Carnivals & Festivals

Welcome to the Thanksgiving 2008 edition of the Carnival of Money Stories. Before we begin, I think we should pause to reflect on all the things we have to be thankful for, despite the darkening economic clouds and the tough times they seem to presage. Money, thanks be to God, isn’t everything. As we discover the stories our friends offer this week, let’s consider life’s little lagniappes with them.

First, thank goodness for story! Story is the basic way we humans speak the important truths we want to share with our children and our tribe. And folks, some people can really tell a tale!

*fwp
The Financial Wellness Project
The Beginnings of Debt (Or, How I Was Unable to Resist a Free T-shirt)
An old tale and a true one.

*J. Money
Budgets Are Sexy
What’s Up with Your Pictures, J? Did You Get Them? Tell Us?
Okay, okay, it’s NOT funny…but J’s strategy is pretty darned hilarious. The saga continues….

*Michael Bass
Debt Prison
Should You Cosign for a Friend for Family Member?
Would anyone like to lay a bet that the answer is “why, sure”?

*Jim
Blueprint for Financial Prosperity
How to Close an Account at Washington Mutual
Uh oh! There’s a wrong way to do this…

Let us give thanks that we’re not in this alone…

KCLau
KCLau’s Money Tips
Buy Term and Invest the Difference
The puzzle of whether to buy term or whole life insurance faces people in Malaysia, too. Ah, the glories of globalization!

Miss M
M Is for Money
I Feel Guilty When I Spend Money
Has Miss M trained herself too well for frugality?

Todd
Harvesting Dollars
Fundraising at Work
Todd faces a charitable conundrum.

Ryan Suenaga
Uncommon Cents
When Emergency Spending Becomes Overspending
Ryan continues to struggle (expensively!) with the attempted theft of his vehicle.

Brooke
Dollar Frugal
School Projects and Crafts
Feeling flamboozled about the constant flow of requests for school materials, Brooke seeks advice on where to find affordable stuff for the kiddies.

Nickel
Five-cent Nickel
The End of the 401(k) Match?
Based on a recent news report, Nickel imagines corporate life without matching 401(k) contributions.

The Happy Rock
Gas Prices: The Silver Lining of the Recession
Rock is grateful for cheaper fill-ups but wonders how much longer that will last.

Sun
The Sun’s Financial Diary
Citibank Closed My Dividend Platinum Select Card
What are the ramifications when a lender decides to close a dormant account?

…That hard work and persistence eventually do pay off…

FIRE Finance
Three Quick Steps to Get Out of Debt
In which we learn how the FF’s used “TCT” to dig themselves completely out of debt.

Mr. ToughMoneyLove
Year-End Retirement Funding? The Moment of Truth Approaches
Mr. T confronts questions of what (or whether) to do about his various investment vehicles.

…That fits of high dudgeon can be pretty entertaining, at least to others…

FMF
Free Money Finance
Memo to Self: Yes, I Really HATE Sears!
LOL! Another Don Quixote tilts at the consumer (dis)service windmill.

…That we are wily and clever and figure out how to get deals…

Green Panda
Green Panda Treehouse
How We Saved Money by Creating Our Own Cable, Phone, & Internet Bundle
Smart panda!

Aahz
Philaahzophy
Gas Prices Not Dropping Fast Enough? How about Free?
Our hero figures out how to score free or nearly free gasoline. Maybe.

Chief Family Officer
Works for Me: Duplicate Checks
You’ve heard that when baby is born, there’ll be some changes made? Yup.

Silicon Valley Blogger
The Digerati Life
Last-Minute Gift Ideas and Shopping Tips for Holiday Procrastinators
How SVB learned to put Christmas shopping off till the last minute…and what she does about it.

Mr. CC
Ask Mr. Credit Card
Turned Down for a Student Loan
This post uses a couple of brief reader’s stories as kick-off points for advice; also check out the interesting comment from reader Kayleigh, which will stand your hair on end.

PT
Prime Time Money
An Update on My ESPP Flip
How PT generates almost immediate cash from an employee stock purchase plan.

vh
Funny about Money
Costco and the Single Girl
A day in the life of a bulk shopper

…And that some things are more important than money!

The Smarter Wallet
Create Your Family Holiday Traditions and Save Money
Some strange (and funny!) commercial Christmasisms lead Wallet to build more meaningful Christmas traditions.

Next week’s Carnival of Money Stories will be hosted by Financial Wellness Project. Be sure to submit your stories to the Carnival before the December 1 deadline!

Best of wishes to everyone for a happy Thanksgiving. Or, if you’re reading this from outside the U.S., for many good things in your life to give you joy and thanks.

Wow! GREAT Carnival of Personal Finance this week! It (Carnival No. 180) just went online over at Living Almost Large, who also included Funny’s rumination about the patriotism (or not) of frugality. You have got to see the editor’s picks! It’s hard to be hilarious about a recession, but I laughed over Kevin’s witty 12 Days of Christmas During a Recession, at the Red Stapler Chronicles. After days of red-eye travel, Beyond Paycheck to Paycheck comes up with a nice metaphor for life in the indebted lane. How LAL managed to separate out just a few editor’s picks escapes me, because so many of the posts are really excellent. Check out Andrea’s theoretical journey at Fools and Sages, for example. This carnival is more than worth a visit.

