Hey everyone, sorry for the recent inconsistent posting. The past month as been really busy for me what with having a house guest (a cousin visiting us from Taiwan for 3 months), a trip to Disneyland (with 2 feisty dogs) the week before last and a trip to Las Vegas last week (with one feisty dog), but I am back and ready to get back to some serious blogging and carnival submissions.

Anyways, here are some great posts by fellow financial bloggers from recent weeks:

PF Bloggers

• Living Almost Large gives us an amusing list of ways in which people justify purchases.
• Seb at Pinching Copper gives his opinion that the penny is worthless. Would you pick up a penny from the sidewalk?
• Kevin from No Debt Plan achieved his goal of going the entire month of May without the air conditioner. Good for you guys!
• Jonathan at Master Your Card gives us 7 Zany Ways to Stop Overspending.
• Ginger from Girls Just Wanna Have Funds gave us Things That Piss Me Off: Food stamp recipients pinched by high food prices that has stirred up a bit of controversy.
• And for a bit of fun, check out Future Millionaire’s (Start of Work Week) Money Funny - Cost of Pop Culture Icons Today about the Brady Bunch, which I am only a little embarrassed to admit was one of my favorite shows at one time.

Elesewhere in the Financial Blogosphere

• I really appreciated Get Rich Slowly’s Closing the Gap Between Dreams and Reality. It has inspired me to get proactive about my financial goals.
• Find out how No Credit Needed will save/make $20,000 by giving up his soda habit!
• Something that goes nicely in hand with my recent Vacation Preparation Checklist is a post from Gather Little By Little about Low Cost Summer Family Vacation ideas with money saving tips.
• Frugal Dad gives a nice Used Car Buying Guide for Teenagers for parents, but it has some useful tips for us grown-ups too.
• We’ve recently begun thinking about starting some investments, so I was really glad to come across The Simple Dollar’s warning about how The Methods You Use to Deal with Ordinary Life Will Fail You As an Investor.
• I was amused by Spam Sales on the Rise, Common Sense at an All-Time Low. I thought it was funny because I recently bought a can of Spam, not as a substitute for real, nutritious food (well, OK it did end up substituting for real food for a couple of meals), but for my cousin to try because they don’t have Spam in Taiwan. It was probably the first can of Spam I have ever purchased. (I grew up in Hawaii where they have something called a “Spam Musubi” which is a slice of pan-fried spam layered over a block of rice and all wrapped in seaweed. YUMMY!)

New Carnival in Town

Oh, and one last bit of news. Jonathan from Master Your Card has started a new blog carnival called the Finance Fiesta which runs weekly on Thursday starting June 5, 2008. If you have a personal finance related blog, be sure to submit your best article!

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Merriam-Webster defines the word “vacation” as “a respite or a time of respite from something”. Well, if that “something” from which one is taking a respite is “peace and quiet” then I would have to agree with the definer. Otherwise, gathering from my 2 recent “vacations” (one to Disneyland, one [working] vacation to Las Vegas from which I have just returned), vacation seems more like a respite from peace and quite to me.

Anyhow, I thought I would put together a pre-vacation checklist to help all you other poor vacationers prepare for your vacations, because if there is one thing I have learned, vacations are costly - and I am not just talking about transportation, lodging and amusements, but all the little everyday necessities - and the only way to travel frugally is to travel prepared. Also, the better prepared you are, the better the time you will have on your vacation; knowing that everything back home is taken care of and that you are prepared for most common travel mishaps will allow you to enjoy yourself to the utmost.

And yes, I am the extremest of Type A personalities, but admit it, sometimes it is handy to have someone who has the bases covered. You’ll certainly be glad to have one of us along when the unexpected happens because we’ve planned and prepared for it (or at least have given some thought to it beforehand so as not to be caught by surprise). This isn’t a list of what to pack (toothbrush, underwear, etc.) but rather more of a pre-departure to-do list to help prepare for your trip. I’m not saying you need to do everything suggested, but hopefully a few items will prove helpful or relevant to your circumstances.

Prevention is the best medicine

Just because you are on vacation, it doesn’t mean everyone else is. This goes for utility companies, burglars and your own plumbing and wiring. When you come home from vacation, you want to make sure you still have an intact home to come home to, and aren’t met with a mountain of additional expenses. Therefore before you leave, you might want to try some of the following:

(These checkboxes are check-able, so feel free to come back and use it.)

Home and Business

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Note: We are taking a short break from blogging this week and will be re-posting a few of our earlier articles that may not have been read by many of our current readers. If you have already read this article (and those few to come), we apologize for the repetition and assure you that we will have some new material for you soon. Thanks for reading!

Credits Cards Really Aren’t So Bad
(Re-Post: Original post date February 14, 2008)

In every online discussion I have seen about credit cards, there are always at least a few contributors whose only comments are “Credit cards are evil” or “No credit card is best”, etc. This post is mostly for those people.

For several years, we also believed that credit cards were bad, having been thus informed by our stepfather, a compulsive spender who is constantly in debt. But over the past few years, we have learned that credit cards are actually a good thing and provide many benefits and advantages:

• Building Credit History
  If you plan on buying a car or house in future, chances are that you will need a loan, and if you have no credit history, it can be difficult to get a good interest rate on a loan. Interest rates make a huge difference in the amount you end up paying or saving. Credit cards, if used responsibly, are a good and easy way to build a good credit history, which can ultimately save you thousands of dollars.

• Tracking spending
  Credit card statements provide an good way to track and analyze your spending habits. By charging all your purchases, you will have a printed statement of where every dollar has gone, a useful too for budgeting.

