When I joined the Yakezie group, I did so because I wanted to network with other personal finance bloggers, get linked to, and see my Alexa rank rise. What I did not realize is that I was joining a fantastic group and there were many more benefits that I didn’t even consider.

I love the selfless spirit of the Yakezie. I love that people are donating their time and skills to the group so that everyone will benefit. I’d like to send a few shout outs to those who have done some terrific work for the group: Early Retirement Extreme for creating the idea and form for the short carnival, Frugal Zeitgeist for the awesome widget he’s created, and finally Eliminate the Muda and Financial Samurai for the hard work they have put in to make the group so successful.

First I’d like to highlight the seven newbies and then we’ll get to the group as a whole.

Personal Finance Journey presents 5 Lessons Learned from My Encounter with a Financial Advisor

151 Days Off presents Is Frugality the New Superiority?

Out of Debt Again presents I Tried To Shop At Whole Foods But I Couldn’t Make Myself Do It

Narrow Bridge presents How I Make Money Online: Successes and Failures (Part II)

Cool to be Frugal presents Should I Put My Emergency Fund into a Roth IRA?

Personal Finance Ninja presents How to Get the Most Out of Your Money: Rocks, Pebbles, & Sand

Saving Money Today presents Disposable Products Cost More In The End

Rainy-Day Saver presents Mortgage Interest Tax Deduction? No, Thanks

Canadian Finance Blog presents What is Financial Literacy? Part 1

Clarifinancial presents Life Insurance Secret #7: Permanent Life Insurance isn’t Always Permanent

Free From Broke presents Pay Off Highest Interest Or Highest Balance Credit Card – Analysis Paralysis

Beating Broke presents LifeLock Hit with $12 Million Fine

My Journey to Millions presents How Financial Planners SHOULD Act

Eliminate The Muda! presents Earning a Living or Living an Earning

Engineer Your Finances presents Ignore Social Norms and Save More

Well-Heeled Blog presents Household Finance and Gender Roles: Women Budget, Men Invest?

Money Funk presents Brew the Perfect Cup of Coffee (Frugal Tip)

Wealth Pilgrim presents Make Sure Your IRA Beneficiary Gets Your Money When You Go

MyMoneyMinute presents Estate Planning 101

Credit Card Chaser presents CARD Act Guide

Early Retirement Extreme presents Marginal earnings, when working is no longer worth it

Ultimate Money Blog presents Why it’s Frugal to live in Arizona

Financial Samurai presents The Mental To Physical Connection For A Healthier Lifestyle

Woohoo! I fully funded my 2009 Roth IRA yesterday after taking $3,000 out of savings and sticking it in my Vanguard account. The great thing about that is that I now am eligible for many more funds. Until today, I’ve been using their STAR fund, which is basically a mutual fund of mutual funds. I’m willing to take more risk and will be researching some of the other options. Any suggestions?

I’m not worried about my emergency fund dwindling (It’s at about 1 month’s expenses right now) because the next 6 weeks will be the best ever. Not only does my pay raise go into effect then, and not only will I be getting $868 back from the federal and state governments, but there are 3 pay periods in April this year! The calendar just happens to work out that way, but it will be a nice boost for my savings plan and it’s going to put everything back in its place and then some.

Here are some of the mutual fund options I’m considering:

Vanguard Target Retirement 2050 (VFIFX): This life-cycle fund includes several other index funds and will change its allocation by reducing stocks and increasing bonds around 2026. It’s the least involved options I have because it will automatically change its investments as I age. There is a 0.20% acquired fund fees for this fund.

Vanguard 500 Index Fund Investor Shares (VFINX): This domestic stock fund invests in stocks in the S&P 500 index. The expense ration is 0.18%, meaning that for every $1,000 I have invested, Vanguard takes $1.80.

Vanguard Emerging Markets Stock Index Fund Investor Shares (VEIEX): There are higher fees for this fund (0.40% expense ratio, 0.25% redemption fee, and 0.50% purchase fee) and it has a higher risk level that the other funds, which also could mean more of a reward. The international stock fund invests in stocks in emerging markets around the world, such as Brazil, Russia, China, Korea, and Taiwan.

