Career Clinic #2

Here is my roundup of weekly career and job related posts from around the PF blogosphere. I am specifically looking for career and job related posts, so if you publish one let me know and I may include you in the next Clinic:

Consumerism Commentary published a list of well paying jobs and some low paying jobs. Surprisingly, folks in the medical profession top the list. I would have guessed investment banking would take the #1 spot.  

Wise Bread advises his readers on how to find freelance work. It's all good advice, but from my experience, the best source of free lance work is your professional network and in particular, former colleagues. These are people who know you and will be happy to send you some work if the right opportunity comes along.

Free Money Finance published an article about 30 second video resumes that have started airing on his local TV station. His advice, which I fully agree with, is that if you are going to be putting yourself out there you had better be prepared. Don't waste the chance, be concise and talk about accomplishments. I also have to wonder if such gimmicks really get people hired. Another good one from Free Money Finance is a post about how to increase your salary.

Plonkee is talking about how her new job is effecting her business attire. It's always a good idea to dress for success. My philosophy has always been to dress one level more formal than the rest of the guys in my company. It's also a function of my specific position with the company and the fact that much of my work involves meeting people from outside the company.

Finally, Financial Fizzle has a post post about whether it's a good idea for both parents to work. Ultimately, it's a personal choice but I have previously weighed in on the same issue pointing to all the often overlooked costs of staying at home with the kids. Financial Fizzle also offers some job hunting tips for graduates.

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Career Clinic #1

Your career is your most important financial asset - that is, unless you are one of those lucky few who do not need to work for a living. Yet, somehow, us personal finance bloggers typically focus on what to do with your money once you have earned it, how to invest it and how to spend less of it. Well, my thinking is that building your career is at least as important if you are trying to achieve financial security. So, with that in mind, I have decided to scour the PF blog community and promote those posts that offer sound career advice. Here are the ones that I liked:

Spilling Buckets has a post about going for Grad School rather than trying to find a job in a recession. That's a common tactic these days, but I am not certain that it's a good career strategy.

Free Money Finance talks about his networking plan. Networking is one of the key aspects of career development, yet most folks never bother with it until they are looking for a job. Big mistake. Just as importantly, networking doesn't have to be a pain - read the article for some fun AND useful suggestions.

The Simple Dollar talks about salary negotiations when receiving a new job offer - this is the one time in the employer / employee relationship when negotiations are expected and the power rests with the employee. You MUST take advantage of this opportunity.

Saving Advice talks about freelancing as a source of income. For some folks, that's a very valid career move. I think that my wife may be headed in that direction, but we'll see.

The Smarter Wallet recommends companies that are less likely to let you go, recession or not. I am not sure that this is the number one criterion most people should consider when looking for a job, but job security is certainly a good thing, especially in the current economic conditions.

New Grad Handbook makes a very valid point: not all promotions are good promotions... the most important thing to consider is how a career move will position you in the long run. It's a good article.

Job and Career Advice talks about how to conduct yourself in an interview.

Finally, check out my own post about building work place alliances as a way to improve your chances for success.

I hope you find these useful.

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Recommended Aricles & Commentary

Here are some of the personal finance articles I enjoyed over the previous week. To be honest, this week I did not have much time to roam far and wide, as I normally do, and instead mostly stayed with my favorite PF blogs. Here are my recommendations for the week:

Plonkee wrote a wonderful piece about gap years - a common practice in Europe where people take a year off work - often before or after college, and go travel the world. Personally, I did this twice - once before college and once after my first year as a lawyer. Those were some of the best times of my life. Those two 6 month periods also helped to define and mold who I am today. Sadly, very few Americans make travel a major part of their early adulthood.

On the Digerati Life this week, there were two articles I particularly liked. One dealt with not buying a new car - a topic which I wrote about myself a while back. The other had to do with signs of a stock market bottom. I want to comment briefly about both posts - first, the car purchase. It appears that Americans in general have decided to forgo buying new cars for now - as evidenced by the complete meltdown of Detroit auto sales, and that's a perfectly rational decision in tough times. However, let me tell you a story - my company has been going through a fund raising process in this horrible financial environment (I will write a long post about this about 2 weeks from now), and as a consequence, I have been meeting many venture capitalists. The vast majority of these arrive in our office driving Porches or BMWs, but just last week I met one venture capital partner who drives a Nissan Altima. I immediately took a liking to the guy. Here's someone who spends his money wisely, even though he is obviously very well off financially.

