Follow Finance Friday: Early Bird Edition

My apologies for missing last weeks Follow Finance Friday, it was my birthday and I was being extremely selfish. Only for 1 day do I allow myself to do so! Today's post is coming to from the crack of dawn as I was required to be up for work at 4:55 AM! We had to elevate some new code modules and processes to our real-time production environment, so we are required to do so at odd hours since we know few people will be making financial transactions through our web systems.

It feels good to get in early, kind of eerie as well since there is nobody in the office at this hour. The lights automatically come on at 6:00 AM so if you are here before that, you are sitting in the dark! The positive part about coming in early is that I will hopefully be able to leave early as well. Once I get done lunch today, I am walking out the front door and starting my weekend with a nice tranquil nap. Anyways, its another edition of Follow Finance Friday and if you are on Twitter (like the rest of the world), it is #followfriday where everyone gives recommendations for new people to check out!

Have a great weekend. Stay safe. Be frugal. Now on to the links:

Follow Finance Friday

• Mr. Tough Money Love puts the future in perspective by asking the question Do You Have A Retirement Date Target?

• I caught up with Flexo's Investment Portfolio Overview for May 2009, where he shares his detailed investments with the world. I definitely have to give this a try at the end of the month!

• Last week, the Broke Grad Student gave us The Average Student Loan Debt By State and somehow, Iowa had the highest average per student! Fooled me!

• At Get Rich Slowly, J.D. gave his take on Kiplinger Magazine's 20 Guiding Principles for Investment Success

• Kyle Lacey, a writer for the Brazen Careerist, caught my eye with the post Authenticity is Life. The Rest is Just Details. Read it a few times and evaluate your own writing strategy.

• With Father's Day coming up this weekend, Squawkfox gives us 6 Father's Day Gift Ideas!

• MyLifeROI looks into the future with his post on 5 Tips to Prepare for Next Year's Tax Season! My plan is to just make more money! Bang! It's that easy!

• Finally, J. Money's brother gives us another post at Budgets Are Sexy after great success the first time. His recent post is simple, Doing What You Love Pays Dividends

In the words of the great Porky the Pig, "That's All Folks". Tune in next Friday for another edition of Follow Finance Friday, and drop in a few hundred times between then as well!

Follow Finance Friday: Summertime Edition

This summer heat is getting to me! I dropped the ball on last week's Follow Finance Friday, but we are back with a vengeance this week! My vengeance is directed solely at myself for being an irresponsible blogger the last few weeks. Posts have been inconsistent and so has my reading of my other favorite blogs. Specifically, I missed out on an amazing contest at Budgets Are Sexy! Mr. J Money gave away a free phone in a promotion for Billshrink. Not just any phone, but a T-Mobile Sidekick, the same phone that is giving me problems now! FML! But I deserve that for not staying on top of the blogosphere, I have no excuse!

In our newest edition of Follow Finance Friday, we bring you some of the hot picks in personal finance from around the web. As Will Smith would say, "Drums Please!" (Video Below!)

Follow Finance Friday

• Money and Such: Another Day, Another $280...
  
• Studenomics: 11 Simple Ways College Students Can Save Money
• Get Rich Slowly: The Lazy Way to Investment Success
• Consumerism Commentary: Debt Reduction Methods and Philosophies: Snowball, Avalanche, and More
• Man Vs. Debt: PF Bloggers Weight Loss Challenge!!!
• Weakonomics: Why are Oil and Gas Going Up Again?
• My Open Wallet: The Economics of Opening a Bar in New York
• Master Your Card: Why Do We Settle For Less Than We Want?
• Free Money Finance: What are Your Three Money Do-Overs?
• Fabulously Broke in the City: How We Chopped Our Grocery Bill Down By 57%

Follow Finance Friday

Time for the second installment of Follow Finance Friday where we present to you, the knowledge seeking reader, the best posts of the week from around the Blog-O-Sphere. I gather various articles during the week that catch my eye that I find on Twitter, Tipd, and other blogs that I read in my Google Reader (If you don't subscribe to my feed click on the big orange picture to the right). So here are some of my favorites for the week with a little blurb on each. Thank god it is Friday right? (I refuse to use that damn acronym!).

• Watson Inc writes an interesting post titled "Rich But Financially Inept". A great piece on why great athletes go broke. You would think with all that money they could afford a trustworthy financial advisor? Guess not, just ask Dirk Nowitski.
• At Cash Money Life, Patrick writes a timely post on how you can Work Abroad This Summer. With Memorial Day Weekend coming up, the opportunity is here to mix work and travel to score your best summer yet.
• Mr. Budgets Are Sexy asked the question: Credit Card Roulette.. To Play or Not To Play? If you do not know what the game is, I wouldn't recommend raising your hand to participate. Just remember we warned you. I played once and lost... bad.
• Mrs. Micah sparked up a wild discussion on How To Live Like A Grad Student based of FMF reader who revealed they had $265,000 in student loans and no job.
• Last week, The Weakonomist tells us why he says Text Messaging Is The Biggest Scam of The 21st Century.
• Finally, I stumbled upon a new blog I started reading called Zen Habits. The author, Leo Babauta, wrote a post on 6 Small Things You Can Do When You Lack Discipline, this is something I am sure all of us could use, even those rich athletes who make it rain too much!
  

