Moments of Fame

Doughroller kindly featured Funny’s squib on decluttering and recluttering at the top of this week’s Editor’s Picks for the 159th Festival of Frugality! That is very flattering, especially since the festival features quite a few excellent and entertaining posts. Saving Advice, for example, touches on one of my pet peeves: neighbors who jam their garages with junk and then leave the rolling stock parked on the driveway, in the front yard, and along the curb. At Value for Your Life, Amanda discusses her strategy for implementing her 25% Grocery Savings rule; before you read that post, definitely click on the first link in her post, where she describes the amazing result of her scheme. There’s a nice conversation going on at Cash Money Life that Patrick kicked off by explaining why he chose a PC over a MacBook. And speaking of decluttering & recluttering, if you’re of the female persuasion do check out Paula’s great commonsense steps to cleaning out and intelligently restocking your make-up stash.

The 92nd Carnival of Money Stories is up at Gather Little by Little—don’t miss the opening photograph! His favorite is a thoughtful story from Trisha at Empowering Mom, titled Are You Waiting for Your Ship to Come In?Funny’s rant about the dilution of pool testing chemicals appears among the money stories. At Free Money Finance, FMF realizes that one possibly ought not to be put off from buying online by an outrageous-sounding shipping bill. On a subject of interest to moi, Jeff Rose at Good Financial Cents shares a client’s experience with long-term care insurance. And at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity, Jim mounts my favorite hobbyhorse and takes a ride with The Total Cost of Owning a Dog.

Clever Dude hosts this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance with a highly original “fairy tale” narrative. Speaking of the cost of dog ownership, My Journey to Millions suggests making some provision in your will for the care of pets that survive you. To my mind it’s a little extreme to set up a trust in the name of your cat, but it might be a good idea to state specifically who is to take care of Fifi…and, uhm, to let that person know about it before you pass through the veil. Saving to Invest offers a very good guide for prospective apartment renters. Prime Time Money reminds us that it’s not too late to max out your contribution to your Roth IRA. Funny’s reflection on 2008’s best and worst personal finance strategies appears among this week’s CoPF selections.

This week’s Make It from Scratch Carnival appears at The Daily Dish. Once again, the food is to die for. If you love portobello mushrooms as much as I do, you’d better check out Simply Forties’s mouth-watering tomato broth with portobellos and spinach over gnocchi…good grief! By way of gilding the lily, she also explains how to make gnocchi. I went over to see Stephanie’s post on coffee liqueur, and by golly, what should come up but the very thing my mother used to make. It’s a lot cheaper than Kahlua and it tastes the same…or better! As a bonus, Stephanie also tells the story of how the MIfS Carnival came into being. Speaking of hoots and my mother (who crocheted like a wizard), My Recycled Bags is at it again, with a pattern for a great green shopping bag. I have got to relearn how to crochet! Funny’s contribution to this edition was the recipes for black-eyed peas and cornbread.

The Writer’s Coin hosts that blog’s very first carnival with this week’s Money Hacks Carnival, where Tina and I submitted our Copyeditor’s Desk post on setting freelance fees. At a blog I haven’t seen before, Pizza for a Dream presents a nice little fable for our times about a potato farmer and an apple farmer. Wealth Junkies discusses the pros and cons of short refinancing…nice trick if you can pull it off. And here’s something to look into, if you can afford to have a ton of money sitting in a bank: Mr. Banker reveals that some banks subscribe to a federal program that guarantees ALL your money in noninterest-bearing deposit transaction accounts. You learn something every day!