Finally, I have the option of investing in Berkshire Hathaway Class B stock through my employer, which is owned by Berkshire Hathaway and the amazing Warren Buffett. It has done extremely well this year (24.71% YTD returns, while none of the other options I listed have gained more than 5%), but will it continue to rise?

There are many other options, such as the growth index funds, mid- and small-cap funds, and others, but I wanted to highlight these specifically.

Given my time horizon (age 22), which of these investing options should I take? I’ll share my thoughts later in the day. Keep in mind that this isn’t the only time I will be putting money in my retirement account!

I’m pretty sure Bank of America hates me. And I’m pretty sure Mint loves me. When one gives me lemons…the other one alerts me and reminds me to nag the first one for my money back.

Each morning, I log into Mint and get the latest transactions from my bank account. I like keeping track of my spending and renaming and organizing my finances. The faster I do this, the better success I have at remembering why there is a $20 charge from “Buff Bill” (that would be a local bar, Buffalo Billiards). My budget is always in sync and I can clearly see how I’m doing for the month and which areas to watch.

On Wednesday, I logged in as usual and I had an alert! I was charged a $5 maintenance fee by guess who – Bank of America! Of course it was them. I called up and found out that my one year grace period had expired on my savings account (that gives a whopping 0.10% interest!) I now had to either keep a $300 average daily balance in my saving account or set up recurring transfers of $25 per month. Plus, I have no idea why they didn’t give me a warning.

They refunded the fee, and my solution for the future is to set up a $25/month transfer in, followed by a $25/month transfer out a few days later. It’s a silly system, but if this is what they want, that’s fine with me. This will only last until November when I earn my Keep the Change bonus, at which point I’ll probably close the savings account (and leave the bank completely? I wish!).

So Bank of America, no matter how many times you try and steal my money, I won’t let you. Mint will keep reminding me, and I’ll keep fighting. Plus, you still haven’t given me my $25 bonus for using bill-pay, and I’m coming for that, too.

Garbage and excessive spending @ Early Retirement Extreme

Spending Money Wisely @ Canadian Finance Blog

I do a lot of reading of other personal finance blogs, and while I share them occasionally in my “Best of the Rest” round-ups, I want to give some shout outs to those who have been consistent commenters and let you get to know them a bit better. Hopefully this will become a regular thing.

Up first in the Interview Series is Monevator, a UK based blogger who gives motivation to armchair investors.

Why did you start a blog? Why Personal Finance?

I guess I started a personal finance blog because if I didn’t, my friends and my then-girlfriend would have killed me for boring them to tears. I’m a bit like Buffett — without quite so many billions! Sure I have other interests — Buffett has steak and coke, too — but the first pages I read of the newspapers are the business pages, the only bulletin boards I’ve ever contributed to are personal finance and investing ones, and so on.

So there was that — it’s 100% my passion, there’s no faking and I probably should have done it for a career (except I hate 9-5 employment! I’m now totally freelance, which pays a bit better too, at the cost of career progression).

I would say that my passion applies most to growing your net worth and achieving financial freedom through small business ideas, passive income and investing. I’m not really a save your coupons kind of guy. I’m naturally very frugal (I’ve saved over 50% of my salary some years, though I was fortunate to earn enough then to do so I concede) but there are other blogs who’ve already got that angle covered.

A bit like the title of Sweating the Big Stuff, I’m more interested in the big picture story. What are you doing about your income? How will you grow it? Where should you invest it? And what’s the end goal?

What is the most important personal finance lesson you have learned?

I’d like to tell you it’s to trust yourself and don’t listen to experts. I was well over 90% invested by the March 2009 lows, despite all the gloomy talk from bloggers and the mainstream media alike. Once I ran out of cash, bonds, REITs and so on to sell to buy stocks, I started selling my real world possessions to try and put more money into the market. (This isn’t including my emergency fund, which is larger than normal because I’m self employed, and which everyone should have and consider sacrosanct).

I didn’t know the market would go up anytime soon – you can never know that. But I did judge it would do someday… stocks were just too cheap, and everyone was panicking like it was Doomsday. (If the worst predictions had come true, cash would have been worthless anyway!)

