The Wealth Builder Carnival #85

Welcome to the eighty-fifth 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 and did not include submissions that were off topic. For reading convenience, the posts are listed with a brief summary or comment by the submitter and organized into seven categories: Earning, Insuring and Protecting, Investing, Living Frugally, Retiring, Saving and Taxes.

And now on to the Carnival.

Earning

iyabo oyawale presents Choosing a Topic for Your Authority Niche Blog posted at Ask Iyabo Oyawale.com, saying, "If you look up ‘how to choose a niche topic’ in the search engines, chances are, you’re going to be bombarded with so much contradictory information and left confused about where and how to start. Well, I don’t intend to add to your confusion through this post."

Theresa Torres presents How to Pursue a Career as a Freelance Web Designer posted at Designs Tutorial, saying, "Here are the basic steps you need to take to launch your career as a freelance web designer."

Katie presents Save money on small business marketing… by DIY blogging! posted at Money saving tips & advice from Discount Coder, saying, "Small businesses have a hard enough time competing with the big boys without wasting money on tired online marketing practices. That’s where blogging comes in. If you're a small business and want to get closer to your customers, blogging is a super cheap and effective way to get that done. Here are our top tips..."

Investing

Dividends4Life presents 5 Basic Materials Stocks With Growing 3%+ Dividends posted at Dividend Growth Stocks, saying, "When it comes to selecting a company to invest in, I like those that make a tangible product. Through patents, trademarks and other barriers, these companies can sometimes develop a formidable economic moat. Often times, the widest moats are found in the Basic Materials Sector..."

Living Frugally

Kurt presents New FICO Mortgage Score posted at Money Counselor, saying, "Fair Isaac Corp. has teamed with CoreLogic to create its new FICO Mortgage Score Powered by CoreLogic. Will you be helped or hurt?"

Taxes

John presents Upcoming Changes to Gift-Tax Exemption May Cost Your Children Millions posted at Wallet Blog, saying, "Have more than a cool million that you plan on passing down to your kids or others? Better start making plans to get that money out before the lifetime gift-tax exemption amount drops at the end of the year!"

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, earning, insuring, investing, living, retiring, saving, tax, or wealth building advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2012 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

Voting for Change

"Get to work Mr. Chairman." ~ Senator Charles Schumer to Fed Chair Ben Bernanke

Before giving that directive to the Fed Chair, Mr. Schumer admitted that Congress wasn't going to do its job, which is why he was relying on Mr. Bernanke to "get to work." Personally, I'm disappointed in Mr. Schumer's perspective, since he is paid $174,000 per year with great health care and retirement benefits.

My solution will be to "fire" all incumbents.  The problem is that no one in Congress, nor the President, is interested in the doing the tough work needed.  This November, I will NOT vote for any incumbent.  It's time to give other people a chance to do the tough work needed.

Definitely, change I can believe in :-)

For more on New Beginnings, check back every Sunday for a new segment.

This is not financial or voting advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2012 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

Links to Carnivals from July 17 - July 23, 2012

Here are the links to the Carnivals in which My Wealth Builder participated from July 17 - July 23, 2012:

Carnival of Financial Planning #246

Festival of Frugality

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 © 2012 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

The Wealth Builder Carnival #84

Welcome to the eighty-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 and did not include submissions that were off topic. For reading convenience, the posts are listed with a brief summary or comment by the submitter and organized into seven categories: Earning, Insuring and Protecting, Investing, Living Frugally, Retiring, Saving and Taxes.

And now on to the Carnival.

Earning

Theresa Torres presents Finding Clients For Your New Virtual Assistant Business posted at Legitimate Home Business Ideas Blog, saying, "Finding clients for your virtual assistant business isn't as hard as you think. Follow these steps and you'll soon be on your way to getting your first clients."

Katie presents 10 ways to cut your small business running costs posted at Money saving tips & advice from Discount Coder, saying, "Starting your own business can be an expensive venture, but there are ways to control your outgoings without jeopardising productivity. This informative post looks at a few of the ways you can save."

Insuring and Protecting

John presents Should Small Business Owners be Worried About Their Money in December 2012? posted at Wallet Blog, saying, "Will small business bank accounts still be Federally insured at the end of the year? What could it mean for the local banking industry if the extension is not passed? Is it best for small business owners to transfer funds to larger banks or is that a misconception?"