Regarding the signs of a stock market bottom, I have this general advice: don't look for them. Trust that the laws of economics, much like human nature, have not and will not change. As long as we remain a capitalist nation and a huge asteroid does not collide with the Earth, stock markets will, over the long haul, yield about 8% a year. Some years will be better, some will be worse. You can save yourself a lot of anxiety and heart ache if you accept this and continue to invest in a disciplined manner regardless of what the market happens to be doing that specific year. Easy advice to give, tough advice to follow (even for me).

Five Cent Nickel this week started to entertain the notion of a second stimulus check- yeah, I don't know that this would be a viable long term strategy for stimulating the economy. In fact, I am not even sure if throwing even more federal money into the battle is a good idea or not. I am concerned about the mounting deficits and debt load. Someday soon we will have to pay the piper in the form of substantially higher inflation, a potentially steep decline in the value of the US Dollar, or both. I am keeping an open mind though, and don't pretend that I know what the right answer here is.

This week I participated in a couple of blog carnivals, including the Carnival of Personal Finance where Sun awarded me the honor of Editor's Pick for my post about leaving your job in a tough economy. I am honored. The post seems to have stuck a cord, since it was also taken up by many other bloggers. I also participated in the Carnival of Money Stories and in the Festival of Frugality. Finally, this week my blog was flooded by traffic when MSN Smart Spending featured my article about how to avoid getting laid-off. Hey, welcome new readers and RSS subscribers!

Recommended Articles

Here are some of the personal finance articles that I enjoyed over the past week:

JLP from All Financial Matters posted an article about the 50 worst months in the stock market and how the market performed in the months that followed. It's an interesting read, and demonstrates that over the long haul, stocks are a good investment, even if it's tough to remember this during the bear markets.

Brip Blap posted about how wealth is not a zero sum game - in fair trade, both parties can emerge wealthier. I whole heartedly agree - this is the basis for capitalism, n'est pas?

Clever Dude is voting libertarian, claiming that this is not a wasted vote. Well, I agree in the sense that it is not any more wasted than the votes of most other Americans.

Consumerism Commentary posted about lay-away programs - consumers paying in installments and getting the product when they have completed paying for it. What a strange concept!? Why not simply save the money in a bank account, earn interest, and pay for the product all at once when you have the cash? Strange...

Moolanomy has a good post on one of my favorite topics: career planning. Career progress is not something that just happens. You have to know where you are trying to go and take concrete action to get yourself there. Moolanomy's tips are a good starting point.

The Digerati Life - who happens to live in roughly the same area as I, had a post that showed foreclosures in our neck of the woods. California has seen its share of foreclosures, and then some, but Silicon Valley has so far been mostly untouched by this phenomenon. Not for long though, I think...

Finally, Puny Money had an article about how charitable contributions sometimes don't really make it to their intended targets. It is really a good idea to research your charity to make sure that it uses the money for its intended purposes and minimizes administrative costs.

Recommended Articles

Here are some of the interesting personal finance articles I read this past week:

NPR featured a good interview with Vanguard founder John Boggle in which he reiterates his investment advice: don't panic and make rash decisions; and invest in index funds. 

MoneyNing wrote a good post about how some mighty big investors are not panicking even though many of them have lost hundreds of millions of dollars. He thinks that the primary reason these guys aren't freaking out is that they don't need the cash in the near term.  I speculate that the real reason for the lack of big investor panic is that money has a “diminishing marginal utility”. What I mean by this is that your first $1,000 a month is very important because you use it to buy food and shelter; the next $5,000 a month are also important to you because you use it to ensure you have a decent lifestyle and save some money for a rainy day… after a while… say your $10,000,000 or so (maybe its $100M - what do I know) - money sort of loses its importance… I mean, these guys couldn’t spend all their cash if they tried… so I think that the small guy who lost much of his 401k savings in the market is feeling much more pain than the tycoon who is technically losing MUCH more money…

The Digerati Life is cheering for the U.S. economy, saying that we are still #1 and things aren't all that bad. I tend to agree that things are not as gloomy as some make them seem. I mean, if you walk in the streets, folks are still out and about, dining establishments are full and most of us (still) have a job. This is, in fact the point that Frugal Zeitgeist is also making.  

Here's a good one - Moolanomy has a piece about recency bias - our tendency to look at recent history as if it is representative of reality. For example, people's tendency to assume that real estate is a sure fire investment and will never go down on a nationwide basis, back in real estate bubble times. A similar, but somewhat more insidious bias is our tendency to extrapolate current trends into the future, indefinitely. E.g. just because the stock market has been taking big hits every day for the past few days, does not mean that all stock investments are worthless...

