The Wealth Builder Carnival #4

Welcome to fourth 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. As a result, this carnival did not include submissions that were off topic, e.g. those about debt, debt management, debt reduction, credit scores, credit monitoring, credit card evaluations, or account opening bonuses.

For this carnival, I have organized the posts into seven categories: Earning, Investing, Insuring and Protecting, Living Frugally, Retiring, Saving and Taxes. I have acknowledged bloggers who are in Technorati's Top 100 Finance blogs by showing their 8/31/2010 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

Christina Crowe presents 10 Practical Ways to Make a Living Online posted at Cash Campfire, saying, "Could entrepreneurs really be taking over the economy? This was one question Amy Cosper, Editor-in-Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, posted in the December 2009 issue of the publication. This guide is meant to be a resource to help you make a living online. A simple list of ideas or suggestions to help you achieve your online goals, if you will, that will point you on to the right path. Test them, practice them or devote your time to them. You can control your own future." For me, online approaches can have low start up costs which make them attractive to try.

Ken presents Home-Based Business Career Opportunities posted at Spruce Up Your Finances saying, "One option for the unemployed individuals is to start looking into a home-based business even on a part-time basis in order to generate income."

PT presents Kids Can Make Extra Money: 5 Businesses Your Money-Wise Kids Can Start Today posted at Prime Time Money, saying, "Ideas for kids to make extra money." Having kids learn about earning money is a great idea. I pay our daughter to help me set up and clean up when I teach her after-school class.

Insuring and Protecting

Mick presents Rental Insurance for Apartments - Do All Renters Really Need It? posted at PadBlog. To me, it was worth it to purchase rental insurance before I owned a house. My policy covered me when our sports organization was in a lawsuit and the individuals were named as defendants.

Investing

Dividends4Life presents 8 Dividend Stock Delivering Good News posted at Dividends Value, saying, "If you closely follow the daily financial news as presented by the mainstream media, it is easy become jaded and start believing that there isn’t any good news out there. Don’t be confused by the noise. There are still many great companies committed to generating superior returns and rewarding their shareholder by increasing cash dividends."

Mike Piper (#4) presents TIPS vs. Nominal Treasury Bonds posted at The Oblivious Investor, saying, "When does it make sense to use inflation-protected bonds, and when does it make sense to use the traditional nominal Treasury bonds?" At the current levels of government spending, I believe inflation is a given. So do a lot of other investors. The TIPS we own are currently selling at 10 to 15% premiums over face value.

FMF (#29) presents Asset Allocation Made Ridiculously Easy posted at Free Money Finance, saying, "One of the main keys to investing is setting an asset allocation and sticking to it. This post details how to do this." Automatic and preset. It doesn't get any easier.

Living Frugally

Jane Sanders presents Time Orientation and Personal Finance posted at Debt Management. I like this idea of thinking about a purchase three times before buying. It will slow down impulse buying.

BWL presents Should You Sell Your Car or Repair It? posted at Christian Personal Finance, saying, "A look at the always difficult to answer question: should I sell my car or repair it?" Since we are trying to keep our cars at least 10 years, our question is " Repair it or buy another car?" At seven years, our answer is still repair it. When we do buy, we plan to pay cash.

Retiring

Mitch Archuleta presents Comparing Retirement Accounts: At What Age Do You Have to Begin to Withdraw Funds? posted at RothIRA.com's Retirement Planning Blog.

FIRE Getters presents Three Good Habits of Successful Retirees posted at FIRE Finance, saying, "Vanguard's chairman and CEO Jack Brennan has nearly three decades of valuable experience in investing at this great firm. He has observed that successful long term investors share some common traits. Here is our spin to his observations."

Saving

Pfstock presents Pay The Early Withdrawal Penalty? posted at DC's Personal Finance and Stock Investing Blog, sharing, "If CD or money market rates go back up to the 4-5% range, I intend to close my CD account, pay the penalty, and establish a new account at the higher rate. I already did some back-of-the-envelope calculations that show I would be much better off doing that even after having to pay an early withdrawal penalty.'

Freefrombroke (#1) presents Seven Ideas To Set Up SmartyPig Goals posted at Free From Broke, saying, "An important aspect of saving is having a goal to save towards. Here are 7 savings goals you can set up in SmartyPig (or anywhere else)." Having goals is a great idea. Retirement and college education are two important goals that we included for our list.

Super Saver (#26) presents A Simple Way to Build Wealth posted at My Wealth Builder saying, "By paying ourselves first, we guaranteed that we were increasing our wealth every time we received a paycheck."

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 or wealth building advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

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