Diana Lesley presents What You Need for Traveling To Canada posted at Travel Insurance Reviews, saying, "You might forget that traveling to Canada is just as international as traveling to Europe or elsewhere outside the US. There's a few specific things about Canada that you should know and take care of before you leave, and this article gives a nice overview of these aspects including trip insurance."

Investing

Dividends4Life presents June 2012 Pocket Change Portfolio Performance posted at Dividend Growth Stocks, saying, "The Pocket Change Portfolio (PCP) was first introduced on September 13, 2008 as a real money dividend income portfolio funded by the "pocket change" earned from my various online endeavors. Each month I report on the portfolio's progress and dividends earned."

Carlos Sera presents An Alto Mar Tale posted at Financial Tales, saying, "As I have said countless times, Modern Portfolio Theory and standard deviation treat risk as though a person would be equally happy going from poverty to wealth as from wealth to poverty."

Living Frugally

Miranda presents Is It Worth It To Pay Someone Else to Complete Some of Your Everyday Tasks? posted at Wallet Hub, saying, "Is time worth your money? When considering paying someone else to do the things you can do yourself, you should consider a few things first."

Saving

Greg Field presents NerdWallet Interest Rate Monitor: Deposit Accounts that Beat Inflation posted at NerdWallet Blog - Credit Card Watch, saying, "NerdWallet has release a new free online interest rate monitor and a last of deposit accounts whose rates beat inflation, helping to save you a ton of money. Enjoy"

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, earning, insuring, investing, living, retiring, saving, tax, or wealth building advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2012 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

Being More Retired

Regular readers may have noticed that postings for July 2012 have gone down significantly.  As of today, I'm averaging posting about once every three days versus a typical average of once per day.   The main reason is that I've been putting more effort into my retirement to do list and 2012 financial projects.   In addition, I've working on improving skills in two sports.

These activities have been taking up a lot of mind space, even more than the temporary full time job that I did in 2011.  Some of the activities have potential for significant financial returns.  So I've been cutting back blogging a bit to enable more mental effort in the the other activities. 

The posting slow down will likely last through the summer.  I will continue to publish The Wealth Builder Carnival, when Blog Carnival is operational.  Otherwise, future posts will be sporadic, unless there is a major event worth sharing.
For more on New Beginnings, check back every Sunday for a new segment.

This is not financial advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2012 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

The Wealth Builder Carnival is Still Delayed

Blog Carnival, the site that helps manage carnivals, continues to have technical difficulties.  The Wealth Builder Carnival will be on hold until Blog Carnival is fixed.

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

This is not financial or carnival hosting advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2012 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

Work on One or Two Important Factors

Too often, I work on too many elements when trying to improve myself.

In my mission to upgrade my childhood sports skills, I noticed that there has been significant improvement in tennis and golf by working on only two factors:  proper grip and swinging with my hips. For golf, I now hit the ball straight about 80% of the time.  In tennis, my consistency in putting hard hits in play has improved significantly.  By focusing on only grip and swinging with my hips, my play in both sports has seemingly become better automatically, i.e. I don't consciously think about it.

The principle of working on only one or two important factors also applies to personal finance for me.   Before retiring, I worked focused on two things: qualifying for the higher pay each year and saving a 10-20% of my paycheck.   In the years I worked on these two elements, our financial situation improved significantly each year. 

Of course, identifying the right factors can be challenging since the factors may be different by individual and YMMV.   However, as I have learned again in my sports experience, focusing on the right one or two factors can be very rewarding.

For more on Strategies and Plans, check back every Monday for a new segment.

This is not financial advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2012 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

Cooking Outside

In our area, the weather has been brutally hot.  Temperatures have uncharacteristically exceeded 100F and there has been little rain.   Thank goodness for air conditioning.

However, we still need to cook and that typically will add heat to the house.   So we have two options:  eat out or cook outside.   We've chosen to cook outside more often, which reduces the heat load for our air conditioning.

