Weekly Linkfest

If you have a moment, send Tricia some love as she’s going through a difficult time.

Now, onto personal finance stuff…

Nickel does a good job analyzing a mortgage refinancing offer. It’s a great post that you should read if you’re considering refinancing because often times people don’t look at the total cost to you, just the drop in monthly payment. By calculating the full cost, he saw that it wasn’t a good deal because of how the clock would reset (back to thirty years). On a slightly different note but still related to housing, Flexo discovered a tool that will help you figure out if you’re overpaying for rent. If I was renting, this tool would be crucial in the decision making process, overpaying on anything, especially high dollar things like rent, always bothers me.

FMF’s March Madness is still going on and it’s down to the Final Four, so get your vote on! Also, check out MBH’s dollar coin allowance - MBH’s been on a serious dollar coin kick lately.

On the consumerism front, JLP went to Sears lately and saw that they were fudging with their stats. If you’ve ever read Freakonomics, you probably aren’t surprised by this especially if there are incentives for coming in under time.

If you can get past the crassness, I think Jeremy’s article on burying for under $1000 is worth reading. Not knowing anything about this sort of thing, thankfully, it’s good to read it before you go through it - it’s a little less stressful now.

While not directly applicable to me, some of you may find this children’s allowance strategy insight helpful at Raising4Boys.

Lastly, SVB asks an interesting question: how much credit have you turned down? The estimate is half a million but considering how I get every single day in the mail and how I shred all of those offers, I wouldn’t surprised if it was considerably more. That’s not saying much because getting offered $5,000 credit lines a hundred times is different than getting one half a million dollar line but it’s still an interesting thought.