Carnivals - Jan - Week #2 - Round Up Of Carnivals And Festivals!

We are changing our way of covering the weekly Carnivals and Festivals related to Personal Finance. 2007 will see us covering all carnival and festival related publications and reviews in one post each week. That will give more room for FIRE Finance's own posts on the landing page making it easier for our audience to see what we have been blogging about in that specific week. This week we started publishing our posts at Carnival of Investing in addition to our regular publications at Carnival of Personal Finance and Festival of Frugality. Without much ado let us get down to covering them.

Binary Dollar had hosted Carnival of Investing #55. This is the second time this month that Binary Dollar is hosting a festival or carnival. Great going! This is a smaller carnival compared to the Carnival of Personal Finance. It had about 23 posts with summary notes about each post from Binary Dollar.

Publication: Our post was published at this carnival under the category General Investing. We have been described as "Wesabe Finance Tool Review posted at FIRE Finance - FIRE Finance reviews a finance tool. Verdict? They like!"

Our list of favorites from this carnival are:

• Why Portfolio Rebalancing Works? It's More Powerful than You Probably Think posted at My Pocket Change - Great article. It summarizes how re-balancing does much more than just re-aim your risk/return level. It forces you to sell over-priced asset classes and buy under-priced asset classes.
• Sharp Minds Love the Sharpe Ratio posted at A Financial Revolution - The Sharpe Ratio is a measure of the reward to risk of a given investment. William gives us an analysis if it works or not.
• Pivot Points posted at Trader Knowledge - Equation included. Pivot Points work by indicating points of support and resistance for the price of a financial instrument that is being traded. When the price reaches a pivot point, it will either bounce back from it (indicating support or resistance) or continue beyond it.
• Top 10 Scams Of 2006: Some Personal Encounters posted at The Digerati Life - View this article! CT has a detailed account of top scams that people have invested in last year and her personal encounters with all of them. Plus there’s a video embedded in the article.
  
• Wealth Building Thru Gold Investing - It is All About Supply and Demand posted at Breaking the Shackles of the 9 to 5 - Michael talks about why we should invest in gold. Sweet sweet gold.
• Four Types of Annuities: Fixed & Variable Deferred, Fixed & Variable Immediate posted at My Retirement Blog - This article talks about the differences between various annuities. According to the article, deferred variable annuities are the most complex of the four and should be a last resort for investors.
• Is Your 401(k) Insured Against Electronic Theft? posted at Free the Drones - A post on protecting your brokerage account from being hacked.

Getrichslowly hosted Carnival of Personal Finance #82. It is a superb carnival based on the super hero theme. You must check it out, the posts as well as the pictures from the comics are fabulous.

Publication: Our post was published at this carnival under the category Sidekicks. Here is our host's description:"The authors at FIRE Finance upgrade their cellphones every year. They wait for a good deal to come their way. Their patience was rewarded when their cell provider promoted their loyalty and perseverance."

Our favorites from this huge carnival with ninety-two entries are (the descriptions are by Getrichslowly):

• If home-ownership has you scared, Jim at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity plays devil’s advocate, and suggests that you may want to rent forever - don’t buy a home. “The general rule of ‘buy a house, stop renting’ is probably the most strongly believed but most weakly defensible of the common sense personal finance advice concepts out there.”
  
• The Money Tortoise has a nice piece on behavioral finance, which is a subject I have been intending to research. “It’s your behavior that makes all the difference in investing — not the investments themselves.”
• Super Saver at My Wealth Builder evaluates the Vanguard Retirement Calculator.
• Note of the Living Deb makes its first contribution to the Carnival, looking at modern necessities. Deb analyzes a recent Pew study about which appliances consumers view as vital. This is fascinating stuff.
• If credit card debt has you down, then check out Make Your Nut where you can read how to lawfully reset your credit history.
• Have you ever had problems with PayPal? Corey at My Opinion On Everything writes about his battle with PayPal. It’s not a pretty sight. (Read more about his trouble here.)
• Better yet, attack that debt head on. ISPF at Personal Finance for Students and Fresh Grads details the seven steps that made him debt-free.

That is it for this week! Hope you had a good time scanning the posts or visiting the carnivals and festivals. We thank our hosts for doing such a superb job of hosting the carnivals, the authors for writing such great posts and our audience for making these carnivals a success. See you next week with our publications and favorites from various carnivals and festivals.

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