Here’s an interesting article about some cashless technologies in use today in the land up North. It’s brief and features a lot of cellphone payment related technologies, such as feeding the parking meters, but it’s worth taking a peek at. I think payment via cell phones is probably a risky endeavor, as people likely lose cell phones more frequently than they do credit cards (I make that claim based on no actual evidence), but the Canadians know what they’re doing when it comes to payment technology I suppose (again, a baseless claim).

The latest Kiyosaki column on Yahoo Finance is about how mutual funds are a bad deal because the fees are just downright nasty. The bulk of the article is an excerpt from an interview with John Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group, on Frontline where he reveals that mutual funds are a raw deal. Usually when I read a Kiyosaki piece (or any “expert advice”), I’m looking to rip it to shreds because that’s the way you should approach all “expert advice” until you have enough personal trust in that writer to take the quotes off. In this case, Kiyosaki is spot on, traditional mutual funds are a rip-off and Bogle gives him good ammunition as to why.

Essentially, if you get an 8% return for 65 years and put in a mere $1,000 at the start, it will be worth $140,000 at the end. Now take away 2.5%, typical management fee for a mutual fund, every year and you go from $140,000 at the end of the year to a mere $30,000 - somewhere in that mathematical chicanery 80% of the difference is lost to the financial system. Skip to the end if you want to find out where it went. So you put up 100% of the capital, assumed 100% of the risk, and earned a little over 21% of the potential return.

(read full article…)

The Festival of Frugality is up at Free Money Finance. Find frugality at its finest! (I get carried away with alliteration)

So you just graduated and your new employer has given you a much coveted signing bonus - what are you going to do with it? If you’re a recent college graduate, any signing bonus feels like a windfall that you don’t deserve and you’re not going to think twice about spending it (I spent part of my signing bonus on junk, not enough to regret it but enough to realize I wasted some of it)… but resist the urge! You’re going to want to buy pitchers of Newcastle instead of Pabst Blue Ribbon on Thursdays - resist the urge! Don’t be a stingy bastard though, enjoy the money but here are some things that you might need to spend it on before that first paycheck comes in.

A New Place:
The first major expense of your new life will be a security deposit. Chances are you’ll be renting so you’ll want to research how much of a security deposit landlords are going to want. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and it’ll be a few hundred dollars, sometimes you’ll not be so lucky and it’ll be a month’s rent. Either way, you’ll be paying this before you start work so your signing bonus will have to soften this blow.
(read full article…)

Have you ever tried, at the end of an internship for example, to recall everything you did on a particular job? It’s difficult to muster up the words to describe every thing of note that you accomplished and even harder to fit all that stuff onto a single page. Now imagine if you’ve been working at the same company for twenty years and were suddenly laid off, with only a pink slip and your 20 year old resume in hand. Now try remembering what you did 20 years ago, or 10, or five… it’s damned impossible. That’s why you should update your resume every three months no matter what. You could be in your dream job working as the right hand man/woman to the CEO of your company right now, it doesn’t matter, update your resume every three months. You could’ve won the lottery and sitting on your ass drinking mohitos in the Caribbean, it doesn’t matter, update your resume every three months. There are a lot of reasons, here are a handful:

1. Your memory now of now is better than your memory of now in a month. No matter how good your memory is, what you remember now will surely trump what you will be able to recall one, two, or ten years later. You never know when you’ll need to pull out the resume so it’s always good to have it updated with the freshest information.

(read full article…)

A living will, also known as a healthcare directive or a directive to physicians (both of which are better descriptors of what it is), is a document that expresses what you want in terms of medical treatment in the event in a permanent vegetative state or terminally ill and unable to communicate your preferences. Unlike a “regular” will, this has nothing to do with dividing up your grand estate in the event of your passing (I thought it was related, but it’s not).

(read full article…)

The forty-first Carnival of Debt Reduction hosted by yours truly weighs in this week with eleven articles from several well known bloggers and some you might not recognize. Without much fanfare, here are this week’s pieces:

• Free Money Finance takes a look at an article on MSNBC about debt in Debt in America: What’s the True Cause?.
• LAMoneyGuy of Its Just Money writes about The Monthly Mentality - how consumers now are concerned only about how much something costs per month.
• Harrison Loke at Journey To Financial Freedom presents Something about Student Loan.
• Tricia of Blogging Away Debt has some Tips for Using Prosper for Debt Consolidation.
• Financial Reflections presents Last Chance for Student Loan Consolidation?
• Victor Fam at Towards Better Life presents Do You Really Need to Buy A New Car?.
• Debt Free writes about some Common Mistakes in Becoming Debt Free.
• King of Debt writes about Day 58: Simplify Your Bills.
• Pete at My Financial Awareness presents Imagine if you won $200 Million.
• Amy Allen Clark at The MotherLoad presents Online Grocery Shopping Options.
• Aridni writes about How to save money without being a mooch.