Our outdoor set up is a gas grill that uses the house natural gas, which means it is always ready to use like any other appliance in the house.   When I first starting using the grill, I would use it on high to cook everything fast.  Recently, I changed to indirect low temperature smoking at about 250F.   Using this approach take about 90 -120 minutes to cook meat and vegetable on the grill, which allows me ample time to prepare salads and do other activities while the main dishes are cooking.  (In fact, I a writing this article as the main courses are cooking.)

Best of all, there is no heat added to our house and that saves energy :-)

For more on New Beginnings, check back every Sunday for a new segment.


This is not financial  or meal preparation advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2012 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

Improving Sports Skills Learned in Childhood

I'm not as quick as I used to be.

In my younger days, I made up for average sports skills with above average agility and quickness.  This approach worked best in sports with direct competition, e.g. tennis, football, baseball, etc.   As I've gotten older, I've learned there are two downsides to this approach.

1. Opponents with significantly superior skills.  At my level, I was very competitive medium higher skilled level players.   However, my agility and quickness did not overcome the capability of the significantly higher skilled player.   As expected, I was consistently beat by players with significantly higher skills, which was personally frustrating.
2. Sports without direct interaction with the opponent.   In golf, being quicker and more agile than my opponent has no bearing on the outcome of the competition.   Good skills and good execution is what helps.

So I've decided to improve my skills in the two sports I'm a currently playing: tennis and golf. 

For golf, I knew I could improve since I took 3 lessons 20 years ago that significantly improved my ability to hit the ball long and straight, which I wasn't doing either earlier this year.   I was about to sign up for lessons and decided to watch a video called Automatic Golf by Bob Mann, which basically focuses on two things:  a correct grip and using the hips and legs in the swing.   Within 30 minutes of watching the video, I was hitting a plastic practice ball straight and long.  So no lessons needed.

For tennis, I decided to take lessons at a local club.   Improving will take more time.   I am changing everything: grip, swing and footwork.    It will take a lot of practice to be competent again, which is the main downside.  However, I'm committed to do it, even though I been able to win using my old style.

The upside is that I will need to get out a practice much more, which means I will likely achieve my goal of exercising three times a week.
For more on  Crossing Generations, check back every Thursday for a new segment.

This is not financial or sports advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2012 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

Perhaps a Buying Opportunity...At Last

It looks like I may finally get the extended buying opportunity I have been patiently waiting for since June 2011.  I missed the last major buying opportunity in October 2011 and the recent short buying opportunity in early June 2012. 

The S&P and Dow indices have fallen four days in a row.  The economic indicators are becoming weaker.  The early earnings reports and forward guidance have been disappointing.  Europe continues to show no resolution for the sovereign debt issue.

 The stock market may finally start fully reflecting the magnitude of the financial issues, which would create a buying opportunity for the abundance of cash on the sidelines.

For more on The Practice of Personal Finance, check back every Wednesday for a new segment.


This is not financial or investing advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2012 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

The Wealth Builder Carnival is Delayed

Blog Carnival, the site that helps manage carnivals, is having technical difficulties again.  The Wealth Builder Carnival will be on hold until Blog Carnival is fixed.

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

This is not financial or carnival hosting advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2012 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

The Wealth Builder Carnival #83

Welcome to the eighty-third 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 and did not include submissions that were off topic. For reading convenience, the posts are listed with a brief summary or comment by the submitter and organized into seven categories: Earning, Insuring and Protecting, Investing, Living Frugally, Retiring, Saving and Taxes.

And now on to the Carnival.

Earning

Josh presents 10 Creative Ways to Make Money posted at Josh Champagne, saying, "From Youtube Busking to Planning Weddings, here are 10 Creative Ways to Make Money. So, get out there, be creative, and make some money."

Insuring and Protecting

Mac Hildebrand presents Will the Electric Car Trend Affect Insurance Prices? posted at Car Insurance Comparison, saying, "In addition to insuring and protecting, this article also focuses on the long and short term benefits of purchasing an electric car."

Brandon Lewis presents 5 Things You Should Know About Structured Settlements posted at Annuity Structured Settlements, saying, "You can often elect to take insurance payments in the form of a ‘structured settlement’. In this post we tell you five key things that you should know about structured settlements."

