1. As some of you might know, I have my Roth IRA with Scottrade. I’m not going to go over how and why I started it right now since I’ve already covered it, but they have finally made a change that I’ve been waiting for. For a long time now they took away the ability to make an online transfer into the account because of some security issues they had in the past. They re-instituted these online deposits for regular accounts but not for IRAs for some reason (I was told because of the issue with tracking contributions for each year). Well, they’ve finally gotten their act together and I can now make a simple online transfer to fund my account.

2. There is an interesting article at Yahoo! about people tapping 401(k)s to pay bills. The very beginning of the article is what struck me. It says that one man “had little choice because he and his wife could not keep up with monthly expenses after American Express reduced the limits on three credit cards”. My first thought was… Why are they using their credit cards to pay monthly expenses in the first place? Someone should have noticed that there was a problem way before the only option was to raid a 401(k). If you’re racking up balances on your credit cards just to pay bills, then there is a problem. A novel idea would be to re-evaluate your needs and wants.

3. Another article caught my eye since I’ll be going back to school in the fall. It talks about an upcoming student loan crunch. It says that it could get tougher to get student loans since credit is drying up and lenders are toughening standards. One part of me doesn’t really care too much since it’s just another mention of another “credit crisis/crunch”, but another part of me was planning on taking out some student loans just as a back up since they’re usually at pretty cheap rates. For now I’m not going to get too worried, but it’s something that I’ll keep in mind going forward.

1. Fox Business has an article about raising financially savvy kids. It’s from back in 2005, but it still applies today if not more than back then. Regardless of our thoughts on the issue, financial concepts are not taught in our current educational system. Most of what young people learn about finances come from the example they see in their family. It may behoove us to ask ourselves what we’re teaching those around us about money management.

2. Fiscal Musings Throwback: Back in May of last year I asked the question, Are You an Investor or Speculator? At that time, real estate was still booming and the stock market was experiencing fantastic gains. Going by the definition I provided in this post, I would submit that true investors are still making money in the current market while the great number of speculators are losing their shirts and worrying.

3. Advanced Personal Finance has a great post up about the reality of negative real interest rates. I especially like the fact that it was looked at from multiple points of view for people in different situations.

More recently I’ve been putting in a lot of extra time at work. I won’t say that I’ve been doing 60 - 70 hours of work per week, but usually more than the standard 40. I also wouldn’t say that it’s required, but the overtime pay is certainly useful. What this does mean though, is that I have had less and less free time, especially when I busy myself with various projects around the house like our new floor. Which reminds me that I’ve also decided to lay down some vinyl tile in our one bathroom; another project that will just take some time. Even with everything going on, I still try to find the time to search out great financial stories and articles as well as write them myself. Seeing as how it’s now the weekend though, here’s the latest edition:

1. Ten Traits That Make You Filthy-Rich is an article over at Yahoo that looks more at your attitude towards money instead of any tips, tricks, or specific instructions. I’m a huge believer in changing your whole mindset about your finances instead of just looking for a quick fix.

2. Scott over at W Revenue dot Com has a great article entitled Guaranteed to Fail. He hits the nail right on the head discussing the differences between employees and entrepreneurs and their mindsets. If you don’t ever try, you have a zero percent chance of succeeding.

3. For the third point, I don’t have a link to give you. Even without having cable or satellite at my house (I’ve just got the rabbit ears) I still can’t escape all the supposed drama in the political scene. It’s almost as if the news media is trying to compete with TMZ. And making it worse is the fact that the general election is still over nine months away and we’ve been bombarded with all of it for over a year and a half already. I don’t mind that candidates want to state their positions on issues and whatnot, but I’m a little sick of who did/said what, and what they ate for breakfast, and on and on. My rant is now at and end.