• Safer than carrying cash
  If you carry a lot of cash and lose your wallet, you can usually assume that money gone forever. If you mostly use your credit card and carry very little cash though, all you have to do is call the credit card company as soon as you discover the loss and you won’t be liable for any unauthorized charges to the card.

• Backup for emergencies
  Credit cards can be a backup source of funds for emergencies when you don’t have cash on hand. Though these should be true emergencies and not things like “fashion emergencies”.

And best of all, the reason we use our credit cards whenever and wherever we can:

• Credit cards can earn you money
  Credit cards can “make” you money in 2 ways:
  • There are many cards out there that earn you cash back or rewards. Some earn you as much as 5% cash back on grocery, drugstore and gas purchases. If you get a card with no annual fee (there are many out there), use it responsibly for regular purchases (not cash advances), and pay your balance in full every month, you can earn money without paying a cent to the credit card company. We have an American Express Blue Cash Credit Card that earned us over $300 cash back last year.
  • In addition to the cash back, credit cards also earn you money by allowing you keep your money in the bank longer. Depending on your billing cycle, you can charge your purchases and bills to a credit card and your money can sit in the bank earning interest for up to 6 more weeks. For example, our propane bill was due on January 30, 2008. Our credit card billing cycle ends on the 28th of each month. If we charge our bill to our credit card on the Jan. 30, 2008, it goes on the new billing cycle which ends on February 28, 2008, and the due date for that billing cycle is in mid-March 2008. So the money for that propane bill that was due and paid on Jan. 30, 2008 won’t actually leave our bank account until 6 weeks later. That’s 6 extra weeks of interest on money that would have left your account immediately had you paid by cash or check.

These are just a few basic reasons we use and approve of credit cards. However, if you know that you won’t be able to control your spending, then perhaps it is better to not go this route. If you need advice on applying for credit cards, visit your bank or credit union and someone can usually recommend a good card for you and help you with the application.

Continue reading for tips on choosing the right card and a few tips for safe and responsible credit card use.

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The other day I posted a comment about how my sister and I share an AMEX Cash Back credit card on Kevin’s post $327 in AMEX Cash Back Thus Far at No Debt Plan and he emailed me to ask out of curiosity why I share an account with my sister because it sounds so risky. What if one of us decided to go on a shopping spree and screwed things up for the other person?

I emailed him back explaining our logic, and while it may be unconventional, for us it is a convention we have practiced with success for many years. Ever since our high school days when our parents would give each of us pocket money for lunch, the bus, pay phones, etc. we have always regarded our money as literally “our money.” When one of us didn’t have any cash and wanted to buy a drink or snack at school, we would just ask the other person for some. And to the shock of many of our friends, we would just give each other the money. We never had a distinction of “my money” and “your money”.

Perhaps this had to do with our always having been somewhat unconventional people, even as kids. While our friends went to the mall, movies or shopping, we preferred to go to the library, karate class, or stay at home and read or play with our pets (we had dogs, cats, 20-30 rabbits, guinea pigs, birds, fish, mice, etc.). So for us, money was never really a means for pleasure but living - taking the bus home from school, buying lunch or an occasional snack or buying pet supplies. Because we didn’t habitually spend money, our parents didn’t put us on allowances and would just give us money when we needed it. (This could explain why we still live on a No-Budget System.)

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In recent months, the subject of “too many credit cards” has frequently arisen on blogs and forums. I have even seen a post title saying that closing a credit card will immediately boost your credit score by 10 points. I don’t know if this is true; a quick search on Google didn’t turn up any substantiating information.

I had always believed that if my accounts all showed up in “Excellent” standing on my credit report, that it would be a positive thing, and therefore kept old and unused accounts open. Now I am glad I haven’t acted hastily.

First of all, I currently have 4 credit cards (shared with my sister):

1. Old Navy Store Card
   Opened 2001, the earliest/oldest account on my credit history, never used
2. Bank of America Platinum Visa
   Opened 2004, unused since June 2006
3. American Express Blue Cash
   Opened 2006, primary card
4. Amazon Visa
   Opened 2008, used on Amazon.com where we do the bulk of our online shopping and wherever Amex isn’t accepted

I had seriously considered closing my Old Navy store card recently and also contemplated the Bank of America Visa, which I had been keeping around for emergencies. But, last night I happened on article at Bankrate.com “Closing credit card dings credit score” by Leslie McFadden, which tells us that there is actually no harm in keeping old and unused credit cards open, and that it could actually harm your future credit history to close them, and am really glad that I saw this article before I had done anything.

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A few days ago, I came across a thread on a forum where a member wrote about something dishonest she had done in order to save money. This individual was cleaning out her kitchen pantry and came across some jars of pasta sauce that she had gotten in a Buy One Get One Free sale some time ago and forgotten to use. She had exactly ½ the number of jars left as she originally came home with, so technically these could be regarded as the free jars she had gotten in the BOGO sale.

She saw that these jars of sauce were coming up on the expiration date (a week away) and since she didn’t have time to use them by the printed date and didn’t want them to “go to waste”, took them back to the store to return them. She told the cashier that she had lost the receipt and ended up receiving a $10.00 store credit for these items that she had gotten for free in the first place. She knew that what she had done was dishonest but said that she thought it had been worth it.

Now, I am all for frugality (which is defined as “prudence in avoiding waste,” see my post Frugality is a Virtue) and saving money, but there has to come a point where one draws a moral line and takes responsibility for one’s own mistakes. This person had herself neglected to use a product she had received for free and taken it back to the store under false pretenses and made a financial gain.

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