American Consumer News had a post this week warning folks to watch our for nasty health benefit cost increases as their health insurance plan comes up on its annual "open enrollment" season - also known as "let's screw the consumer annual fiesta". With changes effective in November, our medical plan is going to have much higher co-pays for most procedures. The really annoying thing: my company is not the one cutting benefits - they are still paying just as much for coverage, but the cost of health care coverage in this country is inflating out of control. This is definitely something the next President should address as a high priority.

Finally, my favorite for the week: JLP of All Financial Matters wrote a post that I agree with completely - way too many people claim to be victims in this financial crisis. The vast majority of these are not victims they simply think that they should be protected from the consequences of their own financial decisions. Being an idiot doesn't make you a victim, it simply makes you... an...errr... idiot.

This week I participated in the Carnival of Money Hacks, check it out.

Recommended Articles

Here are some of the personal finance articles I enjoyed this week:

The NY Times posted a column by Warren Buffet telling folks that he believes the stock market is a good investment and that he is putting his own personal money heavily into equities. Naturally, this was big news round the PF blogosphere with many bloggers, including Consumerism Commentary and Five Cent Nickel, dedicating posts to this item. Me? I am just glad to be on the same side as the oracle on this one. On the 15th, when the market was taking a major tumble, I made our monthly investment into the stock market. 

Lazy Man wrote a post this week about the good things that are happening in the economy, among them: buying stocks on the cheap (I guess he too is a Buffet fan), and cheap gas. Well, actually, I am not a very big fan of cheap gas. Although expensive gas is painful, it causes folks to burn less of it, and conservation and energy efficiency are in our long term best interest. Still, I won't lie, paying less at the pump is nice.

Another excellent one this week came from Moolanomy who basically published the beginner's guide to frugal living. He covers useful concepts and ideas and gives a whole bunch of suggestions and resources for those of us who are trying to cut expenses in a tough economy.

My final recommendation for the week is an article Plonkee Money posted on the impact of the real estate bubble on her home price and her economic expectations. This is a remarkably sober and level headed assessment of the situation and is a great example of the excellent material Plonkee publishes. If you don't yet subscribe to Plonkee's blog, you should consider doing so.

Also this week, I participated in a number of blog carnivals and events. The Festival of Frugality was hosted by Aridni; and my article about Using Credit in a Tough Economy was Editor's Pick at the Carnival of Debt Reduction, hosted by Gather Little by Little. I am honored.

Recommended Articles

Here are some of the interesting articles I have been reading this week around the personal finance blogosphere and throughout the web.

First up, take a look at this very interesting presentation from Sequoia Capital - one of the most respected venture capital firms in Silicon Valley. The presentation explains the causes for the economic crisis as well as some of the likely outcomes and possible impacts on technology companies. Very well done.

My Financial Journey came out of semi-retirement to say that if the world is coming to an end, he is going out fully invested... :-) I share the sentiment. I think there are at least 8 of us left, worldwide.

Five Cent Nickel wrote a post about one of my favorite topics these days: reducing debt. Seriously, if at this point you are carrying much debt, and you are not working for a completely recession proof entity, such as Uncle Sam, than you must be out of your mind. Living below your means is rule #1 in tough economic times.

My friend Frugal Zeitgeist is wondering about second order economic problems - what happens when parents or kids get into financial trouble, just when you are facing the squeeze yourself. My philosophy is that families should always stick together and help each other out in tough economic times.

Plonkee has some solid tips for career development. At this point most people are just thinking about not getting laid off, but Plonkee's ideas about developing new skills and making sure that you are marketing yourself correctly are useful for those who want to avoid the ax as well as for those seeking growth.

Hey - it turns out that some people are writing about things other than the economic meltdown. I didn't know that this was still legal... well, Lazy Man has a great post about the worst gifts he had ever received. Our worst gifts have got to be some of the things we got for our wedding. Someone got us an oil painting that they did themselves and which was pretty abysmal. You know what? It is NOT only the thought that counts, people.

Finally, Lynnae of Being Frugal had a great post about how to be frugal while traveling. These days, with airlines nickel and diming you for everything, planning ahead can save you a lot of cash.

Recommended Articles

Here are some of the personal finance articles I found most interesting over the past week:

Money Smart Life has an article about how to use your last few days in an old job to improve your chances for success over the longhaul - solicit truthful feedback from your colleagues. This is an excellent idea and one that I will suggest to my wife as she gets ready to leave her current position (more about that in a future post).

Pinyo of Moolanomy fame offered a succinct and well written article explaining what short selling is, and why people do it. This topic is very timely given the turmoil in the financial markets and the recent restrictions that the SEC placed on short selling financial institutions' stock.

