The Weight of Money

I took a few minutes from a too full schedule to follow links this week. I’m glad I did, there were several articles I enjoyed and some that related to some current and upcoming concerns that I look forward to getting to sometime this week.

First off, a new series from The Simple Dollar: The Road to Financial Armageddon.  This is mostly because I like ongoing series. I like this one because I feel taking a long look at your financial background helps you see where you are and how to get where you want to be.

Of upcoming importance are the posts by Verve Coaching outlining getting a better job and My Financial Awareness’ post on staring a getting-a-raise discussion. There may be some serious job searching in the not-near-yet-not-so-distant future if I continue to play my cards right.

In terms of relationships, there is a good outline for relationships where partners have different spending habits at The Frugal Duchess and Mac’s Money Blog focuses on that most important relationship - the one with yourself - and remembering to take care of your needs/wants too.

NoCreditNeeded is hosting this week’s Festival of Frugality in Fairy Tale style. I do enjoy these creative posts but find that I’m actually even less likely to click on any links when formatted this way. Being short on time with work deadlines, I try to limit my blog reading and need to carefully consider each link I’m going to follow.

Just to clarify, I really like NCN’s creative presentations. I just can’t point out ones that I enjoyed since I didn’t follow any of the links this time - sorry.

I submitted to two different carnivals for this week — Carnival of Debt Reduction and Carnival of Personal Finance.

It’s Just Money is hosting the Carnival of Personal Finance #72 — I submitted the personal assessts post because of the recent mummur over at Make Love, Not Debt.

My Money Forest is hostingthe Carnival of Debt Reduction #59 – I submitted my post on reducing debt by reducing interest rates, which I find crucial for helping us get out of debt because of the $300+ a month we pay in interest could be going toward principal.

Favorite Post:
The Coin Jar’s comments on having another child — I will actually post a much longer response to this post this week.

Other posts I enjoyed:
- Taking Control over Money’s post on bad debt - good breakdown of bad debt and felt like a fresh post on the subject.

- Money Under 30’s radical ways to spend less - I notice that I’m often less likely to spend money because I don’t own a television — I don’t hear about any of the latest new items or know about any blockbuster movies that we just ‘have to see’.

- Mom Advice on using powdered milk — no, not because I’m a big powdered milk advocate but because I love seeing stories where people have taken money saving advice they weren’t sure about.

Out of all the posts I read through, these are the only ones I really found worth reading. I will put the disclaimer that I am a judge-a-book-by-its-cover type of gal and some article titles just didn’t pull in enough click-it mojo to get my attention. I’m starting to wonder, what is teh saturation point for personal finance blogging? When are we all merely repeating the same things over and over again at different times?

I think I’ll be reflecting on this along with some other ethical issues I’ve been considering the past two weeks.

Festival of Frugality is being hosted by Jason at Pragmatic Finance. I really like the creative format that he used to address the many great entries — check it out.

Individual articles I enjoyed:

A Tutorial for the Fast-Food Generation: How to Get Started Cooking at Home for Frugality and Health - food and cooking are a major obstacle to intentional financial living. This is an excellent guide for those feeling overwhelmed by moving more towards cooking and away from prepared foods.

Sock it to Me - this is just because I’ve got a serious thing for socks. My white stocks manage to stay fairly white for a long time — the daughter’s on the other hand — ewww. I don’t understand how she manages to get her socks sooo dirty – on the first wearing too.

Frugal living: credit cards - I enjoy seeing posts reminding people that credit cards are not evil. Many people use the rewards cards successfully and free money is a good thing.

Carnival of Personal Finance #67 has been posted on Canadian Capitalist.

Some posts I enjoyed:

Colorado Health Insurance Insider’s post about kids and health insurance.

My Finanical Awareness’s post on money and relationships. I don’t think enough can ever be said about this subject and hearing the same things over and over again is a good reminder.

Accumulating Money’s Need vs. Want. This seems like an ongoing dialogue with the partner, classifying things as a need or want. He seems really stuck in the everything is a “need” category.

Thanks to savvy saver for hosting this week’s carnival of personal finance.

To the new readers: I write about my adventures in making money work for me instead of me always working for it. I have worked for several years to get beyond some bad money habits and financial disasters. A few weeks ago, I married the partner, and my networth dropped 100% further than it was before. So now, we are working on getting out from under our debt and finding a way to live within our means.

The name of the blog comes from the fact that the partner has a love for metal and I noticed that selling property was calculated not by dollars but by weight instead. He’d come home and tell me how he sold 2,000 pounds or how he helped 5,000 pounds find a new home. His inventory of large machines has been fading as our savings have been increasing.

Since we started dating, he has managed to drop his credit card debt by $10,000 and has made lots of little changes to help stay in line. On this site I simply catalog our attempts and failures at making more positive progress in getting our spending under control and our debt wiped out.

I will be starting a new series next month about tackling your credit report and what you can and should do to try to clear up any inconsistencies or challenge negative information that just might go away if you do. My credit score is very sad, I’ve not rebuilt any credit in the past few years and I’m really behind in getting this taken care of. But, if we’re going to attempt another home buying adventure next year, together, then I need to get my act together so I don’t pull down his great credit score too far.

Thanks for reading and enjoy some of the other fine blogs listed this week.