So I’d like to tell you that. However my main lesson was not buying a house between 1999 and 2004. At first I could have bought something useful, but I wanted an amazing house at a bargain price. Later I thought (after 100% or so more rises in here in London) that prices were out of whack with rents, salaries and so on, so I didn’t buy again. To buy somewhere I could live for say five years would cost me at least £400,000 ($600,000) now. That prevarication probably cost me at least £200,000 ($300,000, or more like $400,000 on the £/$ rate then!) in lost equity that I would have still gain, even after the price falls in 2008.

That’s the most painful lesson — I’m not that smart. (Of course I’m not buying now. So I’ve still not learned!)

What does financial freedom mean to you?

My father paid a fortune into company pensions (well, a fortune for him, relative to his income) and did all the right things, but was stuck in a job he couldn’t leave to access that money for another 4-5 years…this when he had a life-threatening disease lurking in the background waiting to kill him.

I hated that he couldn’t get out, and vowed to be in charge of my own destiny.
Eventually he did retire 12 months early, but a couple of years later he had a massive heart attack and currently suffers all sorts of disabilities and is essentially housebound and in permanent care. I’d guess he got to use about 3 years of that pension money he put away while he was healthy, although my mum benefits, too.

So now I want to be financial free to do what I want, which likely will always involve some work, but will increasingly NOT involve anything I don’t want to do. The aim is to have a big – ahem – ’screw you’ fund so I can choose to do what I like, and I don’t have to be *allowed* to have access to my money.

What was first personal finance memory?

My first memory is of making pizzas and selling them to my parents for a few pennies. Not much money, but I used their ingredients so I made a healthy profit!

What is your favorite thing about the Yakezie group?

Going up in the Alexa rankings! Seriously, I get a buzz out of it. But a very close second is getting a focus on which of the dozens of personal finance blogs to hone in on, and meeting people (in virtual terms) such as yourself, Sam, Ryan, Neal Frankle, MoneyFunk, and many, many more. I’m not a very sociable blogger, I just like to write really, and I needed to work more on the community side of things. This has helped a lot.

If you could go back and tell your 20 year old self one thing, what would it be?

I’d tell myself having long hair and listening to alternative music while hanging around with my beautiful girlfriend back then was all very well, but in 2-3 years I’d start working and realize that socialism was a charming idea that doesn’t work in the real world because people are inherently lazy and selfish.

I was born a capitalist but I went through that left-wing phase and unfortunately it was when I might have made some more investing-related career choices. Instead I’ve had a very fun and laid back career, but it’s not been as financially rewarding as it might have been, and seeing as I think about stocks 8 hours of the day to be paid for it would have been a bonus!

It was poor timing, but I don’t really regret it. As we say here in the UK: “If you’re not a communist when you’re 20, you haven’t got a heart, and if you’re not a capitalist by the time you’re 30, you haven’t got a head!”

What are your two favorite posts?

My first is this post about replacing your salary with income from investments over time. I think it’s a much more sensible long-term goal for most people than worrying about fluctuating net worth. Income is usually much more stable, and if you want to live off it one day, it can be much more tax efficient to build your investment portfolio that way from day one.

My second choice is a long and self-indulgent one about my father, which puts what I’ve said above into more context. I’m going to pick it because Google doesn’t understand it and so never ever sends anyone to it, and if you’ve got time I think it’s one of the better things I’ve written. It’s called Money Can’t Buy Me love.

Thanks for your great answers, it was a pleasure having you!

A Different Perspective on Pricing @ Eliminate the Muda

Yakezei Challenge Carnival @ Deliver Away Debt

A friend of mine, Josh, recently applied to job, had a positive interview, but ran into a problem with the paperwork. They wanted to run a credit check on him.

In college, Josh was a little irresponsible and racked up a fair amount of debt. Now he wants to repay it, but was worried that this employer would  disapprove of his past activity. The credit check was likely the deciding factor as he didn’t get the job and had to look elsewhere.

