2011′s First Carnival of Money Stories

Happy New Year! And welcome to the year’s first Carnival of Money Stories.

Since we’d all like to know if the economy is going to get any better over the next twelve months, our theme is—what else?—predicting the future. What does where we’ve been tell us about where we’re going in 2011?

Editor’s Picks: Winning Up-&-Comers

Where was this lady when I needed advice about my son’s financial upbringing? Mike Piper of Oblivious Investor tells the story of his mom’s very special approach to teaching her son the basics of capitalism.

Free from Broke tells a gracious and beautiful story about his “best financial tool.” It’s pretty neat!

Mrs. Accountability takes the plunge, cutting off her (highly economical) waist-length tresses in favor of a cute new bob…and she worries about justifying the increased cost that results.

OMG! Maybe you have to need to have brought up your own brood to appreciate this, but this thing is freaking hilarious! Don’t miss the story of the parental shopping trip from He!! (or maybe heaven?) by Lindy at Minting Nickels.

Speaking of pretty funny, I’ll bet you didn’t think PF bloggers have a sense of humor, right? The Magic 8-Ball says “guess again.” Len Penzo compares what his not-so-crystal ball predicted about various PF bloggers deepest questions with what actually happened in 2010…and…well, the success rate is a bit unnerving.

Nine Growth Areas

Charity

Daniel at Sweating the Big Stuff gets a discussion going when he explains why we should donate to charity.

I didn’t know whether to file this all-too-familiar tale under “Charity,” “Family,” or “The Buying Culture,” but ultimately Craig Ford at Money Help for Christians comes to what (I think) is the right conclusion on the question of what to do with those bizarre gifts people love to give you for Christmas.

Communications

Boomer and Echo join the tide of consumers who are ditching the land line to rely solely on cell phones.

Debt and Lending

How crazy can wild tales of extreme student debt make the frugalist? Let us count the ways! FMF at Free Money Finance can’t stand it, and neither can many of his readers.

Over at Darwin’s Money, proprietor Dan is awed at the way some folks think about money and debt. Really, really awed…

Meanwhile, PT at PT Money delivers some advice about landing a good loan informed with his own experiences.

Family

Fifty-Plus Finance meditates on the value of grandparents for young families.

Flexo and his readers agonize about the new trend for young adults to move back in with their parents—not necessarily by choice.

Mike Ahi at After-Hours Investing decides to make a really significant investment: in experience. How and why he figures this will pay off.

The Buying Culture

Mad Kane is still at it! She won an Honorable Mention in a limerick contest with this Ode to Greed, inspiring a riposte from a reader.

Here at FaM, Funny scores almost $760 worth of brand-new clothing for $108.

Here’s a nice, if altogether too brief, story of a pretty and highly economical wedding at Budget-Wise Weddings—great idea, smart young couple.

David Leonhardt shares some Aesopian fables for the 21st century at the Self-Help Happiness Blog.

Work

“I’ll be getting back to you…” {gasp!} Joe Plemon at Christian Personal Finance tells the (briefly hair-raising) tale of how he wangled a nice raise from his boss, and then offers seven tips to make it work for you.

At Money Thinking, Money Thinker tells the story of a generation fighting its way through a depression in an excellent, if at first glance unprepossessing, story on temporary employment. It’s scary, but there’s hope.

SVB reflects on the tale of a small business owner who deliberately resorted to generating bad publicity to get visibility. “Just spell the name right,” eh?

Real Estate

Greg of Control Your Cash shares a horror story about some commercial tenants.

How’s your New Year’s hangover? Say what…you don’t have a headache? Well, if what Dividist reports at Divided We Stand and United We Fall is accurate, yes, yes: you certainly do!

The Big Picture

Check out this fascinating first post from new blogger kctan at Humor. Inspiration. Life. This guy can tell a story—and he’s got quite a few to tell!

At My Dollar Plan, Amanda Grossman reflects on the upshot of the bailouts…and it may not be what you think.

At Personal Finance by the book, Tim reflects on the capitalistic and not-so-capitalistic meanings of the parable of the vineyard workers.

Tell Me a Story…

Quite a few perfectly fine personal finance posts were submitted to the Carnival of Money Stories this week but didn’t make the cut because their authors apparently aren’t thinking about what a story is and how it differs from, say, a very fine list of tips or a how-to article or a piece of straight reporting. In many cases I really regretted  having to reject articles that were well written and informative, only because they don’t tell a story. A story is like an anecdote: it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It’s structured around a plot: an interesting lead, rising action, a high point, and a dénouement.

A lot of valuable information can be delivered in a story—take a look, for example, at Joe Plemon’s piece on extracting a decent raise from your boss: he provides a series of tips, but he couches them in the context of his own specific experience. He combines story-telling with advice. He gives us advice, but he adds something more to help make it meaningful and show how it applies in the real world. This was true of many other of this week’s contributions.

Images:

John William Waterhouse. The Crystal Ball. Public Domain.

English Ouija Board. Mijail0711. Public Domain.

Eva Kröcher (Eva K.). Crystal Ball. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license.

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• Best of Money Carnival