This week the carnival is at Budgets Are Sexy.
Right there at the top in the editor’s picks was a submission from Free Money Finance, telling us that a pleasant attitude and personality will help you 
succeed. I’ll have to take his word for that.
Realm of Prosperity had a brilliant idea to help us all pay down our debt. "Create the illusion of a smaller amount through the use of many 9s." Don’t pay $20 each month on a debt, pay $19.99. You’ll feel better. Somehow.
I was encouraged by a post from Financial Methods on Stupid, Pointless and Worthless Frugality Tips. The author is obviously new at this. Neither toilet paper nor dryer lint is mentioned. Still, it’s always good to see another blogger willing to take a stand against dumpster diving.
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Last week Fivecentnickel had a post on how to Avoid Lifestyle Inflation: Create an Artificial Sense of Scarcity. Basically, the idea is that you need to hide your money from yourself so you won’t spend it.
Out of sight, out of mind. If you don’t see the money sitting there every time you check your accounts, you won’t be constantly reminded of its presence, and you won’t be tempted to spend it.
This is a fairly common idea. The Automatic Millionaire series, for example, is based around it. But very little has been written, until now, on how to find that money again when you really need it.
For some people, the "hiding" of money is merely notional. They just open a so-called "savings" account at the same bank that has their checking account. But for many of us, that kind of hidden is not hidden enough. We need the money to be truly out of sight and mind. For us, the money must not be merely well hidden, but in a place we would never think to look.
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If there is one topic that professional journalists just love to report on and analyze, it is the troubles of traditional newspapers. They’re in very bad shape, we are told, and if something is not done these vital institutions might just go away, obviously taking our civilization along with them. There are even pundits who quietly suggest that government subsidies are in order.
What is most weird about this (spectacularly self-serving) sort of commentary is that it often actually understates the economic problems that newspapers face. Some papers may stagger on for a few more years or even a decade or two, but make no mistake, this patient is terminal.
Imagine, if you will, that newspapers didn’t exist. Now imagine somebody came to you with an exciting new business idea. His plan is to print the news of the day on paper overnight in massive printing plants and distribute copies to driveways in the wee hours throughout the region using a network of motorized vehicles. This operation would be paid for mostly by selling advertizing, but he would also have to charge about a dollar a day to readers.
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Last week the The Digerati Life, a generally worthwhile blog, had a generally worthwhile post on market timing. (Bottom line: you really shouldn’t.) But 
it had a few sentences I keep rereading.
I have in my portfolio two ETFs that track the movement of the Dow. One makes money when the market goes up and the other makes money when the market goes down. The only job of these ETF’s is to react to the overall market. The responsible thing that I do is to buy them both as a form of insurance. I buy both because I know that I cannot predict the market movements.
So Silicon Valley Blogger owns two ETFs that exactly mirror each other, such that the net of the combination of the two is zero? (Actually, it would be the T-bill rate less the management fees, which is approximately zero but maybe less.)
That can’t be right. She didn’t mean that. That would be dumb.
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Time for another of my lazy Tuesday posts recapping the week’s Carnival of Personal Finance. (Last week I couldn’t find the carnival, but then again I was too lazy too look very hard.)
Amongst the several items that caught my eye was one from Fiscal Fizzle listing ten places you still need cash instead of plastic. It made me feel old. 
(Admittedly not that hard to do.) I always carry cash when I leave the house. Along with keys, identification, and a charged cell phone, cash is one of the four things I think no adult should go outside without.
But the theme of the post is that, of course, the days of cash are numbered. The author tells us "I have to admit – it’s rare for our family to carry cash on our person on a daily basis." And then his efforts at reassuring me that cash will always have role fall flat. At several of his places even I now pay without cash. (E.g. highway tolls and the appliance repair guy.) Before reading the post I wasn’t worried I would soon be the last guy in America using worn pieces of paper to buy stuff, but I am now. Of course, our currency has looked like play money to me since the mid-90′s, so maybe it’s just as well.
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Carnivals | Frank Curmudgeon | 
August 18, 2009 12:59 pm | 
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