For this Festival I asked the question

At what age do you want/plan to be financially independent (IE you don’t have to work full-time if you don’t want to) and what is your plan to get there.

A couple people answered the question and I will highlight the responses here.

• John at Broke Now Rich Later wrote ” I want to be financially independent at 42. I’d like to have over $1mm saved in retirement funds, my house paid off and my kids’ college paid for. At that point, I no longer need life insurance and my income needs go way down. By 46 or so, I should only “need” an income of $30k or so. That leaves me wide open with options. More realistically, I might just stay in my career. By 55, I’d like to be able to retire and travel and be with grandkids. My goal for then is having $2000 a week in after tax income in 2007 dollars. That should fund just about anything I would want to do.”
• The Finance Journey wrote an entire article on the subject – “Ideally I would like to have enough money to sustain me without taking away from principal with reinvesting for inflation….I think I will probably be able to think about retiring around 52 which is 26 years from now. By this time with inflation i will need about $4 million dollars for this plan…I don’t really have any magical plans to make this happen. Currently I am contributing the maximum amount to my 401k and ROTH IRAs”
• Wanda at Well-Heeled wrote – I honestly don’t know how to define “financial independence.” And I can’t forsee myself leaving the workforce for extended periods of time, much less retire early, unless I win the lottery or something equally unlikely happens. But just to grab a figure that seems good to me, if I have $10 million (inflation-adjusted) by the time I’m in my 50s, I might become an independent consultant or work on non-profits.
• Mr. Credit card answered – I plan to be financially free when I am 40 (or early forties). That means having a passive income of at least $20,000 a month. I plan to achieve that through a few businesses that will generate income for me.
• I also wrote an article on this topic which can be found here. “Ideally I think I would like to retire in my early 40s. Now when I say “retire” I mean don’t necessarily have to chase the highest paying job and can do something that gives me the flexibility I want to really spend time with my family…….”
• Finally WenchyPoo had the best answer – “Answer to question: already financially independent.”

Thanks to everyone who answered the question and now onto the Festival

David Weliver wroteWhat I’ve Learned About Money posted at Money Under 30. - Eloquent but simple article that really fits spirit of the carnival.

Priya Jestin tells about the 10 Biggest Mistakes Made by Poor People That Will Keep Them Poor posted at 1031 Exchange Lowdown. – probably applicable to more than just “poor” people, but in my opinion he hit the nail on the head with many of them

ISPF explains Here’s Why I Like My Relatively-Frugal Lifestyle posted at Grad Money Matters. - in my opinion being frugal is more fun than spending on whatever you want. It’s also a great stress reliever and simplifies your life so that you can concentrate on what is really important to you.

Silicon Valley Blogger writes A Job Quitter’s Primer: 15 Ways To Resign posted at The Digerati Life. - probably something that many of us 20 year olds will have to do a couple of times. Great advice on how to do it properly.

And here are the rest of the articles

Wanda explains why I am NEVER paying back my student loans (early) posted at Wanda - Even though I don’t have as good of deal as Wanda I share her sentiment. My loans are locked in at about 2.5% and I am stretching out my repayment plan as long as they will let me. You’d be nuts to pay back money that is free or close to it.

The Frugalist writes Why Live Frugally? 15 Ways Frugality Makes You Happier, Healthier, and Sexier posted at Frugalist. - I love frugal articles

Ted Reimers presents 10 Tips on How to get a College Scholarship posted at CampusGrotto, saying, “Student Loans are a major cause of financial debt. Here are 10 tips to getting scholarships to fund your education.” - So often I think of under 30 as 20 year olds, but for you high schoolers this is a great list of tips on how to get additional scholarship money.

Sagar Satapathy wrote The Shopaholic’s Guide to Getting your Expenses under Control posted at Debt Consolidation Lowdown. - Kick that nasty habit and gain back control over your finances.

pfodyssey presents Pareto?s Principle (80/20 Rule) of Personal Finance posted at My Personal Finance Odyssey. - Great list of steps on how to get your financial life in order.

Mr Credit Card presents Roadmap of Career Paths and Financial Freedom (Ask Mr Credit Card’s Blog) posted at Ask Mr Credit Card’s Blog

Bryan C. Fleming presents Saving Money: $704.51 in 14 Weeks posted at Bryan C. Fleming.

Henry presents Lower Your Student Loan Interest With Automatic Payments posted at Binary Dollar!.

Pushpa Sathish presents 15 Financial Lessons from the Demise of Anna Nicole Smith (Yes, I’m Serious) posted at Credit Card Lowdown.

WBL presents Wealth Building Lessons » Blog Archive » How To Have An Extra $1000 In Monthly Retirement Income posted at Wealth Building Lessons.

