The Wealth Builder Carnival #8

Welcome to eighth 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 9/28/2010 rank in parentheses. Finally, for some submissions, I have added my perspective and comments related to the post topic.

And now onto the Carnival:

Earning

Martin presents Starting an Online Business posted at Impact Your Money, saying, "Join me as I take you with me on my journey to start an eCommerce/online business." The author provides an excellent explantion of how to keep business and personal elements separated for legal, financial and tax purposes.

Investing

Walter W. Fouse presents Top Ten S&P 500 Index Funds: Large Cap Core Mutual Funds with Lowest Costs posted at Best No Load Funds, saying, "This table of low cost top 10 S&P 500 mutual funds has been organized with the lowest cost index fund first. Nevertheless, each of these S & P 500 index funds is among the least costly on the market."

Dividends4Life presents 12 Stocks Raising Their Dividends posted at Dividends Value, saying, "When it comes to selecting dividend stocks, one of the most important items to look for is consistency in raising dividends. Sure it is easy to increase dividends when the economy is booming and business is good, but to be consistent a company has to persevere and continue to increase dividends even during the tough times."

MoneyThinking presents Why Should I Care about Gold? posted at Money Thinking.

FMF (#20) presents Avoiding the 10 Most Common Investor Mistakes, Mistakes 1-3 posted at Free Money Finance, saying, "Mistakes to avoid if you want to make the most of your investments."

Mitch Archuleta presents What Investments Can I Hold in a Roth IRA? posted at RothIRA.com's Retirement Planning Blog.

Living Frugally

Tash Hughes presents Top 10 business saving tips posted at Word Constructions. Being frugal also applies to businesses.

PT presents The Best Cash Back Sites posted at Prime Time Money, saying, "I rank some of the best places to make cash back online. Get a kickback for your shopping."

Arjun Rudra presents Practical Tips To Best Utilize RESP Savings And Control Student Debt With Aurele Courcelles, Director of Tax and Estate Planning at Investors Group posted at Investing Thesis, saying, "According to Statistics Canada, university tuition fees in 2009/10 were up 3.6 per cent to an average of $4,917 and compulsory fees (such as student services fees, administrative charges, athletic and recreation fees) for Canadian students increased 6.8 per cent from the year before to $749. On top of this, student living costs for rent, transportation, food etc. can range from $500 to over $30,000 depending on where they go to school. This past year student debt hit an all time high exceeding $13 billion in Canada. We sit down with Investors Group financial planning expert Aurele Courcelles to find out how current students can take steps to limit their student debt and accomplish their financial goals." Living frugally is also important for students especially with respect to education loans.

Freefrombroke (#2) presents Why We Chose A 30 Year Mortgage When We Bought Our Home posted at Free From Broke, saying, "When we bought out home we realized a fixed rate, 30-year mortgage loan was the best for us. Here is why." We chose a 30 fixed mortgage over a 15 year fixed mortgage for the very same reason - knowing we could always cover the payment and pay down principal with extra funds.

Leave Debt Behind.com presents How to Handle Lifestyle Inflation posted at Leave Debt Behind, saying, "The first step is understanding how to live within or below your means, regardless of your income level."

Silicon Valley Blogger (#1) presents Taking Out A Loan? Questions To Ask First posted at The Digerati Life, saying, "When you need the money, you should ask yourself a few questions: should you get a loan in the first place? And if you do, which one should you get? " In the past, we only answered yes for college, home and car loans.

Khaleef @ KNS Financial (#32) presents How to Create a Budget – Celebrate Small Victories! posted at Faithful With A Few, saying, "Some of us respond better to rewards and incentives then we do to calls for discipline. Because of this, it is wise to budget rewards and incentives to motivate us to achieve our goals!"

Retiring

Super Saver (#18) presents Early Retirement can be Expensive posted at My Wealth Builder, saying, "In terms of the financials, retiring early is usually not a good choice unless one is within a few years of the normal retirement age. Even so, the lifestyle changes made early retirement worth the cost for us."

Taxes

Mike Piper (#13) presents Deducting an IRA Loss (Roth or Traditional) posted at The Oblivious Investor, saying, "Under what circumstances can an investor deduct a loss in an IRA?"

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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