Before Class Round-Up

I've been catching up on my blog roll and there have been so many gems in the past week! Here's a few of my favorites:

Madame X features a post citing a study regarding how women are less likely to get hired after a certain age. It goes into plastic surgery and remaining 'hip'. Erg. Society.

Think your family's finances are hard to manage? Try having a 'throuple' household which involves a three-person long-term relationship. I'm very open to the idea of relationships involving multiple people, but have never thought about the consequences or details. Thanks to Nina over at QueerCents for this.

Over at The Digerati Life there is a great post up featuring "12 Effective Ways To Afford Big Ticket Items". Lots of little reminders on how you can manage to purchase those expensive, yet necessary, items in life.

Another set of 12 tips are featured over at The Simple Dollar. These show how you can find time (and money) to get things done on a daily basis. Number 7 and 12 are my favorites.

Run over to Well-Heeled and tell her what your food budget is!

Give Me Back My Five Bucks is an excellent example of how an emergency fund saved her during a time when she was unemployed. Please don't look at the current status of my EF. Ugh.

I have eight minutes to run to class! Off I go!

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.

Good Morning, Sunshine.

This happens to be one of my favorite phrases. Of course, the fact that it is still dark out happens to disturb me. Ugh. I hate waking up impossibly early in the morning. That said, here's a set of my favorite articles this morning.

Over at My Open Wallet there's a lovely discussion going on regarding the difference between being frugal and plain out cheap. Make sure to check out the comments sections. People's stories cracked me up.

The Simple Dollar has an amazing guide to writing a killer resume. I particularly thought Step 4 was helpful.

Chief Family Officer shares with us her personal ways on saving money. One, three and seven are the most important in my opinion.

While I already have half my Christmas gifts bought, those of you who don't might want to look into Kicking Off A Stress-Free Holiday over at Grad Money Matters. It's a great guide for getting started with the season. I might write up my own Christmas guide seeing as I actually implemented a plan this year. Oh, and check out the links included in the article. They are really helpful for getting great deals.