Friday Finance Findings for February 20th

While it was a shortened week with the holiday on Monday, it’s still been a busy week. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I helped with a money store for Cosmopolitan magazine. Well, the March issue is out, and this site got a brief plug at the end of the story. I don’t see the story online yet, so as of now it’s only in the magazine. But if you’re a woman looking for ways to save and subscribe to the magazine, check it out!

In other news, I’ve been working on a few other items in the past week. Most notably I’ve been invited to give a guest lecture for the College for Financial Planning. I’m still flushing out the details, but it is a very exciting opportunity. While I don’t think any of that will be available to the public, hopefully through the process of putting together the material I will have some interesting new topics to discuss on the site.

Oh, and stay tuned next week. I have a few items I’m going to be giving away after I review them. With that, here are your links for the weekend.

Paying Off Credit Card Debt In Ten Simple Steps – Let’s be honest — credit card debt sucks. And people don’t always get into this situation simply through bad spending habits. But regardless of how you got into credit card debt, Frugal Dad has a list of ten steps you can use starting today to help you pay off that debt.

Helping Parents Cope with Damage to their Retirement Nest Egg – Lazy Man is actually featuring a guest post, but it’s a very timely piece that addresses how you can help your parents cope with their retirement savings problems. If your parents have been devastated by this downturn, here is some advice you can use to help.

The Empty House – Where do you draw the line between cozy and empty? Brip blap shares an observation on the size of homes, the costs associated with them, and whether people have just a house or a home.

Taxpayer Benefits in the Economic Stimulus Package – Will you be getting any tax relief from the stimulus package? Aside from the roughly $13/week extra in my paycheck, the tax breaks seem about worthless for us. Not buying a car, or a house, or sending anyone to college right now, so I’ll continue to hand over far too much of my income to Uncle Sam.

Preparing for a Layoff – Job Tips for Staying Employed in a Recession – The unemployment numbers continue to rise, and we’re entering a period of unemployment we haven’t seen in decades. Almost no job is safe, so everyone can do a little preparation to minimize the chances of getting a pink slip, or at least minimizing the damage if it does happen.

The New Retirement Book Review and Discussion – While this book is targeted a little more towards the boomer generation, many of the rules still apply. We just have more time to plan and prepare for many of the same retirement concepts. So, Frugal Trader has done a nice writeup of this book and you just may find it’s worth checking out regardless of your age.

Stress at Work Getting You Down? How To Manage Job Burnout – Even if you love your job, I’m sure you’ve had times when work just becomes a bit too much and you feel the need to take a break. While we all can’t just pick up and go take a few weeks off for the heck of it, there are some steps you can take to help you avoid the stress and minimize job burnout.

$8,000 First Time Home Buyer Tax Credit – Earlier this week with the passage of the stimulus package, some details were finally revealed about the first time home buyer tax credit. If you are buying a new home, or even considering it, this is some very useful information.

How Accurate Are Credit Estimators? – You’ve seen them before, those credit score estimators. But how accurate are they? Jim over at Bargaineering puts a few of them to the test. Are they worth it, or completely off?

Gold and Silver ETFs – Whenever the market is down, the discussion of gold and precious metals picks up. Typically investments like gold do well when the markets are in turmoil, so it only makes sense people start talking about them. I’ll leave the discussion as to whether or not gold or silver is a good investment up to you, but how do you even invest in the stuff if you want to? The Sun has the answers.

Is Your Home an Asset or Liability? – Is your home an asset or a liability? It depends on who you ask. Flexo takes a stab at examining the true difference and whether you should consider your home an asset or a liability.