Friday Finance Findings For January 18th

Winter finally has a grip on the Midwest as temperatures begin to drop into the single-digits with wind chills around -20 degrees. Every winter I think about how I’d love to move somewhere warmer, but it just isn’t that easy to do. Anyway, if you haven’t noticed, Jim from Blueprint for Financial Prosperity interviewed me and you just might learn something about me that you didn’t otherwise know.

In other interview news, I was briefly interviewed by the Washington Post this week for an upcoming story on budgeting for “fun money.” Not sure when the article is set to be printed, but hopefully it will be available online sometime next week. With that, here are the highlights from the past week:

5 Tips for First Time Investors – Looking to get your feet wet with investing? It can seem intimidating, but here are five tips that can help you get off to a good start.

Saving Money at Fuddruckers: What’s Too Frugal? – Man, I love Fudruckers. Nothing beats one of their big juicy burgers, piled high with that neon yellow cheese sauce, tomatoes, pickles, and everything else. And their cookies… mmm.

The Newest Trend in Bank Fraud -  This is just plain scary. Do you have a HELOC? If so, you better read this so you can stay ahead of the thieves.

Seven Steps to Investing in Yourself – This is one of the most overlooked aspects of personal finance in my opinion. It is all too easy to get comfortable in your career and just chug along. But by investing in yourself, you can make significant headway towards earning more income and becoming happier in your career.

Stop Waiting for Tomorrow and Get Informed, Honest, and Focused – I’m one of the worst procrastinators I know, so this was a helpful article to read. It is easy to say you’re going to do something, but it is time to really get informed, honest, and focused so you can accomplish your goals.

12 Money Mistakes That Could Cost You $1,000,000 – The Sun talks about the Consumer Reports article that highlights 12 very costly mistakes. I don’t know about you, but I could use an extra million over my lifetime, so I don’t want to make any of these mistakes.

How Safe is Your Money Market? – Well that all depends. I’m a big fan of money market funds because they are easily accessible in my brokerage account while providing higher yields than most banks. But, you do have to be careful since it is theoretically possible for your fund to lose money.

The Stupid Passport Photo Ripoff -  My passport is about to expire, so I’m probably going to have to get a new photo when I renew, but I can’t believe how much they charge for such horrible quality. I might take Golb’s advice and do it myself.

Six Great Ideas to Protect Your Assets – With the start of the new year and the markets hitting the toilet, it has raised many concerns about how to protect what you do have. Moolanomy has some great tips that don’t deal with protecting your investments from decline, but protecting your overall assets.

Reduce Your eBay Taxes With a Home Office Deduction -  Do you sell items on eBay to make some extra cash? Well, if you are doing it as a business, you may be able to deduct part of your home with the home office deduction.

How I Overcame My Fear of Lending on Prosper – I’ve signed up, but I still haven’t put any money into Prosper. One reason is that I don’t have a ton of money to spare right now, but it is also partly due to being a bit afraid/unfamiliar with it. This article clears up a lot of things.