Monday, April 16, 2007

New Carnival and Recommended Articles

The new Carnival of Personal Finance is live on AllFinancialMatters. My recent article condemning a possible sub prime bail out tops the list of articles (oh, yeah!).

Other excellent articles in the Carnival include:

The BEST post I have seen this week comes to us from Finance Buff, who gives us an article comparing multiple money market funds from Vanguard and gives very salient advice on how to pick the right one for you. Hint: taxes are important. With posts of that quality, Finance Buff is now on my list of favorite PF bloggers.

Getting Green recommends 8 Tactics to Help You Win in Any Negotiation. It is a good article, but I disagree with Green's assertion that you should not be the first to name a price when negotiating. In fact, you should do your best to name a price first - assuming you are knowledgeable about the subject matter and will not completely expose yourself as ignorant by doing so. The reason: anchoring. It has been repeatedly shown that if you anchor your adversary's expectations high enough, it is harder for them to low ball you. For example, if you are hoping to be paid 500, and your adversary was only planning to offer 400, if you are the first to name your price, your adversary will have a tendency to raise his first offer such that it is closer to your own.

Canadian Dream gives us 10 Signs That Your Retirement Plan is Not Going to Work. To his list I would like to add: investing all your retirement assets in a money market fund (or a savings account), because you feel that this is the safest place for your money. You would not believe how many people I know that have that philosophy. In fact, some of my family members are like that. Luckily, in their case, the retirement plan is somehow adequately funded.

Finally, for the sake of amusement, check out this reproduction of the original 1040 tax form, from 1913... brought to you by Political Calculations. Man, I could have saved sooooo much money if I only lived a hundred years ago. Of course, that would have placed me 6 feet under at this point, so I guess I am happy to be paying my taxes.

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