financial zen

Well, by perusing some wordpress plug-ins from pro-blogger (a must read if you blog) I came across the answer to sites that unscrupulously steal your feeds (also called scraping).

Add a copyright message to your RSS feed! All with this plug-in – Angsuman’s Copyrighter Plugin. Really, I consider this plugin a must-have, especially once you start getting traffic and the “referrers” start coming in the form of “blah had a great post, here’s his content, and a link back. By the way, click on all my ads surrounding his entry to make me money.”

I recognize that feed-scrapers that do have link-backs aren’t necessarily evil- they aren’t phishing or stealing outright they’re just trying to make a quick buck off someone else’s writing spirit and soul. I liken them to pyramid schemes and Ponzi-artists – worthless, taking up bandwidth of the internet that would be better suited to a number of amiable bloggers out there.

Enough for my ranting – to my fellow bloggers fighting the scrapers, copyright your feeds!

As an aside, I’ve got some planned entries coming. Being a full-time father/worker/student/husband takes a toll, and it’s writing that suffers so that none of the others do!

In covering the basics – one thing every person must do is get their free credit report. Do this yearly. Do it more often if you suspect fraud or identity theft.

But what does it all mean?

Bankrate has 20 must-know credit scoring terms to help out! The key to success in any topic always starts with a glossary of terms. A credit report is one more extremely useful, beneficial tools that one comes across in their personal finance journey.

Your credit report contains your credit rating which is comprised of your credit score. See? Three terms down – are you sure you know what they mean? A fundamental understanding is what separates you from the person across from in preparing yourself to mastering your finances.

I hate guessing taxes on my wife’s paycheck.

I do. I hate estimating, guesstimating, et al. with taxes (I’m still learning to master them!)

Luckily, Ms. Ducky has posted a calculator that will do the work for you!

I’m plugging through my wife’s numbers to get a rough idea, it’s a cool tool to utilize!

I came across this Spending Plan Online Calculator from Crown Financial Ministries which assists in setting up a budget – you enter your yearly salary, tithe, and taxes, and it spits out a budget. I came across this on either Google or another blog, sorry I can’t remember which!

An *excellent* tool in starting up a budget. I’m using it as a basis for a spreadsheet to help share the state of our finances with my wife (she’s the pen-and-paper budgeter, I’m all about Excel/Quicken – and possibly Mint, once the Beta opens up!)

It’s a very good *start* of a budget – it breaks it down by percentages. What I did was plug it into Excel and start comparing my expenses to it’s assumptions – I’ll update it the beginning of March to see how we did!

EDIT: Actually, there are quite a few good tools on the site! Visit and click around!

I read once on Lifehacker about using the snowball calculator to pay off debts. (Or was it at Get Rich Slowly? I don’t know – they both reviewed the same method)

Yup, the Dave Ramsey method.

This works by gathering all your information, and I suggest using this calculator.

Select your number of debts (mine was 5, currently)
Setup a minimum amount per month you are willing to devote to this (I chose $1000 – a conservative estimate, really)
And which way would you prefer to snowball? Interest or balance? – the great thing about this calculator is you can compare them both and see which way you would benefit the most.

Instead of doing it by the “emotional” method of paying the lowest off, I’m doing it by interest rate – I stand to save more money that way (~$200 in the long run). Of course, this is assuming I’m not going to have any purchases made, any increase of debt, or any changes in income – no doubt with a baby on the way the changes will be coming – and when my wife and I get a house purchase in order – the mortgage actually shouldn’t affect this plan – I’m establishing this as if we are all ready paying on the mortgage.

Has anyone else used this method? What are your experiences with it?

Golbguru at Money, Matter, and More Musings has a link to Financial Fundamentals for 2k7.

This list may be common sense to people, but as a rule I never rule out that *somebody* hasn’t thought about some of these. I’ll sum it up for you:
Personal Finance Bloggers have been touting these since the first day I started following them.
Read the rest of this entry »

Fidelity.com has released a new tool (in beta). I’ve been playing with it for a little while, and it’s got some useful features:

• Savings Rate Finder- make sure you’re getting the best savings with their search that includes online savings accounts, CDs and money market funds.
• Free Checking – does anyone not have free checking anymore?
• Financial Search – a search engine for various online financial sites.
• Fidelity Mortgage Search – Tools and articles.

Being in beta, they’re taking feed back on the tool. It’s very “web 2.0″ in appearance, and I *love* that they’ve got a lot of feedback links – go check it out and let them know what you think!