Eco Joe reports getting hundreds of submissions for this week’s Festival of Frugality. More than the normal number of submissions also came in for the Carnival of Money Stories, which I just posted. Bloggers must be taking this week off work and spending some of the time working on their sites! At any rate, with that competition I was flattered to see my post on the boutiqueful of clothes my friend inherited from her shop-loving mom. Speaking of acquiring loot, want some free stuff? Check out Madison’s list of Black Friday freebies at My Dollar Plan. At Saving Advice, David wonders whether this is the year to get a fake Christmas tree. OMG! At Raising 4 Boys, good ole’ Dad has figured out how to get LEGO blocks on the cheap! Wish I’d known about that when M’hijito was little.

The Make It From Scratch Carnival has just gone up at Feels Like Home. Hmm…lookit this interesting idea for recycling one of Dad’s shirts or sweaters to make a cute dress for a li’l punkin. With the holidays coming in, you’re likely to have some house guests; here’s a clever, quick, and delicious-looking breakfast croissant casserole! Awesome idea. After you’ve eaten your Thanksgiving turkey (with Funny’s brown gravy recipe that was included in the carnival), go on over to Out of Debt Again and follow Mrs. Accountability’s recipe for making turkey stock—she throws in an extra for potato-zucchini soup, too. As Christmas comes up on us, here’s the secret to how to make scented bath salts. Who knew?

The 179th Carnival of Personal Finance is up at Money Ning, where Funny’s squib on speculators bidding up real estate appears. This is a very large round-up. Check out Cash Money Life’s advice on year-end retirement investing. The five recession-proof ways to get hired at Just Thrive may interest you, especially if you’ve just been laid off or are about to be. If rehiring isn’t in your future, though, My Wealth Builder has an interesting post on taking early retirement during the downturn.

At what I hope is the right site this time, Make It from Scratch has posted this week’s Make It from Scratch Carnival, where Funny’s discovery about olive oil as the skin care product from heaven gets a mention. In the “Wish I’d Though of That” department, FWP came up with an awesome idea for clothesline rope, described at Financial Wellness Project. If you’re into amazingly wonderful food, you’d better check out Mary’s recipe for wild mushroom strudel at Simply Forties. If that’s not enough to impress your Thanksgiving guests, follow it up with Mama Bear’s thick & chewy chocolate chip cookies at I’ve Got a Little Space to Fill…good grief! And if you enjoy photos of extremely cute kids and tales of what moms will do for them, check out ChristineMM’s great story at The Thinking Mother.

Financial Wellness Project hosts the 152nd Festival of Frugality, where the recession has come home to roost. Funny’s plans for living in poverty over the next 2½ years appear there. Credit Withdrawal reports that frugality has become fashionable, highly entertaining. John is Fit reveals four ways to get PR people to send you free stuff (fifth way is to get on the staff of a popular magazine!). The Shark Investor comments, as I did Monday 11/18, on the new trend to blame the deprecession on frugality. This festival has about a jillion really interesting posts—if I highlighted all the ones I’ve enjoyed I’d probably have to paste the whole post in here. Be sure to make a visit!

BTW, FWP announces a new blog carnival, the DIY Jubilee. This sounds like fun—check it out, and send in a submission; next deadline is Nov. 23.

The 85th Carnival of Money Stories is up at Ask Mr. Credit Card, with an entertainingly Snopesian theme of myth-&-reality—about money. In the Karma department, check out Smart Spending’s story about why she did what she did when a friend and a stranger were in financial trouble. Money Ning has a nice piece on how recycling & reusing has helped his financial life. And Budgets Are Sexy wonders what the actual bill for Mrs. Budget’s emergency gall bladder surgery will be.

Hallowe’en comes to the Festival of Frugality at Living Well on Less, where some very weird characters appear at the Monster Mash. Funny’s report on the fall garden (you have to live in Zones 9 or 10 to appreciate it) appears in this round-up. For those of you who live in more normal climates, check out Frugal Pursuit’s tips for how to prepare your garden for autumn and winter. Check out the amazing photo and Money Ning’s self-questioning about the wisdom of buying certain products in bulk. Saving Advice has an interesting post on the “freegan” lifestyle which has elicited some even more interesting comments.

Hot diggety! If you blog, check out Financial Wellness Project, where FWP uses a heuristic theme for the 82nd Carnival of Money Stories that generates about a jillion new ideas for posts: he asks a series of questions related to his plan to move to full-time freelancing. Along the way, he fills the carnival with a treasure chest of very interesting pieces, among which he has kindly included one of Funny’s several rants about the Qwest misadventure. In FWP’s editor’s pick, Mr. Credit Card’s Mrs. describes what happened in the couple’s lives after they declared bankruptcy. The story is at once inspiring and cautionary, and shows that the bankruptcy laws should never have been changed to cut off this avenue for ordinary people trapped in credit-card debt to turn their finances around. The Financial Blogger tells a funny job interview story, one that will especially entertain anyone who’s ever had to screen job candidates. For those of us who are blowing around on the winds of layoff rumors, Retired at 47 has some encouraging words…his story makes me think I may be able to pull off unemployment without too much agony.

