I can’t believe it’s September already. I woke up today with that feeling of fall in the air, which is really nice. While I learned long ago to never wish life away by wanting a future day hurry up and come, I can’t say that I don’t look forward to the cooler weather and lower electric bills (till winter comes when we have to decide whether we should get our heater fixed or try to go without and save about $1,000 dollars in propane gas bills over the winter.)

Fall also means that Halloween is just around the corner and we’re [hopefully] going to get super busy in our pet clothing and costuming business. I’m sure you’ve noticed that I still haven’t been able to start posting more frequently and we’re still averaging 3 times a week. This is because I am working hard to get our new Franga Designs store up and running as soon as possible for the Halloween sales season. But enough about me and our other sites, lets get on with news about Our Fourpence Worth.

Our Fourpence Worth News

6-Month Anniversary!

First of all, Our Fourpence Worth passed our 6-month anniversary at the end of August. We’ve had 26,879 unique visitors in these 6 months and received a Google page rank of 4, which I am quite happy about. Thank you to all our readers who have been with us since the beginning and joined us along the way. We appreciate each of you and your comments and feedback.

9rules

Next, I am pleased to announce that Our Fourpence Worth has just been accepted today to the 9rules community. For those of you who don’t know what 9rules is, here is an excerpt from their about page:

9rules is a place where members and readers can connect, build relationships, and learn new things. 9rules started in 2003 with a set of 9 rules:

1. Love what you do.
2. Never stop learning.
3. Form works with function.
4. Simple is beautiful.
5. Work hard, play hard.
6. You get what you pay for.
7. When you talk, we listen.
8. Must constantly improve.
9. Respect your inspiration.

This is very exciting for us and we would like to thank Scrivs, Tyme and Mike (The Triad) at 9rules for accepting us. We hope to be able to both contribute and learn from being a part of the 9rules community.

Now on with our roundup for this month.

Personal Finance Roundup and Blog Carnivals

PF Bloggers

• Get Rich or Die Trying opines that Parents Who Don’t Fund The Kids’ College Are Selfish.
• No Debt Plan shares A Six Step Guide to Asking for Fee Forgiveness from his recent experience in making and correcting a simple error in his credit card payment.
• Living Almost Large asks Why Aren’t We Honest when it comes to talking about our finances?
• Wide Open Wallet shares an interesting way of life in A New Car Every Year.
• Master Your Card tells How to use the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act to Your Advantage.

Elsewhere in the Personal Finance Blogosphere

• My Dollar Plan gives students (and parents) a heads up on 10 College Money Myths.
• Saving Advice gives us 10 Things Money Can’t Buy.
• Blueprint for Financial Prosperity warns of The 7 Deadly Sins of Personal Finance.

Festival of Frugality

The 141st Festival of Frugality was hosted by Kelly at Almost Frugal. We would like to thank her for including our Fast and Frugal Recipe: Mediterranean Pizza Toast in this week’s edition. Kelly is an American living in France, so she chose to share some fun frugal French vocabulary in this edition. Ever wondered how to say “miser” in French? Well, head on over to Festival of Frugality No. 141 and find out! Allons-y!

Well, this wraps this month’s very long roundup. I hadn’t planned on it being this long, but I hope you enjoy the links.

Happy 5th of July, everyone! I hope you had a nice 4th. We just relaxed at home and ate yummy food (pizza with garlic, olives & feta cheese and Taiwanese style fried chicken, the recipe of which I plan to post here some time soon) and watched the Lost Episodes of the Lucy Show on DVD with our cousin who has never seen the show before. (Mr. Mooney is my favorite.)

It’s been a somewhat hectic and busy month what with 100+ degree weather just about everyday since the beginning of June, car trouble and my messed up sleep schedule. I know my posting has been rather irregular, and I apologize to my regular readers. Our cousins’ 3-month visit is winding to an end - she’ll be leaving on Tuesday July 7th - so we’ll be trying to spend as much time together as possible in the next few days. After that I hope to be able to get back to posting a little more regularly.

That said, the past month has gone quite well for Our Fourpence Worth. Our Money Management Monopoly Game Expansion series has met with pretty good reception in the financial blogosphere, 2 of them having been chosen as Editor’s Picks in recent blog carnivals and quite a few mentions at other blogs. This also means we’ve had to do a lot of test-playing of our expansions, which hasn’t exactly been torturous labor.

I’m also really excited to be slated to host the Festival of Frugality on August 19, 2008 and the Money Hacks Carnival on August 20, 2008. We’ve also received the honor of being included in the Personal Finance category at alltop.com.

OK, now on to our round-up for this month.

PF Bloggers

First of all, I would like to announce that the PF Bloggers network is starting a monthly group writing project wherein each member of our network will be writing about a pre-selected topic on the 15th of each month. Our first topic will be our personal/family financial history and basically what influenced or inspired us to live frugally and/or aspire to financial freedom.

• No Debt Plan gives us 2 reasons we should care about his toothpaste savings.
• Master Your Card posted some amusing things children said about credit cards.
• Future Millionaire shares her reasons for tipping generously.
• Wide Open Wallet tells us why she likes high gas prices.
• Pinching Copper contemplates whether a Costco or Sam’s Club membership is worth the money.

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