Carnival Time

One area I have been majorly slacking in lately has been submitting my posts to blog carnivals on a weekly basis. Part of my problem has been I have not updating enough on here and the other part is just my dumb self forgetting to submit.

But I am back. The Carnival of Personal Finance is taking place this week over at Weakonomics. He presents us with 203rd The Carnival of Personal Finance: Birthdays Edition! My article titled "7 Strategies On Spending Your Tax Return" made the cut for the week! Some of our other buddies made some noise as well so make sure you check it out!

Here's to hoping I can keep this up and start making a name for myself with some of these big dogs. Enjoy the day! Be easy.

Follow Finance Friday - Harry Kalas Edition

Welcome to the first edition of Follow Finance Friday, where we take a gander around the personal finance blogosphere and I highlight some of my favorite posts of the week. Hopefully, this catches a little steam and you begin to fancy some of the featured blogs the same way I have!

The inaugural edition is a tribute to the late Harry Kalas, the long time Philadelphia Phillies TV/radio broadcaster that tragically passed away this week. His legacy speaks for itself and this weekend, my Phillies are paying him a very special tribute that Babe Ruth once received!

In honor of Harry, we are going to dedicate this post to him by presenting you the starting lineup for some of the best recent links. Our scorecard brings you our top nine stars and we do not use a DH in our league, we are old school! Take it away Harry...

• Leading off, in centerfield, Studenomics gives us a a great PF Blogger Interview with Mr. Lazy Man and Money.
• Batting second, the third baseman, PT Money touches on one of the 12 Things Every Teenager Needs To Know About Money (And How To Teach Them).
• In the three spot, the rightfielder, Trent from The Simple Dollar wades through the pros and cons of the debate: Charge Cards Vs Debit Cards Vs Credit Cards.
• Slugging in the cleanup spot, at first base, Mr Tough Money Love who brings us an excellent visual breakdown of Where Your Taxes Are Going.
• Batting fifth, the second basewoman, The Digerati Life highlights the Priceline Negotiator in Getting a Bargain Vacation (William Shatner is coming of the bench).
• Next up in the sixth spot, out in left field (literally not figuratively), J. Money from Budgets Are Sexy stresses that Life Insurance Makes More Budget Sense Than You Think!
• Batting seventh, the shortstop, Kristy from Master Your Card ask the question Are You Stagnant In The Face Of Change? Well, are you?
• Batting eighth, the catcher, Cash Money Life explains Why Getting An MBA Is No Longer His Goal
• Rounding out the lineup, the pitcher, Squawkfox, coming off a recent injury, she highlights 14 Things To Do Before And After A Car Accident
  

Now tell me what squad is going to be able to hang nine innings with that starting lineup? Hoep you enjoyed the first installment of Follow Finance Friday - The Harry Kalas Edition. I will leave with a video tribute the local Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia created for the great Harry Kalas. He was "The Voice" of Philadelphia sports. We will miss you.

Help A Fellow Blogger Hit a Milestone!

Twitter fills me on everything I must say! Mr. Tough Money Love was tweeting about something going on at another blog, so I decided to join in on the fun! (Get on Twitter People!)

One of my favorite bloggers on the Internet has been going through a rough month personally, but JD Roth over at Get Rich Slowly is on track to have his best month ever. He has a goal for 1,000,000 hits for this month and asking everyone for help. So I will gladly plug his site with some of the meager traffic I experience every month. His site is full of tons of great articles, many of which got me going to start up something of my own. Click on the link in my blogroll or in this article and tell him that I sent you! Have a good evening peoples. Be easy.

Weekly Links: Good Bye George Bush Edition

Happy Thursday people! Been a fun end of the week for me, I am in a training course for work which I am breezing through, so it is giving me a lot of time to read and write! Hope you are enjoying it (If not yell at me please).

One of my articles was selected for the Festival of Frugality which is being hosted by Randall at Credit Withdrawal. The article that was selected was my proclamation for 2009, The World Learns to Live Frugal in 2009! Check out all the other selections as well, there are some really good reads there. A bunch of the blogs from my blogroll made the cut as well!

Here are a bunch of links over the last few days that caught my eye. We are going to give a special shout out to our Commander in Chief, Mr. George W. Bush aka Dubbuya aka Pinocchio aka the Texas Prairie Monkey (Check out more nicknames).