Even though today is Saturday, the weekend unofficially started yesterday for me since my work was shut down due to inclement weather conditions. Basically overnight a storm dropped a ton of snow and it would have been difficult for everyone to get out of their driveways, much less to work. I wasn’t going to complain though since it allowed me to work on the new floor some more and get it mostly done (there is just some remaining trim work to be done). Enough about that however, here is some great things from around the web for the weekend:

1. Creating passive income is a common theme here at Fiscal Musings and there is a nice article about just that over at The Walrus, a relatively new blog and recent commenter here. The article is entitled Keys to Creating Passive Incomeand covers various ways to go about it. I have one quick suggestion for The Walrus though. I would change the permalink structure to include the title of the posts instead of just referencing them by number so that the search engines have an easier time finding them. Nice blog though.

2. By now a lot of you have probably heard about the offer that Microsoft made to buy Yahoo. When I first read about it the offer was at a 61% premium over the current share price of Yahoo. Many people are seeing this as a way provide competition to Google, which is more and more being viewed as the new evil empire. It sound like a pretty good idea as far as I’m concerned. Google left a bad taste in my mouth ever since they banned me from Adsense citing “click fraud” even though I never clicked on an ad myself or told anyone else to. And submitting an appeal was a joke. They also downgraded my page rank to Zero I believe because I’ve done some sponsored reviews. I digress here, but Google is getting on my nerves.

3. Speaking of Yahoo, there was a decent article by columnist Laura Rowley, Be a squeaky wheel to avoid ‘Gotcha Capitalism’. I’m sure we’ve all dealt with this before at some point. Hours spent on the phone with “customer service” (a misnomer itself) trying to fix what never should have happened in the first place. To combat this effectively we just need to educate ourselves and pay more attention to what’s going on with our services and corresponding bills. Don’t just pay whatever shows up in the mail; peruse the details to make sure you agree and to catch the un-asked-for extras.

Well, the sun is shining and I have a lot to do today to get the house back in order and usable again with the new floor. Enjoy the above and have a great weekend.

1. With all the fear of recession in the market and in the economy as a whole, it was only a matter of time before the government steps in. And true to form, they’re now coming in after the problem has already been in full force for a while, and their “solution” won’t take effect until much later anyway. But who wouldn’t want to get a tax refund check?

2. I’m pretty much finished with the transition of my other blog, The Milk Crate, to a Wordpress platform. At times it was quite frustrating, but the learning experience was great. This blog will also be making the change shortly, but I’m waiting on a domain name transfer at the moment. Any feedback you have of the new site once it’s finished will definitely be welcome. It is, after all, a site for all of you.

3. I’ve talked about slick marketing before, and I’ve run across an article on Yahoo about how stores trick you into spending more. The double discount is something I’ve seen people get fooled by time and time again.

1. Lazy Man and Money writes about choosing between Netflix and Blockbuster for movie rentals. I can see the benefits of having the movies delivered right to my house, but I much prefer to get free movies from Redbox.

2. As you may or may not have already heard, Bank of America is going to buy Countrywide. And there are a lot of opinions about whether it’s a good or bad move. But there’s an interesting article at CNN Money about a large tax break for Bank of America. Obviously nothing is certain with this deal, but it does look to have some very positive aspects.

3. Not everyone is a car enthusiast, but here are some of the new vehicles to look for at the Detroit Auto Show. Personally, I’m a huge fan of the new corvette ZR1. It’s definitely a slick car.

4. Bankrate has put out the Ten Commandments of Personal Finance. All the things on the list are great things, but I’m not a huge fan of making these ten things the very highest priority since everyone’s situation is different.

I finally went back to work this last Friday, but even after just one day I was ready for the weekend. So I’ll get right to what’s up for this weekend edition.

1. Leading the Primaries: This article discusses Iowa and New Hampshire being the first states in the Presidential Primaries and whether they should be. Should these early states really be more influential than any of the other 48?

2. Hope for the Best…: Here’s a post from a recent regular reader reminding us about life and the importance of an emergency fund among other things.

3. 25 Reasons to Love Credit Cards: This article is from My Dollar Plan and lists off a bunch of reasons in favor of credit cards. There are some definite benefits to credit cards, but you’ve also got to be quite careful. Ultimately it’s up to you what you think you can handle.

4. Fiscal Musings Throwback: Why I don’t buy Mutual Funds explains exactly that. It’s not a post telling you that you shouldn’t, just some of the reasons why I don’t.