At least 16 states are now considering banning most employer credit checks, an act that will help give jobs to people who are trying to get out of debt. Josh was penalized for something that happened 5 years ago, and he has since changed his ways. Making the assumption that he is irresponsible and not letting him get a job adds insult to injury.

Unreasonable Conclusions

Another friend, Sally, had gone through a lengthy interview process, been offered a contract, and was ready to sign when she saw a strange non-compete clause. She didn’t understand why her administrative assistant job would require that, so she had her father, a lawyer, take it in to work and have a coworker who specialized in contract law take a look. He came back with a few concerns, which Sally relayed to her soon-to-be employer.

She received a call saying that the employment offer was being rescinded. My friend was confused why getting legal advice about the contract was a problem, but they explained that getting legal advice was fine, but going to her father for help was not and that it was a sign that she is too irresponsible to handle work without help from others. Whether that was the real reason or if the company had more of an issue with her not signing the clause we can’t be sure, but the employer’s assumption cost Sally a job.

They took a HUGE leap to come to the conclusion that she was unfit to work for them. Suddenly this 4.0 student with just about every award in the book isn’t responsible? It’s ridiculous that she would be penalized because of her father’s profession. Clearly this isn’t an employer anyone should actually want to work for, so it is probably best that she found out early on that this company is crazy.

Are employing making big leaps with these assumptions against my friends? Is it fair to discriminate against those who have had credit problems in the past and are now trying to make up for it?

Property Tax Deferral For Young Families A Good Idea? @ Canadian Finance Blog

Life Insurance Breakpoints @ Evolution Of Wealth

This is a guest post by Dani Parnass. She is a wanna be writer living in New York City. If you enjoy this post, please follow her on twitter.

It’s a funny thing, writing about budgeting and personal finance when you’re 23 years old, trying to live the fast life in an overpriced apartment in Manhattan on an assistant’s salary. But what seems to be an all too common case study in excessiveness can, oddly enough, be a practice in good prudence. Here are two lessons I’ve learned in my ongoing efforts to watch my wallet (which I probably should not have bought from Coach) and not break the bank (thanks Chase, for making me fight for that $125 signing bonus).

Lesson #1: There is such thing as a free lunch (or breakfast)

My dad gave me a simple piece of advice when I first started working and was learning to master the difficult task of eating well on a budget, two things that never really seemed to be an issue in college (for some reason, living off of cereal won’t get me through the day anymore).

When I moved in to said expensive apartment, I soon found out the building management offered free coffee, muffins and croissants for breakfast every morning. The skeptic in me eyed this display cautiously for a few weeks, confident they would hike up my rent with each scone. When it became apparent that wasn’t the case (it was probably built in, but I would have been paying it regardless), I started taking a muffin every once in a while. Since I’m not a huge fan of pastries though, I still continued my daily Dunkin Donuts run for breakfast.

On what has become a weekly rant to dad about my budgeting woes, I mentioned in passing that we have these free muffins every morning. “Really?” he asked incredulously. “And why exactly are you still buying breakfast?” “Well,” I responded, knowing full well I was about to lose this argument. “I’m just not so keen on muffins.” It didn’t take much for him to point out the obvious: “Yes, but free tastes a lot better.”

Needless to say, muffins are now a consistent part of my morning routine, and I’ve been happily reaping the benefits of saving $5 on breakfast every morning. It’s small, but five times a week for six months and counting goes a long way.

Lesson #2: There usually isn’t such thing as a free drink

Unfortunately for me, my apartment building doesn’t also give away free drinks. Even worse is that going out for drinks in the city is no where near as cheap as going out in, oh let’s say, College Park, MD. And while we’ve found some great places that offer 50 cent beers (who am I kidding, I don’t drink beer) or similar drink specials, it can be hard to kick back with some friends while trying to save money.

Enter gender-role stereotype number one (well two, if you count the beer): Guy offers to buy girl a drink at the bar, girl conducts cost-benefit analysis associated with this seemingly free drink. There are the more obvious repercussions that could result from taking a random drink from a stranger, but assuming you have some level of sensibility there are also more subtle costs. You’ve successfully impressed this guy with your witty banter but didn’t particularly enjoy his 10-minute monologue about why he loves that arbitrary sports team. So was it worth sitting through that entire forced social interaction, all for a free drink?