The current Carnival of Personal Finance is up at Master Your Card.

The 175th Carnival of Personal Finance is up at J. Money’sBudgets Are Sexy, featuring a humor theme to perk us up in these otherwise humorless times. One of Funny’s moans about the mess across the street appears in this edition. Quite a few interesting posts appear this week. About investing, I especially enjoyed Patrick’s explanation, at Cash Money Life, of the difference between dollar cost averaging and value averaging. If J. Money’s jokes don’t cheer you, try Jim’s great stress-relief sites, including alink to the ultimate LOLCATs site, at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity. Cindy S at Oh My Aching Debts brings a light-hearted approach to budgeting with a personal finance game. And Be This Way discusses the wisdom of returning sub-par products to retailers.

Funny’s photo essay about Dave’s Used Car Lot, Marina, and Weed Arboretum appears in the 81st Carnival of Money Stories, at Socal Savvy. Check out Wandering Tax Pro’s attempt to educate politicians on the meaning of various tax terms that are being thrown around during the current campaign—maybe unintentionally, this description of a ludicrously complicated and patently unfair set of Byzantine laws explains why American voters blithely elected a pack of morons and craven opportunists on the promise of less or no taxation. Personal Finance Analyst offers several tongue-in-cheek strategies for getting some use out of your redundant SUV. DebtPrison’s angry story reveals that Firestone is still up to the tricks I knew many a year ago.

At Mighty Bargain Hunter, this week’s Festival of Frugality just went online. Stop the Ride describes her strategy for living on an income that grows more flush during a busy season. FruGal makes great fun (!) of the current trendiness of “frugality” (as it were). Meanwhile, CheapHealthyGood tries to eat on $25 a week. The eye-opening result is something to see… Oh heck. We’ll all love living on unemployment and Social Security, eh? For those of us who aren’t lining up at the soup kitchen, Organic Eating offers a few ideas for how to get your hands on bargain organic foods. In describing JetBlue’s seven-buck fee for a pillow, Personal Finance Analyst puts in a nutshell all the reasons I’ve quit flying. And while Funny’s jeremiad against the proliferation of expensive gadgets appears in this festival, Fiscal Zen offers 16 freebies for the Mac.

So it goes.

Greener Pastures hosts a huge 174th Carnival of Personal Finance and kindly includes Funny’s hand-wringing rumination on how to prepare for the alleged coming layoff (about which we should hear today, BTW, assuming there is any such thing). Neat Columbus Day theme with nifty illustrations! This week’s carnival contains so many wonderful posts, it’s hard to figure out which to point to. Five-Cent Nickel begins a lively conversation on the long-term effects of steady investing and how (or whether) it works to recover from a downturn. Harvesting Dollars has a rumination on whether (and how much) to fund a kid’s college education. Andy at Saving to Invest posts an eye-opener about what it costs to fire an employee in various countries—and how cheap it is to do so in the US. On one of my fave topics, consumer psychology, check out Julie Sherrier’s interesting post at Taking Charge on the rationale behind minimum payments. Be sure to visit the carnival to enjoy the many, many other excellent posts.

At Stop the Ride, Stephanie has posted the Make It from Scratch Carnival with a lovely fall colors theme. Ah, to live in a place where they have actual seasons! Funny’s recipe for white bean salad appears this week. Those who live in cooler climes should check out One Krusty Mama’s hearty and delicious smokey shepherd pie, which sounds like true autumn fare.

Whoa!and hold the phone! While you’re exploring Make It from Scratch, check this out! I’ve only watched one of these videos but will be back to see more, for sure: it’s a grand old grandmother who SHOWS you how to make Depression-era food and, in the bargain, tells you stories of what life was like back then, how people got by, and how to save on literally everything. This link appears at Y2K Hippie’s site, which surfaces at MIfS. What a hoot!

Back at MIfS, Heather explains how to make colorful ball and cup toys—great stocking-stuffers for next Christmas. If you haven’t managed to get that far ahead of yourself but are still decorating for Hallowe’en, Squawkfox has posted a set of very classy pumpkin-carving stencilsand Mary at Simply Forties provides recipes for cooking up the pumpkin meat.

At Out of Debt Again, Funny’s rumination on “dumb tax” appears in the 80th Carnival of Money Stories. Iowa Hippie Chick learns some bad news about one of her dogs and agonizes about how to deal with it. Todd at Harvesting Dollars reminisces about the four (!) layoffs he’s been through during his working life. At The Happy Rock a family exchange is going on that reminds me of myself and M’hijito… Free Money Finance has got his readers continuing the discussion about the saga of the neighborhood foreclosures. And Finance Girl posts a funny story about trying to save on a haircut at Finance Gets Personal.