Wealth Builder, saying, "Low interest rates have caused us to rethink our investment strategy." Stocks are looking more and more attractive.

Dividends4Life presents 19 Stocks Using Real Cash To Pay Higher Dividends posted at Dividends Value, saying, "Are you looking for companies that can sustain and grow their dividend? In making that determination, a company’s Statement of Earnings is one of the last places you should look. Cash is king for the dividend investor and the Statement of Cash Flows is where astute investors begin when they want to understand the viability of a company." With dividends in the 3-5% range, good dividend paying stocks are an option worth considering for our investment portfolio.

Silicon Valley Blogger (#8) presents Investing Tips For The Beginning Stock Picker posted at The Digerati Life, saying, "Here are some of my thoughts on getting started in investing."

Arjun Rudra (#82) presents Searching For High Return On Equity Companies With Jason Donville of Donville Kent Asset Management posted at Investing Thesis, saying, "ROE is a very good yardstick by which to measure how well the management of a company creates value for its shareholders. However, as with everything the ROE statistics has it foibles and can be artificially inflated. To dig a bit deeper into what ROE is and how it translates into investment performance, we are super excited today to present to you an interview with a portfolio manager that relies heavily on the use of return on equity as a screening tool."

Dave presents Food Prices To Soar posted at Cheapo Groovo, indicating that it may be a good time to invest in an agricultural ETFs or ETNs. My conclusion is that inflation may be coming sooner that we think :-)

Sun (#12) presents What to Invest When You Are Young posted at The Sun’s Financial Diary, encouraging the young to invest in the stock market and themselves.

Insuring and Protecting

Jim (#25) presents How to Recover a Stolen Identity posted at Bargaineering.com . As with insurance, this is good information to have, but hopefully never needed.

Living

Aaron presents Prepaid Credit Cards For Kids ? Is It A Good Idea? posted at Prepaidcards123, saying, "This article will highlight some of the pros and cons for when it comes to kids using prepaid credit cards. "

Retiring

J.D. Roth (#17) presents What is Retirement? posted at Get Rich Slowly, saying, "For most people, retirement is their eventual 'life destination', and many dream of retiring early. But what does retirement even mean? How does it differ from pursuing your passions?" I agree that the definition of retirement is evolving. For us, we have chosen a more traditional definition of being able to live primarily off our savings, retirement accounts, and pension payments for the rest of our lives.

BWL presents How to Build a CD Ladder posted at Christian Personal Finance, saying, "Many retirees draw income from CDs since they are a more conservative investment. This article shows explains the benefits of using a CD ladder." We like this idea and been using CD ladders for the past 10 years. The current low interest rates have made this strategy less attractive for us. Hopefully, we'll see better interest rates in the next few years.

Saving

Marie Joseph presents Have you really looked at how much money you made? posted at Moneymonk, saying, "And have you matched it with how much you have in your bank account?" Before retiring, we were saving over 20% of our income. It was a big factor in helping us retire in our forties. Moneymonk is even a bigger saver at 30% of her income.

Taxes

Kara Sebbert presents States with Tax-free Shopping this Summer posted at Fashion Merchandising Degrees. Although not as big a Sen. John Kerry's attempted yacht sales tax savings , these sales tax holidays offer savings for back to school purchases.

Mike Piper (#9) presents 2011 Tax Brackets: What Will Change and How Should We Plan for It? posted at The Oblivious Investor, saying, "A look at likely tax changes for 2011, as well as some tips for minimizing your taxes in light of those changes." Taxes are definitely one area where less is better. Since retiring, we have been managing our income and investments to minimize taxes and maximize credits.

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.

For more on Ideas You Can Use, check back every Tuesday for a new segment.

This is not financial, investment, career or tax advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2010 Achievement Catalyst, LLC