Intense Job Search, Reduce College Debt and Vote for Frugal Law Student! @ The Roundup

In the personal finance blogosphere, we know him as “the guy who tried to use baking soda to brush his teeth in an effort to save money, but failed the smell test.”

I wanted to put in a word for Brett McKay at The Frugal Law Student: as one of my favorite bloggers whose no-nonsense stance I’ve always enjoyed, I wasn’t surprised upon finding out that his blog has now been recognized. He’s now been discovered by the ABA Journal where his site is listed as one of the Top 100 Law Blogs also in the running to be best in category. It would be great if we can vote him through via this link — no registration is necessary.

And while you’re at The Frugal Law Student blog, you may want to see why I subscribe to his content: besides the failed frugal teeth brushing experiment, you can amuse yourself reading about how his wife thinks he has “weakling fingers”, and hear about how his mom cuts his hair so he can save on money. I guess he’s so cool, he even got a newspaper to profile him recently! That above photo is in fact, of the real McCoy.

While Brett hits the books studying for his finals, I’ve been wrestling with our real life schedule which has always been full to the brim. The next few weeks, we’ve been invited to tons of children’s birthday parties, Christmas parties, and family reunions (we’re also hosting a couple) so it’ll be interesting to see how I’ll be able to manage our social calendar as well as my blogging schedule.

In the meantime, I’ve set some time aside to read some of the offerings from other blogs. I have to say I found some pretty compelling material out there, forcing me to hang out in these sites longer than I usually do.

Personal Finance Reads

• The Simple Dollar has done the remarkable and condensed everything you wanted to know about personal finance and fit them into the back of five business cards. Given my long-winded ways, this to me was extraordinary! Plus the illustrations are neat!
• Money Smart Life gives us three easy ways to reduce college debt.
• Lazy Man and Money and I have more than several things in common. We both live in the San Francisco Bay Area, we are both computer programmers and we are both facing work at home issues, though in my case, I so look forward to it!
• Money, Market and More Musings reveals some very enlightening lessons from an intense job search. I was in Golbguru’s position a decade or so ago and I still remember the anxiety of it all.
• Gen X Finance has put together a really interesting analysis of the stock market from 1996 to 2007. Do we see the future in these visuals?
• The Sun’s Financial Diary discusses the performance of his defensive stocks. They’ve held up pretty well and they look like they’re helping neutralize the blow from 30% drops in his Chinese stocks.
• Get Rich Slowly covers his financial goals and plans for the next year in the areas of retirement, taxes and saving…. He’s also keeping that mini-Cooper in mind.
• Five Cent Nickel expounds on some of the “lies” financial advisers tell. Here’s where you can get some clarification on some popular beliefs and myths we encounter in the financial world.
• Blueprint For Financial Prosperity offers an excellent wish list of features that credit bureaus should implement.
• Mighty Bargain Hunter wonders whether this’ll be a weak retail season. Well, the holiday shopping season started earlier than usual and what I’ve noticed before is that things snowball a bit later into better numbers. It remains to be seen!
• No Credit Needed thinks long-term about his personal finances. It’s really easy to get stuck in the throes of day-to-day living (which only gets busier with a family) to the detriment of your finances, but NCN suggests ways to break out of old habits.
• Free Money Finance cracks down on those telemarketers who say they represent firefighters and your local police. You know what, I get these calls constantly and they’ve somehow gotten my address and have been sending me their junk mail. Next time they make contact, I’m no longer playing nice!
• Consumerism Commentary talks about how to align your charitable giving with your gift giving plans. You can kill two birds with one stone by supporting charities via your gift purchases.

Here are more superb entries I’ve come across.

Additional Readings Around The Web

• How to Make Up For The Rising Price of Gas @ How I Will Be Rich
• 10 Signs of Secret Debt: Borrowing Money, But Denying Reality @ The Frugal Duchess
• Not everyone is meant to be a stay-at-home parent @ Chief Family Officer
• Doing Right… @ InsureBlog

Recent Carnivals

Hot Finance Carnivals!
Carnival of Debt Reduction #115 - Holiday World Tour
64th Festival of Stocks
All Women Blogging Carnival
Carnival of Family Life

• Stock trades: Free stock trades from Zecco, Cheap stock trades from TradeKing, Stock news and Investment info at INO TV Free, No cost Trend Analysis for stocks
• Earn top returns: FNBO Direct [1.90%], HSBC Direct [1.65%], WTDirect [1.76%], E*Trade Bank [0.95%], ING Direct [.25% to 1.65%]
• Cash bonus: Discover More [$50], American Express [$25], Lending Club [$25]

If you enjoyed this post, you can get free regular updates through our RSS Feed, or you can have our latest posts delivered to your email inbox by supplying your address here. Your address will only be used for this purpose, and you can unsubscribe anytime. Share This: Save to del.icio.us Digg This! Stumble It! Submit to Reddit Email This

Categorized under: Money Articles / Lists