Carnival of Personal Finance - Week 3

NOTE: Week 4 of the Carnival of Personal Finance can be seen at SmartMoneyDaily.

AllThingsFinancial is proud to host Week 3 of the Carnival of Personal Finance.

First stop is Dawn's FrugalforLife blog for her Tuesday's Tips for saving money and simplifying your life. Lots of good stuff there.

Jim at BluePrint is in a giving mood. Check out this post in which he gives Tips for Deducting Donations from your taxes.

Flexo at Consumerism Commentary talks about whether or not GM's Employee Discount Program is a good deal.

FMF at FreeMoneyFinance discusses how you can save money by buying Energy Star appliances.

Nicole, aka "TheBudgetingBabe," tells us that Goal Setting Really Works. That's good to hear.

Where would blogging be without talk about Social Security? F.D. over at Modblog offers his opinion on Social Security in a post called Victory with Social Security. Based on how political this issue is, I'm sure his post will ruffle some feathers.

My friend, Arbee, from Canada discusses Tax Freedom Day. I like the sound of that!

THC at TheHappyCapitalist offers up an excellent post called Alphabet Soup that explains all the different professional designations in the financial field.

Jon at SmartMoneyDaily offers advice on Creating a Business Plan That Always Works. Good advice for anyone thinking about starting a business.

Protecting Yourself from Identity Theft

Identity theft is also a hot issue right now. It seems like everybody is at risk to have their identity stolen. There are lots of credit protection programs popping up. FrugalGirl talks about Credit Protector - The Good, Bad and Ugly.

Nickel at FiveCentNickel talks about the dangers of writing checks with this post titled Think Before You Write That Check.

Housing Bubble

Talk about the housing bubble has really been heating up lately. Smarty at the GrowingMoney blog offers his take on the housing situation in New York City in a post called Real Estate Bubble?.

Ben at the HousingBubble2 has been writing about the bubble for a while now. Here's one his latest posts titled Housing Bubbles Everywhere, Not Just Here.

Personal Finance Basics

Ironman at PoliticalCalculations offers a calculator to help figure out how much you should be Saving for College.

Finally, in what I call the basics of financial planning, I show you how to calculate annualized rate of return, which is something I think everyone should know how to do.

That's it for this week. Thanks to all who contributed to this week's carnival. Also, thanks to everyone who linked to this carnival. Next week's Carnival will be hosted by SmartMoneyDaily. For a schedule of future Carnivals and to read previous Carnivals, see this post on the Consumerism Commentary blog.