Weekly Roundup - Ghent Bar Tour Weekend

This weekend me and five or six of my friends will be heading down to Norfolk, VA to participate in the Ghent Bar Tour in support of the Make A Wish Foundation. I wanted to give a special thank you to FMF, NCN, and Mapgirl for their generous donations (especially FMF) to the cause and anyone else who donated but didn’t email me. While the response to the FMF and my offer to match dollar for dollar donations was less than spectacular, we both decided to send our full amounts in anyway. Anyway, it should be a great time, I look forward to seeing the event for the first time (if you can make it, let me know!), and I hope you all have a great weekend.

• JLP asked if employers should reduce 401(k) options.
• MBH is going through something most eBay sellers go through, the fear of losing a perfect feedback score. So, MBH thought about it and asks how far you’d go to keep a perfect feedback score.
• Flexo asked if Wal-Mart back to school sales are newsworthy.
• FMF discusses the idea of blending index funds to improve your returns.
• Nickel analyzes his net worth figures and starts to account for his home equity.
• Lazy Man has started looking at 529 plans. Thinking about paying for college can give anyone shudders.
• Jeremy asked if it’s better to buy a stock before or after it splits. From a theoretical standpoint, it shouldn’t matter but maybe it does!
• Ben wonders if minimum wage is too low. Personally I think the market should dictate wages, the government has enough to worry about. This may be a departure from my earlier thinking though and I reserve the right to change my opinion at any time.
• SVB looks at the science behind spending in quite possibly the longest url ever.
• Sun looks at the tradeoffs with paying off debt vs. investing.
• Golbguru has published his fifth tip on buying a car.
• Be wary of retirement investing scams, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
• I started another blog about foreclosures, in the event some associates and I decide to start some real estate investing, so one of the topics I reviewed was the difference between deeds of trust and mortgages.
• Beyond getting a security system, there are some smart tips to keeping your home safe.