I normally don’t post links to major financial news sites on my Thoughtful Thursday posts. After all, part of the reason I do these posts is to draw attention to other small bloggers, or at least, to other personal finance bloggers. After all, we bloggers have to stick together.
But occasionally, there are posts on mainstream sites that just impress me. One such post was by Liz Pulliam Weston on the 100 most useful Web sites. The sheer number of good sites on the list, used many of them to good effect in the past, but had not heard of many of them prior to reading this list, all meant that I just had to post this. Plus, she did include several blogs on her list of useful sites, so I thought I should return the favor. Perhaps if she keeps doing this, I’ll end up on the list as a worthwhile blogger (hey, everyone has to have goals).
Other worthwhile posts I’ve come across this past week:
Earning More Money of Optimizing Spending? – Over on Studenomics, the question was raised of whether you should focus on optimizing spending or taking a second job as the best method to increase your available money. He recommends focusing on savings first, but I think that trying to earn more money has greater potential. You can only cut your expenses so much, and hopefully you’re already living pretty frugally.
How Bad Credit is Always Bad – My Life ROI lists several areas where having a low credit score will hurt you, even if you aren’t applying for a loan or other form of credit. It’s interesting, if a bit disturbing, to see just how many areas of your life rely on your credit score, from insurance companies to potential employers. All the more reason to know your score, and do everything you can to increase it.
On Salaries: Why We Want More Money – This is a simple one: more money allows us to acquire more goods and services, which in turn makes us happier people inside. But on the Writer’s Coin, we learn that a big influence on how happy or unhappy we are with our salary depends on how much we make relative to our coworkers and the other people in our lives. If we are making a small salary, but it’s the highest of our friends, we’ll be happier than if we are making more money in a company where we are being paid the lowest relative amount. It’s an interesting concept, although I think it can be taken too far (if you go to the extremes of ensuring you only date or hang out with people who make less money than you, for example).
Bad Stock Performance Raises Insurance Premiums – The title of this blog entry pretty much says it all, but the Weakonomist elaboarates the connection between the stock market and your insurance company. Rather than holding all your premiums in a big vault until it needs to pay them out (a la Scrooge McDuck), the insurance company will invest your money, hoping to profit when the market rises. But, given the recent downturn, they are getting hammered as badly as the rest of us. To make up for the shortfall, there’s going to be an increase in premiums for many consumers this year.
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MLR
on April 24 2009
Thanks for the spotlight sir!
I appreciate it much and you are most certainly correct… it is absolutely crazy how many people use our credit to gauge us!
MLR
Roger
on April 25 2009
You’re welcome, MLR. I understand why they use your credit score (it’s quick, easy, and most importantly to the companies, gives them an idea of how likely it is that you will pay them back), it just seems to be overused.