Wanda Grindstaff presents Plant Your Flag and Claim Your Success posted at Creating Abundant Lifestyles Begin With Abundance Mindset

Wenchypoo presents Dollar Stretcher TNG–The Next Generation (L-O-N-G) posted at Wisdom From Wenchypoo’s Mental Wastebasket

Amy Pedersen presents Fair Isaac Corporation, What a Wacky Bunch of Statisticians Dedicated to Credit posted at Your Credit Score Secrets

FIRE Getters presents Automatic Enrollment In 401k Retirement Plan – A Revolution? posted at FIRE Finance.

David presents Becoming a Millionaire Investing $5,000 – Reality of Fantasy? posted at Worldwide Success.

John presents Morning Rant – Bad Bills and Worthless Change posted at Broke Now, Rich Later

Steve Faber presents - A few last minute tax deductions posted at DebtBlog.

Web Admin presents Mutual Funds: Newer is Sometimes Better posted at Stock-Net.com.

The next edition of the Festival of Under 30 Finances will be held May 4th at No Money In Poetry. You can start submitting your posts here.

Technorati tags:
festival of under 30 finances, blog carnival.

The Festival of Under 30 Finances is a little unique in that it runs every other week and it usually includes a question that the host asks, to which the submitters can take a stab at answering. My question for next week’s carnival is “At what age do you want/plan to be financially independent (IE you don’t have to work full-time if you don’t want to) and what is your plan to get there.”

If you are participating in the carnival you are asked to answer this question. Even if you aren’t participating in the carnival and want to answer the question please feel free to leave your answer in the comments and maybe if it’s good enough I will highlight it somewhere in the carnival. Suppose I should start working on my own answer for the question

Anyway if you want to participate in the carnival come up with a good article for those under 30 and submit it here. Otherwise if you just have a great answer for my question leave it in the comment or use my Contact form.

Here are some other articles from the carnival that I thought were especially good.

• The Joys of Frugal Living by Dawn at Frugal For Life – Great collection of why living frugal is more about living your life how you want and not how others think you should live. Frugal living is fun and if you haven’t been to Frugal for Life I highly recommend the site, it is the holy grail of Frugal living.
• Throwing a Birthday Party fit for a Princess on a Budget by Frugal Upstate – obviously Frugal Upstate doesn’t truly understand the “needs” of his little princess because according to Yahoo he should have blown $1000 on princess’s birthday bash. This is a great example of how to raise kids and how not to raise kids. I would bet my 401k that the kids at Frugal Upstate’s party had just as much if not more fun than the kids at I’m raising a needy little brat’s party. What’s more important here is that it just shows that 6 year olds don’t need or even want big fancy expensive things to be happy, it’s the parents who set the expectation and the parameters of what they “think” they need to be happy. This a perfect contrasting example of how a truly rich person throws a party versus how someone with a high income throws a party.

Here are my initial top picks from the carnival.

• The Finance Buff talks about Who pays for credit card rewards and rebates – Very interesting article seeing as how I just was complaining about losing some of my rewards privileges. Nothing surprising but more comprehensive than I would have originally thought. I would have just pinned it mainly on people who don’t pay off their bill each month. Unfortunately the rewards card perks are drying up pretty fast as of late. Not exactly sure why, but my guess is because the banks are trying to prepare for fallout in profit from the poor lending decisions the last decade or so with mortgages, so perks like rewards cards are being scaled back to help build up a buffer.

Ahh heck – There aren’t as many articles as normal (maybe because AccumulatingMoney did a great job of weeding out the chaff), but honestly In the first 10 articles I probably ran across 7 that get my approval and see a bunch more that look very enticing, so sorry for this week your homework assignment is to read the entire carnival. Tons of good stuff.

The Carnival of Personal Finance #92 was hosted at LazyManAndMoney this week. My article on million dollar kids – give me a break!
made the Honorable Mentions Category right below the Editors choice. As usual many good articles.  Below are some of my favorites

• Consumerism Commentary’s The true cost of owning a home (I agree and have written a similar article)
• FIRE Finance’s – why market timing doesn’t work (day traders are fools.  Might as well be buying scratch offs)

The Festival of Frugality #66 was hosted today at The Frugal Duchess.  My now famous article on the Frugal cure for a sore throat is found at the very bottom (must have saved the best for last).  Here are some articles that caught my eye.

• Stop the Ride!’s A Frugal Balance (frugality is a fine line and I think she has the right attitude. Frugality is all about spending your money on what is important to you)
• MoneySmartLife’s 10 Ways College Students can Save Money on Spring Break (Ahh spring break, the memories, but yeah if you are smart spring break can be dirt cheap and a blast)

Finally somehow through some stroke of luck, one my articles(The True Cost of Owning a Home) made it to the Elite 8 over at FreeMoneyFinance’s March Madness and looks like it is on it’s way to the Final Four.