Jeremy of GenX finance posted about the risk of compounding your investment losses by investing less in a down market. He is right on the money, but my take is that if your losses are not allowing you to get a good night's sleep, investing more is probably not the right strategy for you. Always invest using a strategy you can live with, even in down times. BTW, Jeremy was also featured in Business Week's print edition this week, in an article titled "Where the Pros are Putting their Own Money". You know who else is featured in the same article? Prof. Jeremy Siegel of the Wharton School of Business and Prof. Harry Markowitz, a Nobel Laureate. You know you are doing something right when you are mentioned in the same list as those big guns. Good going dude!

Free from Broke boils down this whole personal finance thing into a single equation: spending > earning = debt (I think it should say "broke" instead). Somebody's got to put that on a t-shirt and give it to the American public at large... many people in this country still think the equation works like this: spending > earning = leverage + higher lifestyle. And it does, for a short amount of time, before the manure hits the rotating wind making machine...

Also, check out the Carnival of Financial Planning and the Carnival of Personal Finance, in both of which I participated this week.

recommended articles

Once again it's time for a review of some good personal finance articles out there on the web.

First, a new PF blog that I stumbled across: The Smarter Wallet is focused on consumer tips and tools such as Tips for Buying a Used Car. Welcome to the neighborhood guys.

The PF bloggosphere this week was filled with calming advice in the midst of the financial hurricane that we are going through. Debt Difier at The Happy Rock, advised investors to not panic, reminding me of the famous line from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and managing to sound very calm and collected himself. While the Digerati Life had a post about how to protect your portfolio in market turbulence.

Million Dollar Journey wrote a post about a topic that many dual income professionals are deliberating when they have kids: find day-care for the little ones or step out of the work force. We went through the same thought process, and decided, like Frugal Trader, that the day care option was the right one for us. As I previously wrote, there is a substantial price to pay for becoming a stay at home parent, and this choice is not right for everyone. Frugal Trader's article is a response to a reader's comment basically accusing him of being a bad parent for contemplating day care. To be honest I found that specific comment to be offensive - I don't have a lot of respect for people who tell other others how they should live their lives. Along with religion, stupidity, greed and ignorance, telling other folks how to live their lives is one of the main causes of trouble in our world. Live and let live.

Fire Finance offered an inspiring account of a couple that was able to retire early and how they currently live their lives. Seriously... that post got me thinking.

Another couple of interesting articles coming from traditional news sources this week: Kiplinger published an article saying that Americans are under exposed to international equity. And the NY Times published a story saying that the worst is yet to come... I must say that I feel the same way myself.

Finally, my article about Free Software that saves money AND reduces CO2 emissions was included in this week's Festival of Frugality which was ably hosted by Living Almost Large. Good deal.

Recommended Articles

Below is a list of some of the personal finance articles I enjoyed this week, but before I get started, there is another article I want to recommend in connection with my decision to vote post from earlier this week.

The NY Times published an in-depth article about Sarah Palin. I strongly recommend reading it. The image of Palin that I got from the article is that of a very strong minded person, who is highly results oriented and that gets things done but who is also vindictive, secretive and who doesn't mind using her position of authority in favor of personal agendas and to reward old friends. I found this profile to be a very troubling. I may have to contribute some more cash to the Obama campaign.

Here's one excerpt from the article that stuck with me, relating to the now famous library book banning allegations:

"Witnesses and contemporary news accounts say Ms. Palin asked the librarian about removing books from the shelves. The McCain-Palin presidential campaign says Ms. Palin never advocated censorship.

But in 1995, Ms. Palin, then a city councilwoman, told colleagues that she had noticed the book “Daddy’s Roommate” on the shelves and that it did not belong there, according to Ms. Chase and Mr. Stein. Ms. Chase read the book, which helps children understand homosexuality, and said it was inoffensive; she suggested that Ms. Palin read it.

“Sarah said she didn’t need to read that stuff,” Ms. Chase said. “It was disturbing that someone would be willing to remove a book from the library and she didn’t even read it.”

“I’m still proud of Sarah,” she added, “but she scares the bejeebers out of me.”

OK. Now for the personal finance stories:

The Finance Professor - who is ACTUALLY a finance professor, gives some investing advice to his friends and family. In a nut shell: diversify, save, invest often. Trust him, he knows what he's talking about.

Check out this relatively new PF blog, called Spilling Buckets. I found it when they left a comment on one of my posts. These guys have a very clear financial plan and a very cleanly designed blog. Good going guys!

