Posts I Enjoyed Last Week

Ben at Money Smart Life compares online banks with local brick and mortar banks to figure out which one makes a better deal. I use local bank for checking and online bank for savings. Ben also hosted last week’s Carnival of Personal Finance.

Jeremy at Generation X Finance says you don’t have to change oil every 3,000 miles. Of course, dealers and garage owners would love to see you changing oil every month with them.

Lazy Man at Lazy Man and Money wonders whether we really need 80% of pre-retirement income in our retirement. The financial industry calls the 75% or 80% pre-retirement income when calculating income required in retirement “conservative.” They’d like to see you save more and, probably, invest the money with them.

Silicon Valley Blogger at The Digerati Life has eight ways to diversify and manage your portfolio’s risk. Allocation, allocation, allocation. Always have asset allocation in your mind when choosing which to invest.

Henry at Binary Dollar suggests that if you want to have a budget, then you should create one that you can keep up. Too far off either way will make the budget useless.

Golbguru at Money, Matter and More Musings shares some photos he took from a recent trip to New York City and, as expected, they are all money related.

Jim at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity ran a list of sizes of 401(k) from people who are interested in sharing their numbers. The last time I checked, I have a little over $40K in mine in 2 years and my wife has more than $114K in hers in less 7 years.

Mighty Bargain Hunter has some discussions on what minimum wage would buy, now and thirty years ago. I don’t exactly how much inflation has gone up in the past three decades, but the minimum wage in 1976 was $2.30, now it’s $7.25.

Super Saver at My Wealth Builder is having a retirement saving challenge for the next six months. I couldn’t agree more with the importance of creating “environments and behaviors that enable saving.”

Jonathan at My Money Blog takes a peek at what John Bogel, founder of Vanguard, is investing. Given his strong objection of investing in actively managed funds, I am surprised that Bogel also owns some non-index funds, though they are all from Vanguard (therefore, cheap).

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