10 Top Posts: Weekly Wrap Up March 1-8

Here are a few great things I learned this week from the other personal finance and investing blogs that I subscribe to.

First, Pimp Your Finances went over some really cool facts about the $787 Billion dollars we all keep hearing so much about. The facts are about the actual money, not what the government is doing with it. My favorite of the facts is:

Spending $787 billion

Here’s how long it would take you to burn through $787 billion if you spent $10,000…

• every second: 2.49 years
• every minute: 149.7 years
• every hour: 8984 years

I wouldn’t mind having the chance to try and spend $10,000 every second 😉

Pimp Your Finances also had a really interesting article about how some are blaming us, the savers, for the down economy and here is his solution:

I’ve heard that there are some stock brokers demanding a new tea party. I say we follow their lead – kind of.

I say we refuse to buy tea, and then refuse to dump it in a major body of water. After all, we’re responsible. Why should we waste our money like that?

Next, I read over at Monivator about Vertical Diversification with an example of a vertically diversified portfolio that’s shared doubled. The full read gives theoretical information about what is contained in these portfolios and what would happen if they tanked.

Suppose instead the shares doubled:

• The Boring Portfolio doesn’t benefit, but it doesn’t lose money either.
• The Racy portfolio doubles in value.
• The Middle of the Road Portfolio also benefits. The cash holding again retains all its value, while its 50%  allocation to shares doubles, meaning the portfolio enjoys 50% of the gain of the Racy Portfolio.

Then after that, I read about how Paid Twice tracks all her spending. It’s worth the read. I think her most important point is:

The important thing is to find the method that works for you – no one method is better than another, some just work better for specific people than others.

because we are all different, think differently and have different habit and needs.

Next, Prime Time Money had a list of a bunch of different finance blogs, and their authors views on 529 plans. The view was pretty different for each author, but most of them had some plan to save for their kids college. Hey, how come I wasn’t included? 😉

Then I headed over to Poorer Than You where Stephanie gave a rundown on the Entertainment Book. Here is what she saved and her final say:

Total: about $67

Based on this, I’d say that the book is definitely worth purchasing at its full price of $30, but even better… the Rochester one is now on sale for $15 (plus $2.79 standard shipping). As I flipped through the book just now, I also saw coupons for places that I know we visited during that time span, but forgot to bring the book of coupons with us – there were even more savings to be had!

Wisebread had some interesting things to say about Phantom Power which is essentially costing most of us a ton of money:

1 watt of standby power equates to about $1/year in consumption.

Do you have a digital cable box sitting on top of your television? The digital cable box – while off – is pulling 17 watts, and 43 watts if you have a digital video recorder. Your television is consuming an average of 6 watts, just waiting for you to turn it on.

While twittering Free From Broke wrote a post about Frugal Ideas to Help Your Home Sell and he even mentioned me! (I know, shameless of me to self promote, I apologize…)

Take Great Pictures (@pffirewall) – Your home will most likely be online somewhere for sale and you will need photos of it.  Make sure the photos are good quality taken at the time of the day the light is the best.  Wait until you have everything ready and use a good camera.  If you have a friend who’s a photography buff ask him to come over and take a few shots for you.  You want big and clean!  I’ve seen people post photos of cluttered rooms that make me instantly go to the next listing on the site.

And last but not least, both Wisebread and No Credit Needed gave some great information about the new Making Homes Affordable Program, which I wont give any quotes from because both articles were chock full of good facts and info, you will just have to check them out in their entirety.

All of these posts were great, anyone looking to expand on the tidbits of information I provided from them should check out the full articles at their original location.

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Tags: 529 plans, benefit, billion dollars, boring portfolio, cool facts, diversification, diversified portfolio, habit, important point, kids college, personal finance, pimp, portfolios, prime time, rundown, stephanie, time money