Ben of Money Smart Life posted an excellent article about quitting your job gracefully. This is very good advice. The way I see it, most industries are small. You are bound to run into the same people over and over again. Making enemies is not a productive thing to do. So rather than spilling your guts at the exit interview and talking about how your boss is horrible and your colleagues are in the bottom 5th percentile in the competence rankings, bow out gracefully and move on.

Money Ning posted about his friend who calls companies to complain about poor service, in the hopes of getting a discount, even when there is nothing wrong with the service. I think that this is wrong for three reasons: (i) it is possible someone suffers for her lies - e.g. a customer service agent who was supposed to make sure service was good; (ii) frivolous calls increase costs  or reduce profits for service providers, service providers then hike prices for the rest of us to make up the difference; (iii) if you want to negotiate prices, do so honestly.

Here's a good one: Sun of Sun's Financial Diary just bought 125 new shares of Washington Mutual. Yes, that's one of the banks that are suffering through massive losses. Sun is trying to be a contrarian in the hopes of reaping the rewards. I think that this REALLY bad strategy. If you want to be a contrarian, invest in the whole financial sector. Betting on a single institution may see your stock go to zero value if the company you are invested in goes bankrupt. Personally, I put some money into Vanugard's Financial Sector Index (VFH), hopefully making a similar bet to Sun's only with somewhat less risk.

Also, this week I participated in two blog carnivals, the Carnival of Personal Finance was hosted by Banker Girl; and the Festival of Frugality was hosted by Frugal Babe.

Recommended Articles

There were a whole lot of very good articles published on the personal finance blogosphere this week. Here are some of the really good ones:

Moolanomi had an excellent post on the topic of asset allocation, complete with a bunch of charts, methods and tools.  A really good free tool that he points to in the article is Morning Star's free portfolio x-ray tool. You can use this to understand the inner workings of your portfolio, including any asset overlaps in mutual funds, your exposure to different asset classes and sectors and so forth. As I said, this is a really useful post.

Jim from Blueprint for Financial Prosperity makes a point that I agree with 100%: don't invest in what you know, because you only think you have a clue... even the professionals can't seem to beat the market long term. What makes you think that you can? 

Tough Money Love looks at the sad state of retirement savings in this country. He also has some good advice on how to avoid getting to retirement in a dismal state yourself.

Another post I really liked this week was The Simple Dollar's article about creation vs. consumption. His common sense advice is to focus on improving your skills rather than on buying the best tools around. He gives the example of improving your writing skills rather than using the fanciest notebook around. This one really resonated with me.

Fabulously Broke in the City wrote an article about how now that she is a consultant and gets paid by the hour, she doesn't mind being asked by her clients to sit around and do nothing, since the clock just keeps on ticking. I understand the feeling, but I tend to invent things to do when I don't have any active projects. I get bored really easily.

Here's a way to save money: buy used things. Not everything needs to be new to be useful. American Consumer News rightly points out that certain things work just as well used and gives the examples of books, DVDs and computer games. Right on. Personally, I like using half.com for my used purchases -but in all honesty, I don't make too many of those.

Finally, this week I participated in two carnivals: the venerable Carnival of Personal Finance and the illustrious Festival of Frugality. Check them out.

A Tip of the Hat

It's been a while since I acknowledged the folks who send readers over to Money and Such, so I figured I'd take a few minutes on this Labor Day afternoon to give the nod to those five blogs who send the most visitors my way. Not surprisingly, these five also happen to be on my favorite PF blog list.

1. Frugal Zeitgeist - one of my oldest neighbors, Frugal started her blog about the same time I started Money and Such. She is a smart professional who recently finished paying off her mortgage. She writes with intelligence, humor and style. Definitely worth a read.

2. The Finance Buff - is an excellent read for smart and sophisticated articles. He is a fellow MBA and likes... finance. I'm a regular on his site.

3. The Div Guy - invests in dividend bearing stocks and has been on my blog roll forever. He's also been known to comment on Money and Such, when there's something worth saying. We differ in our investment styles, but he's got good things to say.

4. The Digerati Life - definitely one of my favorites, not least because we both live in Silicon Valley. I am a regular reader and peanut gallery commenter on this one. In fact, I actually made his top commenter list for August.

5. Cash Money Life - another of my favorites, who has been on my blog roll for a long time. Patrick is very consistent, producing a new, high quality post virtually every day. Pretty impressive.

Thank you all for being good neighbors and for producing such great content.

Recommended Articles

I ran into a bunch of good personal finance articles this week, and here they are in random order... well, OK, not that random:

First up is this article from Smarter Money. It is very well written and is all about how much money people make, complete with statistics and charts. If you always wanted to benchmark your income against that of other folks, you can satisfy your curiosity with this article. Let's just say that after reading the article and comments, I feel that I have nothing to complain about.

