No Credit Needed is famous

No Credit Needed is famous

NCN over at No Credit Needed has hit it big time.  Not only has been mentioned in the NY Times a couple weeks ago and linked to by a number of high profile websites, he just did an interview for Oprah’s radio show.  Then to top things off he’s being interviewed by a television station out of Atlanta.  Rumor has it he’s also dating Jennifer Aniston (just kidding NCN’s wife).

NCN has had a great few year blogging and has managed to dig himself completely out of over $11,000 in debt and is now worth over $43,000 more than he was just 22 months ago before he started blogging. He’s got a very inspirational story and does all he can to help his fellow bloggers have the same success he has had. He has a couple related sites and deserves all of the attention he is getting. Go check out his sites.

Carnival of Personal Finance #90 Recap

Carnival of Personal Finance #90 Recap

The Carnival of Personal Finance #90 is hosted at Map Girl this week and uses a circus theme.  My post on 20%+ guaranteed return on your money in 2 easy steps. is in SideShow One.  As usual there are tons of entries in the carnival of personal finance and map girl did a good job of ranking them so that you can get to the good articles without having to completely weed through the 90 or so entries.

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

Festival of Frugality #64 Recap

Festival of Frugality #64 Recap

The Festival of Frugality #64 is being held at Getting Green this week. Getting Green is a newish blogger to the personal finance community but hit the ground running and posts a number of high quality articles each day, so after reading the festival be sure to check out his other posts.

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

Free Money Finance March Madness Round 2 – Don’t let jim bully me around ;-)

Free Money Finance March Madness Round 2 – Don’t let jim bully me around ;-)

March Madness has hit the personal finance world over at Free Money Finance and the four posts I submitted to the tournament all made it through the first round (granted one of them had a bye).

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.

How to go about frugal landscaping – Part II

How to go about frugal landscaping – Part II

In Part I of this series I talked about some high level things you can do to save you money and increase your chances of success when going about landscaping.  In this part I am going to talk about where to get some of the supplies you will need and how to save money on them.

Mulch
Mulch is an important part of most frugal landscaping plans.  Mulch is not only a cheaper alternative to things such as gravel or stones, it is a lot less likely to cause you issues if it creeps out of your landscaping and into your lawn which it most likely will do.  Think 2 inch rock in lawn mower versus piece of tree bark.  Mulch is also much better for your plants and flowers as it is a natural material which will help retain moisture (less watering) and slowly break down and release nutrients for your plants and shrubs.

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A lottery winner that isn’t a complete disaster yet

A lottery winner that isn’t a complete disaster yet

There is a recent article on CNN profiling Brad Duke who won the $220 million dollar power ball in 2005, unlike most lottery winners it looks like he has a somewhat solid plan for his money and didn’t just go blow through it in the first few years. He has a plan to grow his $85 million (that’s what he got after taking lump sump and paying taxes) to $1 billion dollars by 2014 and has currently grown it to $128 million while still giving over $1.3 million to his charitable organization, taking all his friends on a trip to Tahiti, paying off his mortgage, and giving each family member $12,000 per year (maximum gift without tax consequences).

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My Financial Journey Best of February 2007

My Financial Journey Best of February 2007

February was a good month for My Financial Journey and here are some of my favorite posts from the previous month