My Financial Journey

I just don’t get it – what is the big deal about gas prices?

March 9, 2007 MFJ Comments 16 comments

If there is one thing I don’t understand is, how much people care about gasoline prices. If a news story came out today that said tomorrow all gasoline prices are going to jump by 10 cents, there would be lines wrapped around the block waiting to fill up for gas. I mean it would be great if people were actually that concerned about their finances, that the extra $1.20 (12 gallon gas tank) it was going to cost them just was unacceptable, but it’s not it’s something else and I don’t get it.

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March Madness Update

March 8, 2007 MFJ Comments 1 comment

If you followed the last couple days you know that I am participating in Free Money Finance’s March Madness. So far my 4 submissions have been fairing pretty well, but I think I suffered my first loss or two. All my games in round 2 were very close.

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What are your thoughts on Wal-Mart?

March 7, 2007 MFJ Comments 10 comments

Me and my family do a lot of our shopping at Wal-Mart, in fact we almost do all of our shopping at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart seems to be a very controversial store when it comes to its reputation. Some people love Wal-Mart and other people hate it. I have some family members who refuse to even step foot in the store, while other families members do most of their shopping at Wal-mart like me.

I was just curious what my readers thoughts were on Wal-Mart and whether they think it is a great store to find a good bargains or if it is the evil empire and refuse to shop there. The reason I ask is I know I have certain opinions about Wal-Mart the store/company (which I will discuss in a follow-up post), but I wanted to possibly get some insight into what people like and don’t like about Wal-Mart and how many people are on each side of the fence

So I got a couple questions for you.

What are your thoughts on Wal-Mart (good,bad)?
Why do you feel that way?
If you have some insight into why they are good or bad where did you get this information?

If you have any preferences one way or the other I really would love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks,
MFJ

No Credit Needed is famous

March 6, 2007 MFJ Comments 3 comments

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.

No Credit Need Blog
No Credit Needed Network
No Credit Needed Podcast
No Calories Needed (Don’t laugh the same mentality that digs you out of debt helps you shed those extra pounds too)

Carnival of Personal Finance #90 Recap

March 6, 2007 MFJ Comments 0 Comment

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.

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)

Festival of Frugality #64 Recap

March 6, 2007 MFJ Comments 0 Comment

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

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)

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

March 5, 2007 MFJ Comments 1 comment

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.