Similar to my article from a couple of weeks ago, this article from Brunette on a Budget (very nicely designed blog, incidentally) asks the question "does money buy you happiness?" She thinks, yes. I am not so certain, but you know what they say: at least you can choose your own kind of misery...

Saving to Invest has a relatively new PF blog that is doing phenomenally well. In fact, he is putting me to shame after only a few months in publication, in terms of both traffic and subscriber growth. This is his take on what it takes to succeed as a PF blogger. I can't argue.

Finally, My Two Dollars has an article about how Comcast is about to start metering users' use of the Internet and kick out customers that use more than a certain amount of data per month (250 Gigabytes is the current monthly limit). As I commented on the article itself, I am of two minds about this. On the one hand this is a throwback to the dial-up, metered web surfing on the 90's... it's also guaranteed to slow down innovation and new services. Forget about downloading Netflix movies over the net, for example... On the other hand, because of my job I understand the ISPs' business very well, and I know that it is tough for ISPs to economically design and run networks with a small minority of bandwidth hoggers. The solution in my opinion is to throttle down the speeds to the biggest bandwidth hogs during peak times, but to let them run wild during times when there is spare network capacity.

Finally, this week I participated in two carnivals. The Carnival of Personal Finance was graciously hosted this week by Broke Grad Student and the Festival of Frugality was hosted by Fire Finance.

Recommended Articles

My post about finding a job in a tough economy was included in this week's Carnival of Personal Finance. It has been a while since I participated in one...

I also found a couple of other interesting posts - this one talks about how GM is trying to sell us a "green story". Many businesses are green washing these days - it's simply trendy and most folks don't pay enough attention to sift the real environmental reality from the crap claims. For example, the other day I saw a BMW ad announcing that the company has a hydrogen powered car available for sale and they are now simply waiting for the world to be ready. Come on! Give us a break! We are not THAT stupid.

This other article was particularly fascinating for me given that I have never bought or bid on a house. It talks about how a realtor was able to help her customers buy a house even when their offer was not the highest one that the owners received. Apparently, it's all about convincing the owners that the bid her clients are submitting is the most likely to close. Interesting.

Top Personal Finance Questions

People get to Money and Such through a variety of sources, and chief among these are the search engines. I figured it would be interesting to compile a list of some of the personal finance questions and key words that lead readers to my blog and provide a brief answer to each. So here goes:

1. How is my 401K doing compared to my peers? Check out this post.

2. How should I ask for a raise? Here is some advice on asking for a raise. And here's what to avoid.

3. How should I save for retirement in my 20's? Good for you! Here's something to get you started.

4. Should I invest in my company stock? Nope. At least not in a way that will unbalance your portfolio.

5. How should I invest my 401K assets? Here are some pointers.

6. Is rent a waste of money? Hell, no.

I also get the occasional intriguing question. Here is a sample, with my attempt at an answer:

1. What should I do in my 20's? Enjoy life, travel, learn.

2. What companies have the best 401K plans? Wish I knew...

3. What is the coin flip change over probability? errr....

4. How long should I stay at home with my parents? Until you can stand it no more... seriously, just get out of there, dude!

5. Insurance good or bad? Ugly. OK, it depends.

Finally, sometimes people get to Money and Such by using some really strange key words. Check these out:

"Art Dinkin" - huh?! who?!

"brake light, 1997 geo prizm" - I recently fixed my busted one.

"kenneth heebner" and "genius" - I have no idea who he is. Is he really a genius?

"im not good at picking stocks" - neither am I. Thank god they've already invented the index.

"how to cut a bubble" - I've heard that scissors work pretty well.

"random things" - should I be offended that this keyword sends people to my blog?

"my life makes no sense" - OK... welcome to Money and Such

"is it ok to ask your boss for a raise" - asking your cat does not typically yield the desired outcome.

I'm curious, am I the only one that gets traffic from such strange key words? Tell me about your weirdest ones.

Recommended Articles

This week's Carnival of Personal Finance is hosted by Million Dollar Journey, and features my article titled Active Resume Building. Here are some more recommended posts from this carnival:

The Personal Financier has a good article about common investment mistakes. I agree with most of the points Dorian makes, however one of his points "selling winning stocks too early, or holding onto losers for too long", contradicts another of his points cautioning against "Trying to time the market ". I actually agree that you should not try to time the market, and recently wrote a post on the subject, with some empirical data, but how can you practice this AND try to time individual stocks at the same time? Market timing is bad. Period.

