Evil Virus and Review of Carnival of Personal Finance.

I started typing this three hours ago and was viciously attacked by a virus from hell. While innocently meandering through the Carnival of Personal Finance posts, I was brutally assaulted with pop-ups when I hopped on to a certain blogger's site. I don't know how it happened, but a file was downloaded to my Windows file as System32. It's actually a horrid virus that is causing never-ending pop-ups to appear on my laptop... even when I'm not on the internet! I couldn't even finish the post because the pop-ups regenerate at a few per minute. Furthermore, I can't delete the file!!! I tried Spyware and Ad-Ware to no avail. Anyone have any suggestions on how to conquer this demon?

On to my review of the Carnival of Personal Finance...



I'm a total and complete Scrabble-freak. No surprise then that I enjoyed Scrabble & Personal Finance: 8 Lessons From Tiles by Blueprint for Financial Prosperity.

Speed Interviewing as presented by The Baglady is an interesting technique that I have never heard of before. I'd imagine it to be quite the adrenaline rush. I wonder how often this gets put into use?

I'm a big proponent of Fair Trade (although there are some faults, but I'll save that for another post). If you don't understand what the concept is, or why it is so important, head over to Money and Values and read the post Go Bananas for Fair Trade. I happen to love my Fair Trade jewelry and coffee.

Outside the Carnival realm...

I utterly adored Cheap Healthy Good's post on reasons Rachael Ray is not the devil incarnate (okay, not completely) despite her annoyingly cheerful demeanor.

GildedButterfly scored big with the find she made... on the street! I was blown away by her Street Shopping post. Not really acceptable out here in the Los Angeles region.

I am utterly horrible with organizing receipts. They end up in a pile in my backpack, on my dresser and crumpled in pockets. Queercents featured an awesome article Financially Organized: Receipts that had some useful tips.

For those of you not skilled in the art of saving, The Digerati Life has a list of 15 Painless Ways To Pay Yourself First.

Last but not least, for those dreamers out there (me included!), Clever Dude's post on what he would do if he won the lottery. I love how he breaks down into what he would do with certain cash values.