New Carnival of Personal Finance is up. Being hosted by FreeMoneyFinance.com

Also, check out the Carnival of Debt Reduction if this is something you need to do…

With the amount of money being spent on Katrina and a potentially greater amount in Houston I had meant to move my 401K’s into cash on Friday in anticipation of the markets moving downward next week. Unfortunately it was a crazy day at work (as it has been for two weeks straight now…) and it was after 4 by the time I realized I hadn’t done it yet…

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A couple of months ago I bumped my 401k withholding to 50% of my salary. The drop in net pay hurt but as of my last paycheck has paid off. I’ve now finished funding my 401k to the $14k limit for the year. My wife has bumped her withholding up a bit as well so she’ll make it by the end of the year. This leaves me with somewhat of a dilemma… What to do with the extra cash in my paycheck???

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The Carnival of Personal Finance is being hosted by Smart Money Daily today. For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, it is a weekly collection of Personal Finance blog posts which is hosted at a different site each week. Check it out…

I personally have 4 credit cards. My wife, up until today had an unknown number… Today I sat down and organized that part of our financial lives.

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I read quite a few financial blogs. I am generally amazed at the number of good well-informed posts there are out there. Here are a few I came across recently. I may try and do this on a regular basis, both to give those blogs some much deserved exposure (although many of them are far bigger than this blog…) and to help my readers discover new blogs they may not have tried before…

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Back in 1992 I had just graduated from college, bought my first new car and was getting settled into having a real job etc. My insurance agent offered me a discount on my car insurance (and being under 25 and not having a great driving record I needed it!) if I purchased a whole life policy from him. Being young and naive I accepted his offer at face value and agreed. In retrospect it was a mistake…

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Before I continue, I am not a financial professional, nor do I pretend to be. So please, do your own due diligence before you invest in, or try anything I mention in this blog… m’kay?

Anyway, in 1995 I had just moved out to Michigan at the request of my company’s largest investor. He wanted me to help organize a merger between us and another small company he had a stake in. The merger ultimately fell apart, but that is another story… Anyway, sharing office space with this other company was a part-time stock trader named Glen. He was an interesting character but always seemed to find good stock ideas. It was Glen who first taught me what options were (I vaguely remember my dad playing with them back in the 80’s but I don’t think it ever worked out for him.)

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I am posting these here to keep myself honest. If I’ve let the world know what my goals are I am more inclined to work harder to make or beat them… It’s one thing to let myself down, another entirely to let others down. (Not that you all have a personal stake here, its mainly a mental thing.) I’ll update these with new short-term goals and progress from time to time.

Anyway, read on to see my goals…

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I’ve got some work to do later. My client seems to feel that launching new marketing campaigns the day after a holiday weekend is cool… :/

My wife and I brought two of our horses back from the trainer today and sent two more off. It really seems to make a difference. At $200 a month plus board though it hurts the pocketbook… Oh well, they are more saleable now and much easier to deal with. I’ll try and post some pics later.

I’m working on a couple of articles, should be up in a day or so.