Me vs. Debt has a post about asking for a raise, and the strategy he used for achieving his goal. I agree with every point he makes, and especially with his final point about "not mentioning his bills" as an argument. Honestly, your boss does not care about your bills. Your personal circumstances are not a factor in granting or denying your request for a raise. Your boss cares about two things: making his budget, and exceeding his departmental goals. If your raise moves him in the right direction on both - you are in good shape. If not, you probably won't be getting that raise. Here is some more advice on things to avoid when asking for a raise.

Canadian Dream wonders why there is no universal personal finance education in North America. He also gives a pretty cynical response: companies make money off of people's ignorance (he actually uses the word stupidity, but I am more diplomatic). I am not sure whether he actually believes in this explanation, but I have a simpler one: who should care about this issue? Is there a pressure group or lobby to push for more financial education? The people that need financial education, mostly don't realize that they need it. The ones that could provide it, mostly have no financial incentives to do so. And, finally, government only acts to serve the interests of various pressure groups - there are no campaign bribes (sorry, I meant to say "contributions") to be won by working on this issue. So there. Now who is the cynical one?

Finally, Money Walks offers a useful tutorial for those who are not sure about how to calculate their net worth. It also features some stunning art work, which may or may not have been stolen from the Museum of Modern Art.

Recommended Articles

After a couple of days off, here are some of the articles I recommend this week from the Carnival of Personal Finance and the Festival of Frugality. The Carnival of Personal Finance this week had a Doctor Seuss theme. My god, it must have taken MBH forever to put that thing together. Multiple kudos!

Moolanomy offers a post about how inflation, taxes and the eroding value of the Dollar are impacting the real value of our investment. You can't do much about inflation, but you can do something about taxes and the value of the Dollar. Investing in tax efficient index funds, and holding onto your investments rather than trading will do a lot to reduce your tax bill. To protect yourself from the falling Dollar, diversify internationally.

The Online College Blog has a post about the best 25 online MBA programs. To which I must respond: are you kidding me? Why would anyone want to get an online MBA? An MBA is a degree which most people get to advance their professional career. It is not typically considered a program that people take for academic interest alone. If you are indeed planning on getting an MBA, let me teach you the first lesson for free: return on investment. Don't undertake a project that is bound to have a negative return. Very few employers give any weight or value at all to an online MBA degree. Now, if you are planning on using the knowledge you gain to start your own business, maybe that would be a different matter. But if you have your eyes set on corporate America? Save your money and your time. If you are serious about getting an MBA, take a look at this website.

Financial Reference complains that laws can distort incentives and wreak havoc on free markets. Boy, do I agree. In this day and age companies routinely and efficiently lobby into law incentives, programs and regulations that give them an unfair advantage over the competition. Such incentives include subsidies, outright restriction on competition, contract awards and so forth. If there is a problem with the free market it's that it is far less free than it needs to be. Unfortunately, the specific example given in the article is a really bad one: yes, if you are violating parking regulations (even by 10 minutes) you should get a ticket. If there is a rule on the books it needs to be enforced. That does not mean that the rule itself is appropriate.

Millionaire Mommy Next Door has a post after my own heart: she advocates renting as a way of building personal wealth. I agree. By spending $24,000 a year to rent our place in Silicon Valley rather than buying a house for about a cool million, we are able to let our diversified portfolio grow, without sinking the bulk of our assets into bricks.

The Financial Blogger has a post about how having a second child is not that expensive. Maybe in wonderland. It's true that the incremental cost of the second child is lower than that of the first. Yes, you can re-use the stroller, the crib, some clothes and so forth, but the truly big costs are still very much there: education, health care, housing and pretty much everything else. Numbers 2 & 3 came to us as a single package and had a big ol' bill attached to their tiny baby butts. Love them to pieces, but those little buggers are expensive.

An honorable mention this week goes to Cheap, Healthy, Good for their amazing post: 11 Things Dwight K. Schrute Has Taught Me About Food and Frugality. I laughed myself silly.

Recommended Articles

Here is my recommended articles post for the week. As always I try to choose the more original and novel articles out there.

Ask Mr. Credit Card hosted this week's Carnival of Personal Finance, which included my article "Advanced Portfolio Building". I also wrote two additional articles on the same topic this week. You can find them here and here.

Tezza from 4EvaYoung wrote an article titled Buying is for Suckers (she is referring to houses). I wouldn't go as far as the title of this post suggests, but you may remember that my article Rent is not Waste was selected editor's pick in last week's Carnival. I agree with practically all of the arguments Tezza is making. Tezza also adds a couple of excellent points, including the following: renters do not typically over-extend. Buyers of homes have a nasty tendency to buy more home than they need, thinking that they will either grow into it, or sell it for a profit. Talk about locking up valuable capital in bricks and mortar.

