The Wealth Builder Carnival #7

Welcome to seventh 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 9/21/2010 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

My Journey (#43) presents Starting your own business costs less than ever before posted at My Journey to Millions, saying, "Starting a business is cheaper than ever - time to build wealth!" I agree that the Internet offers a good low cost way to try a business idea without investing large sums of money.

PT presents Mystery Shopper Jobs: Deciphering the Mystery posted at Prime Time Money, saying, "Find out the truth about mystery shopper jobs." Mystery shopping can be a good side income. I recall reading about someone who made over $80,000 per year treating it as a job. For me, I found the pay to be too low for the effort at the entry level assignments.

Insuring and Protecting

FMF (#18) presents What Is Life Insurance, Where Did It Come From, and Why Should I Care? posted at Free Money Finance, saying, "All the details you need to know about life insurance." I agree life insurance is important to have, especially for those that are still working. For those with minor children, Social Security also provides survivor payments, which is a form of life insurance.

Investing

Dividends4Life presents 5 Dividend Stocks Providing Positive Feedback posted at Dividends Value, saying, "It seems that ever so many years the market turns down and someone declares the death of buy-and-hold. Some even go as far to say that Warren Buffett has lost his touch. With time on their side, the buy-and-hold investors and Mr. Buffett always seem to make a spectacular rebound. As long-term dividend investors our focus should be on acquiring fundamentally sound dividend growth stocks at a reasonable valuation and maintaining our asset allocation."

Arjun Rudra (#69) presents Be Mindful Of The Risk Of Inflation Says Norman Raschkowan, North American Strategist For Mackenzie Investments posted at Investing Thesis, saying, "This past summer has taken investors on a roller coaster of a ride with capital markets rising and falling so much, it’s no wonder investors are feeling queasy. Mixed economic data may be stoking fears of a “double dip” recession, but one North American strategist, says that while there will be an extended period of moderate economic growth, the chances are slim we’ll see another actual recession hit." To protect against inflation, we have purchased TIPS and are purchasing stocks of companies with pricing power if inflation occurs.

Freefrombroke (#2) presents What is Asset Allocation? posted at Free From Broke, saying, "Asset allocation is an important concept for an investor to know."

Madison DuPaix presents Are Municipal Bonds the Next Bubble? posted at My Dollar Plan, saying, "This is a thought-provoking article on municipal bonds - a must-read if you have them in your portfolio or have been thinking about adding them." I agree that bonds are in a bubble. I have already sold some of our bonds at a significant profit and do not plan to buy any new bonds.

Dividend Growth Investor presents Has the time for Tech Dividends arrived? posted at Dividend Growth Investor, saying, "Most large cap tech stocks have hoarded billions of dollars in cash on the balance sheets, which sits idly or is used to overpay for companies with strategic patents in bidding wars for tech dominance." I recently purchased Intel for the 3.30% dividend which is higher than I can get from a CD.

Living Frugally

Sun (#20) presents New Overdraft Law: Is It Good? posted at The Sun’s Financial Diary. Another good reason not to spend more that one has.

FIRE Getters presents 12 Tips To Lower Your Heating Bill posted at FIRE Finance, saying, "The cost of energy is rising everyday. Whether it be electricity, gas, water or sewage, our utility bills are becoming higher with each passing month. Consequently most of us are looking for ways to trim our energy expenses and boost our savings. As winter sets in, the cost of heating our houses will be a major concern ..." Here's another tip. Recently, we just signed on with an alternate electric energy supplier which could save us up to 35% off our current total electric generation cost.

Mick presents Cheapest Method to Move, posted at PadBlog, comparing the cost of different ways to move one's household.

Wenchypoo (#88) presents The 50% Solution posted at Wisdom From Wenchypoo's Mental Wastebasket, saying, "How to hang onto your money--either while you're making it, or after you've made it."

One Family presents Goodbye Alameda, Hello Kochi! posted at One Family's Blog. The author has moved to a lower cost of living area to start his freelance career.

Retiring

Hussein Sumar presents How to Better Understand Roth IRA Conversions posted at Roth IRA, saying, "Roth IRAs and their sister retirement plans Roth 403b and Roth 401k offer outstanding retirement investing choices for American workers & savers. While most people have heard of these plans, they do not exactly know how to take advantage of them, or yet better understand them. This becomes even more difficult when an employee transitions from one job to another company while leaving behind his retirement plan with the old company, not knowing of the choices available." Overall, the first 6 points were a good summary on converting to Roth IRAs with perhaps one exception. For #7, my understanding is different in that I am allowed to convert specific assets, including ones with losses, from an IRA to a Roth IRA. Just another example of how complex IRS rules can lead to different interpretations :-)

Mike Piper (#6) presents The Best Places to Retire posted at The Oblivious Investor, saying, "For those considering retiring abroad, what countries should be at the top of the list for consideration?"

Saving

Brian Cull presents How-to graphical budgeting posted at Living at the Top of the Bell-Shaped Curve, saying, "Simple, easy-to-use how-to budget using graphs"

Khaleef @ KNS Financial presents How to Create a Budget – Evaluate Expenses posted at Faithful With A Few, saying, "Establishing goals and setting up a budget is not the end. You must now evaluate your spending to be sure that your money is working toward your goals!"

Taxes

Super Saver (#19) presents Roth IRA: To Convert or Not to Convert posted at My Wealth Builder, saying, "Significant tax benefits were the reasons we decided to convert."

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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