As usual a ton of articles were submitted. Here are a few that I enjoyed

• My Money Blog’s review of Prosper (Took a very good objective look of Prosper – turns out it’s not all sunshine,roses, and 10%+ returns)
• Broke Now Rich Later’s Taxation Diversification posts – (I have often talked about this and I’m afraid I’ve just got too much put away in retirement accounts that will prevent me from retiring before age 59.5 (although I do have access to all principal deposits I put into Roth IRA accounts). One point I would make about this article is that if you have a good mix of Traditional and Roth accounts you an manage your taxes by taking as much as possible out of the traditional account until you get to a certain tax bracket and then topping it off with tax free Roth money).
• The “Get Rich Quick Fallacy” over at Stubborn Capitalist (I think he hits the nail on the head, the programs aren’t necessarily scams, but if you want to be successful it is going to require lots of time and hard work. It’s not easy and something you can do in your spare time like they promote. I have had friends and family members do pretty well with some of the MLM programs, but it was essentially a full-time job outside of their full-time job and even then they decide the work involved wasn’t worth it after a while.)
• Poorer Than You’s The Road to Millions Starts at Age 16 - (Even though I knew the importance of compounding well before 16 I never followed through and didn’t start saving for retirement until I was 24 – what a complete waste that was and how incredibly harder it will be for me to get where I want to be because I waited so long to start saving for retirement).

In my first game in round 2 Reasons why you should not save for retirement barely eeked out a victory by 2 votes over The Digerati Life’s   Walking In A Winter Wonderland for $1,300

It’s not official, but I think my post Get Rich!! Play the Lottery!! Somebody has to win edged out Blueprint for Financial Prosperity’s 25 Steps To A Wildly Successful Personal Finance Blog by 1 vote.  I honestly thought going into the tournament that 25 Steps had a good shot of winning the whole tournament so if I did indeed pull out the upset is a big surprise for me.

In my other games The True Cost of Owning a Home  tied Might Bargain Hunter’s Sixteen ways being disorganized costs you money. The winner was decided by a coin flip and we won’t find out till Round 3 who won.

Finally My Financial Journey’s Pimp Ride lost out to Punny Money’s Ten Ways Anyone Can Go to College With Zero Student Loans by 1 vote. 

If that doesn’t quench your March Madness thirst, MoneyBlogSite is hosting his own March Madness tournament of which MyFinancialJourney is participating in.  This tournament pits the top 64 personal finance bloggers against each other.  Unlike FreeMoneyFinance’s version, MyBlogSite just lets in 1 article per blog.  I selected Reasons why you should not save for retirement and am squaring off against Binary Dollar in Region 4, so please go vote for the blogs you think are the best.

Anyway if you are even lazier here are a couple that I thought were really good.

• FiveCentNickel presents How to Profit from 0% Balance Transfer Credit Card Offers.
• Wisebread has a great post for job survival. How to survive (and thrive!) in a job you hate.
• Make Your Nut presents Dispelling Popular Myths about Credit Scoring, Volume 1
• Get Rich Slowly presents Cheap Alternatives to Cable TV.
• Grad Money Matters presents An Interview with Trent (The Simple Dollar), Jim (Blueprint for Financial Prosperity) and J. D. (Get Rich Slowly)

My article about How to go about frugal landscaping – Part II is up toward the top.

Some of the other articles that I really enjoyed are

• Buying on Sales Does Not Save you Money! over at My Two Dollars. Amen! It drives me nuts when I hear people say how much they “saved” because the bought a bunch of stuff on sale.
• 25 Realistic Ways to Spend Less and Save Money in College – Note it’s really only 24 ways (Don’t drink alcohol is one of them, better luck convincing a wolf to go vegan)

In the 2nd round I believe Reasons why you should not save for retirement won a close battle with The Digerati Life’s Walking In A Winter Wonderland for $1,300.

Then Get Rich!! Play the lottery!! Somebody has to win drew a tough 2nd round post in Blueprint for Financial Prosperity’s 25 Steps To A Wildly Successful Personal Finance Blog, but is currently pulling out the upset. I think jim’s (BluePrint) article is a very good article and I have referenced it to many new bloggers who come to me with questions, however I think my lottery post takes a pretty neat look at the true odds of winning the lottery and if I hold out to win this battle royal it will be quite an accomplishment for my little underdog blog.  Anyway the voting is open in this round until Wednesday afternoon so get out and vote (even if it’s for jim )

Edit: He’s even bringing the big guns out now and is out on the campaign trail

I’ll let you know when my other two articles play and will give links to all of the bloggers and articles I play.  Otherwise just hang out court side at Free Money Finance and wait for the next batch of games to start.  I can’t wait to see who makes it into the sweet 16.  One thing’s for sure the articles will all be top notch.  I was just happy enough that FMF let my articles into the tourney.  The wins are just gravy.