The Adios El Presidente Links Edition

• Mr. Tough Money Love wants to know Who To Trust Teach Personal Finance To Our Youth?


• Flexo at Consumerism Commentary writes how Walmart Consumers Have Shifted to Frugality


• Pimp Your Finances releases the 10 Financial Commandments For Your 20s


• The Broke MBA wants to know If The Gym Membership Is Worth The Cost?


• Broke Grad Student explains Why He Blogs Anonymously (Many of us do!)


• Brad at the Brazen Careerist wonders If It Is Worth It To Get His Master's?


• Green Panda introduces her course on business basics ECON101!!


• The Digerati Life describes how Startup Funding in Silicon Valley is Drying Up

Have a good day everyone! Enjoy Bush's last words. Join Twitter today and follow me!

Ebay Income Stream

Over the last few weeks I threw stuff on eBay hoping that someone would bid on them. A few days went by with very little action on these items. I am an avid T-Mobile Sidekick user and have a bunch of these devices that are used and broken sitting around my house. I saw online that people were selling used and broken phones on eBay so I posted my items on there and magically, I began getting some action!

EBay is an amazing tool to help generate some extra cash. I have dealt with a few idiots who won my auctions and then decided not to pay, which is fine because I can just re list the item. But I had the idea at work today that I need to just need comb every inch of my home and compile all the items that I could potentially sell online!

What type of experience have you had with eBay?

I am always looking for extra sources of income, who isn't? Sometimes the whole idea of having to create the auction listing is somewhat intimidating, but trust me, it is so easy that once you start doing it, you will be hooked! I am going to pull together all my things tonight when I get home and take some pictures of them with my digital camera. Then I am going to just starting listing these items nonstop and then leave it all alone. These items are not making me any money sitting in my living room, so why not? I will not miss them and either will you!

There is so much information out there on generating secondary sources of income, I must say that Moolanomy's write up on his Extra Income Guide is the cream of the crop! It is a comprehensive look at trying to build extra streams of income aside from your normal day job!

Also, Ramit at I Will Teach You To Be Rich is conducting a challenge on his site called the 30 Day Challenge to Save you $1000, and tip #3 was to Sell Something on EBay Today! Check it out because it really has some great tips and really will get you thinking about your life and how you can cut some corners to save a buck!

Be easy people!

Friday Blog Link Blitz

I like to do this on Friday and throw a list out of some of the best stuff I read all week! check out the links and show them some love this weekend. Watch your wallet this weekend people! Be easy.

The Digerati Life - How the State of the Economy has Affected My Financial Goal

Budgets Are Sexy - 10 Cheap Ways to Woo Your Other Half - Any Day of the Week!

Broke Grad Student - Who Should Pay for a Birthday Dinner?

Tough Money Love - Our Economy Needs More Engineers and Fewer MBA's

My Open Wallet - I'm Mad About Yesterday's Market Gain's

Broke in the Suburb - I Promise...

Money Funk - Cuts Up All the Credit Cards in the Wallet

Hollyisstoppingshopping - Five Frugal Minutes with J Money at Budgets Are Sexy

Finance Friday and Links

A big Friday we have on our hands, some say that this day could be historical when we look back at it in a few years. No I am not talking about my personal finances this time, I am talking about the stock market surge going on today. The DOW jumped almost 400 points this morning, giving us a two day total with yesterday of over 700 points. The the government plans to rescue banks from billions of dollars in bad debt and the implications will become clearer in the future weeks. I for one am not too confident that this "Bailout Rescue Plan" by the Fed is going to help us more than hurt us. Let's just say I do not have much confidence on the old white men running our countries economy right now. I am definitely going to educate myself with everything I can find via Google today to really break down what this is going to do for us, but I would love to hear your thoughts on this rescue plan if possible. I will leave you with a few posts I peeped during the week that caught my eye so click on em and check em out for yourself!

@ Moolanomy- Extra Income Guide - This is one of the most comprehensive reads I have seen on any blog on this topic. Kudos to the author for doing a damn good job breaking it down!

@ Broke Grad Student - Girl selling her virginity on eBay - A highly controversial topic that highlights the morals of a young girl in a society where people will actually get involved in something like this!

@ Tough Money Love - Best tactics for you on the Tuesday after the Crazy Wall Street Monday - Mr Tough Money Love throws out some good advice for what the hell happened and what you should do!

@ Prime Time Money - What are you saving for? - PT Money throws a great topic out there that got a bunch of people to spit what they are really saving for in life.


TGIF! I am hurting today at work with not much happening, hopefully I can find some hot fire to throw everyones way this afternoon, if not have a good weekend and keep them credit cards at home!!!!! Be Easy!!