Free Money Finance has a post about strange and unusual job interview questions. I have had a couple of strange interview questions in my time. One interviewer put a batman action figure in front of me and asked me how I would market the masked crime fighter. In another interview, I was asked to suggest ways to prove that the light in the fridge does not stay on when the door is closed. In yet another interview I was actually asked to estimate the weight of a Boeing 747. Believe it or not, I actually heard of this question before, and had a good idea of how to approach the problem. People that are interviewing with me these days get some unusual questions that they can blog about. I tend to ask people to perform tasks that they would be faced with on their first day on the job. Just last week I asked several candidates to solve some Excel problems for me. The way I look at it, if I expect you to perform the task on your first day, I want to know you can do it, before I hire you. Am I crazy?

Chief Family Officer has a post about sending her boys to private school at a steep price. Her readers responded to the article with some fairly vile comments. I am amazed that she let some of those comments stay published. In any case, I can certainly understand the dilemma. My oldest started kindergarten this year and he is going to public school. The schools in our neighborhood are very highly rated, so I am very comfortable with that decision. However, I can certainly understand the desire to give your kids the best education possible. Education is the one investment that is better than any portfolio. In my humble opinion, that is.

Quest for Four Pillars has a post explaining how he decided how much life insurance coverage his family needs. My life insurance coverage is enough to replace my annual base salary 6.4 times. I am not sure whether this will be sufficient on its own should fate take me away from my family before my time. It's probably pretty close given that term life insurance payments are not taxed, and that the money can be invested as soon as it is paid. I may need to re-evaluate my coverage.

As always, I will add a couple of more recommendations later this week.

Recommended Articles

Once again it is time for my Tuesday morning article recommendations:

This week's Carnival of Personal Finance is hosted by My Retirement Blog, an excellent blog that I read regularly. Our kind host did me the honor of selecting my article Rent is Not Waste as the top Editor's Pick for this weeks Carnival. Good deal.

This week's carnival included a whole bunch of articles that I read and appreciated last week here are some of my favorites:

Money, Matter and More Musings posted an article about the fact that signing the back of your credit cards is a useless security feature. Absolutely. Two of my cards are unsigned, and very few times does a sales clerk even check to see if there is a signature on the back. Even when they do check, and see that the card is unsigned, very rarely do they ask for an ID. Checking is sort of an automatic, meaningless gesture for them. The one exception to this rule: Best Buy. I always get asked to show my ID at Best Buy, and I am glad to do so.

Advanced Personal Finance has a good post about how to deal with a lousy 401K plan. The advice is all good, but he leaves out one critical piece of advice: lobby your company to change the plan. Companies are generally interested in offering a good 401K plan to their employees. The problem is that in many cases the person running the plan is someone from HR that has little or no understanding in personal finance or investment strategy. If you offer your insights or formally file your complaints regarding the plan, there is a good chance that your suggestions will at least be considered. Be aware that companies are always worried about the possibility of being sued by employees unhappy about the company's 401K plan. Each 401K plan is managed by at least one trustee who has a fiduciary responsibility to run the plan for the benefit of its participants. That’s a very big incentive to listen to employees.

For those thinking about asset allocation, the Finance Buff offers some useful advice about how to build a portfolio while limiting complexity to a level you are comfortable with. Generally speaking this is sound advice, but I have some posts coming up about other asset classes that are not adequately addressed by the proposed strategy. Stay tuned. It's going to be interesting.

Chief Family Officer has a post about how much you should stash away in your flexible medical spending accounts. Personally, I check our medical spending each year, using Quicken and follow that amount. However, I find it bizarre that the government (or employers) makes individuals guess their medical spending in advance, and penalizes them for guessing incorrectly by taking any remaining funds they haven't spent. Talk about promoting waste and creating unnecessary complexity.

Also, check out the Festival of Under 30 Finances hosted by How to Make a Million Dollars.

The Festival of Frugality this week was hosted by My Two Dollars. This week I also participated in the Carnival of Financial Planning.

Special Thanks

Special thanks to the following excellent blogs which referred the most traffic to Money and Such in September:

Crazy Money
All Financial Matters
Get Rich Slowly
Money, Matter and More Musings
Paid Twice
Rather Be Shopping
FILAM Personal Finance
Consumerism Commentary

Also, a special thanks to The 401K Insider and to Moolanomy whose readers spent the most time on Money and Such, and to Plonkee who writes a mean blog and who regularly comments on this blog.