Investing

Dave presents Make A Plan And Stick To It posted at Dividends For The Long Run, saying, "New investors can very easily get lost in the weeds as they try to navigate all of the options available to them. What they need to remember is that investing is simply a method for getting from point A (where you are now financially) to point B (financial independence). To complete the journey successfully a plan is required."

John presents How Old is Too Old for Hands-On Financial Management? posted at Wallet Blog, saying, "Is it necessarily a good idea to continue managing your finances without professional assistance as you move into retirement? Are there better ways to secure your future finances than a 401(k)? What are we missing?"

Dividends4Life presents 7 Dividend Stocks For A Confident And Secure Future posted at Dividend Growth Stocks, saying, "Are you confident and secure in your investing process? It is my firm belief that most investors will lose money in the stock market over their lifetime. It is not that the market is a bad place to invest your money, but left unchecked the psychology of the market will lead you to do just the opposite of what you should to be doing..."

Living Frugally

Jessica Bosari presents Five Free Family Finance Apps posted at SavingTools.com, saying, "Balancing the family budget and tracking spending can be challenging for many families. It's easy to forget crucial categories, forget to track expenses and over-budget in one area while under-budgeting in another area."

Jon Rhodes presents The Right Time to Quit Smoking posted at HypnoBusters, saying, "This article shows you that now is the right time to quit smoking."

Jenny presents Let’s make ‘stand-by’ a thing of the past – Saving energy at home posted at Money saving tips & advice from Discount Coder, saying, "Far too many gadgets and appliances are made with stand-by the norm. Which means it’s not possible – or very inconvenient – to turn the dratted things completely off. This quick post looks at what uses what, an just how much you can save."

Theresa Torres presents How to Stretch Your Food Budget posted at Awesome Cuisine, saying, "Want to cut back on your monthly food expenses? Let's look at the ways you can give your family healthy meals and save hundreds of dollars at the same time."

Retiring

Jeff Williamson presents Retirement Planning for Single-Income Families posted at PFCents, saying, "Planning for retirement can be tricky, but when you are a one-income family it becomes even more complex. This article will help single income families prepare for their golden years."

Saving

Super Saver presents Longing for Higher Interest Rates posted at My Wealth Builder, saying, "While low interest rates are 'helping' the economy, the same low interest rates have a negative effect on retiree income."

Taxes

Edward Webber presents 2012 Working Tax Credit Changes posted at TaxFix Blog, saying, "If you are want to claim working tax credits, the rules have changed in 2012. This post will help you understand the changes."

Danielle Dixie presents Do You Qualify For Tax Credits? posted at Tax Credits, saying, "If you work but are on a low income then you may qualify for Working Tax Credits. Our guide looks at the two main types of tax credit and when you qualify for them."

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, earning, insuring, investing, living, retiring, saving, tax, or wealth building advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2012 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

Links to Carnivals from June 19 - July 1, 2012

Here are the links to the Carnivals in which My Wealth Builder participated from June 19 - July 1, 2012:

The Wealth Builder Carnival #81

The Wealth Builder Carnival #82

Carnival of Financial Planning #242

Cavalcade of Risk #160

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 © 2012 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

Final "Cramming" for My Checkup

This month I'll be preparing for the third of my health checkups in 2012.  My last blood test showed a signficant drop in triglycerides but only a slight drop in chloresterol.   In May, I implemented a rabbit diet which I've been sticking to about 60% of the time.  I've lost as much as 2% more of my weight, but haven't been able to sustainably keep the pounds off.  

So here's what I'll be doing:

Increase compliance with the rabbit diet.  I know I won't be able to achieve 100%, but I know I can get closer.  It will be hard with the July 4th holiday coming soon, so I will focus on starting in earnest by July 9.   But I will try to make some slight progess before then.  I will be disappointed if I don't see a further drop in my triglycerides and a noticeable drop in my chlorestrol.

Increase exercise. I'm not regularly at my target of exercising three times per week.  I'd like to get to three times a week for at least 1/2 hour each time.  If I can get to one hour each time that would be great.   Right now, I'm play golf once a week.  I've contacted a couple friends to start playing tennis a couple times of week in addition.

My blood test appointment is in late July.  So I will have a about 3-1/2 weeks to improve my results. 
For more on  New Beginnings, check back every Sunday for a new segment.

This is not financial  or health advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2012 Achievement Catalyst, LLC