The Wealth Builder Carnival #6

Welcome to sixth 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 9/13/2010 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

Silicon Valley Blogger (#3) presents How To Get Hired & Get The Job You Want By Volunteering posted at The Digerati Life. The author shares her approach to finding a paying job, an important element of building wealth. Another approach that I've seen work is taking an available paying position and transferring later to the desired job.

Super Saver (#13) presents Signs of Being Considered for a Promotion posted at My Wealth Builder, saying, "Getting promoted is a great way to increase earnings. " Based on my experience, there are usually indications a promotion is coming.

Investing

Mike Piper (#4) presents Do You Have an Investment Backup Plan? posted at The Oblivious Investor, saying, "What's your plan in case your investments don't perform as well as you'd hoped?" Due to the decline in our retirement savings, we are using a Plan B, reduce expenses, and a Plan C, part time work to reduce withdrawal rate. Plan D, if needed, is to return to full time work.

Darwin presents Dividends = 43% of Total Stock Market Returns [Graphic] posted at Darwin's Money, saying, "Dividends are a HUGE portion of overall market returns - you'll be shocked by the data, and see why you should own strong dividend stocks." In today's sideways markets, dividends may even be a higher proportion of a stock's total return.

Dividends4Life presents 7 Dividend Stocks Sending More Cash To Shareholders posted at Dividends Value, saying, "If your goal is to accumulate wealth for a comfortable retirement, then there is no risk-free path. Throughout time every angle has been tried and failed. What appears to be a safe investment in a federally insured CD or money market , may not even be covering inflation. Growth stocks don’t always grow. The astute conservative investor turns to solid dividend paying stocks with a track record of growing their dividends each year." Currently, companies with good dividends are our starting point for choosing stock investments. However, we base our investment decision on more than just the dividend.

Living Frugally

FMF (#19) presents The Ten Rules Great CFOs Live By posted at Free Money Finance, saying, "10 steps you can take to grow your wealth." These are ten great rules by which to live financially. Now, if we could only get the government to follow these rules. :-)

Andrea presents 6 Tips to Find Out How Smart are you about Money? posted at Savings Scoop. Here's a convert from spending to building wealth. I wish Andrea luck in her journey.

Retiring

Rob presents Best IRA Rates posted at Stock Tips, saying, "Learning how to get the best IRA rates available can help protect and grow your retirement investments. Learn how here." With CD rates being so low, there is greater interest in high return investments for retirement accounts. The author recommends using a self-directed IRA to invest in real estate. To me, using an IRA to invest in a single property is too risky for our retirement savings. For some real estate exposure in my IRA, I would choose to use a REIT instead.

MoneyNing presents Will You Ever Be Able To Retire? posted at Money Ning, saying, "The economy may not be doing so well but don't fret, you can do it. You can retire!" The author recommends to invest early, allocate according to risk tolerance and reallocate nearer to retirement.

Saving

Khaleef @ KNS Financial presents Do You Really Need An Emergency Fund? posted at Faithful With A Few, saying, "Setting up an emergency fund has become standard personal financial advice, but does that make it wise? Would we be better off investing the money, and using the increased earnings to help in an emergency?"

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.

Technorati tags: the wealth builder carnival, blog carnival.

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.

Copyright © 2010 Achievement Catalyst, LLC