I’ve learned that you can’t win them all and a free muffin beats a free drink, at least under the aforementioned circumstance. So you can either feign interest in that suddenly fascinating sports team, or take the high road and feel good about reallocating those funds you saved from breakfast.

My goal until April 15th is to fully fund my 2009 Roth IRA. I’ve stoppped contributing to my employer plan and will be socking away as much as possible until I hit the $5,000 mark. It was going to be close because I happen to get paid of the 15th of April this year and didn’t want to leave it until the last minute, but the $800 in tax refunds I’ll be getting should put me over the top and help me reach the Roth IRA limit.

Blog Traffic

Another month of unsustainable growth has gone by an increase in traffic of 111% and the statistics continue to surprise me. I’m sure some of the progress is due to the Alexa Challenge, and as that page makes its rounds on other blogs, I hope many of the readers stay.

Samurai Alexa Ranking Challenge

It’s been awesome getting to know everyone and being part of an awesome community, and the results have been fantastic. Everyone is moving up, and in the past month, my rank rose from 441,611 to 142,090! How great is that?? I’m definitely starting to slow down, but I’ve reached the front page of the Wisebread rankings and now I’ll start to enjoy many of the other benefits of being a member of the Yakezie.

Favorites

Personal Finance 101

Pay Down Variable HELOC or Fixed Mortgage?

What the Credit Card Act Means for You

The True Cost of Coffee

The Best Deal I Ever Got

Guest Posts

FiscalGeek - Why I Don’t Use Zero Based Budgeting

About 5 months into my first credit card experience, I decided that it was time for a credit line increase. No, I wasn’t racking up debt and no, I didn’t have any large expenses that made the credit increase necessary. I wanted an increase because when you have $1,000 each month, it’s easy to have over a $2,000 balance right before the bill is due. With a credit limit of $5,000, that equals a 40% utilization rate, something I’d definitely prefer to stay below. Add in the fact that Bank of America mysteriously skipped a bill cycle and that rate jumps to around 60%.

Sure, it’s not always that high and only if my accounts are checked on those days would it be marked that high, but I’d like to avoid the worry altogether and assure myself that my credit rating is as good as can be. It’s not imperative now, but it’s always good to keep a good credit score.

We know that hard inquiries negatively affect your credit score, so I decided that while I wanted to increase my credit line, I wouldn’t do it if it meant a hard inquiry.

Also, I have great news. Bank of America has one redeeming quality: it makes increasing your credit line very easy.

After logging into my account, I clicked on the “Request a credit line increase” button, filled out the form, and requested another $2,500 in credit.

The next day, I received a call to verify my job, income, and reason for requesting an increase (I have heard that saying that you’ll be making some large purchases works well).

I was approved immediately with only a soft inquiry and suddenly my utilization rate dropped. That same 40% utilization rate suddenly turned into less than 27% on the worst days, something I can definitely accept.

It’s only a small part of my credit score, but every bit helps and good habits now will help when we need it.

When I started blogging in September, I knew it was a long-term project. I didn’t think I would make a huge amount of money, nor did I realize how much work it would be to maintain a blog and post 5-6 times a week for many months. So far, I’ve learned a lot of lessons from blogging, and this one shares a strong connection with personal finance, so I’d like to share it with you all.

Nothing Comes Easy and It Takes Time

When I started, I didn’t think at all about making money. I don’t have ads on the site, I don’t do sponsored posts, and I don’t get free stuff in return for positive reviews. Recently I found a few easy ways to make a small amount of money without loading the site with ads. If you tell most people that they have to work for 6 months for free and after that they’ll start getting paid a few cents per hour, they won’t dream about taking the job.

If any moneymaking idea was easy and took little effort or time, there would be a lot of very wealthy college students. But anything rewarding requires a lot of serious effort, and more people are turned off by that. If you’re able to set a goal and keep working until you reach it, the results will come. The results always come if you work hard enough.

Sometimes it takes a long time to be promoted, to make money off of a business venture, or to learn new skills. Still, the time and effort is worth it, whether you’re rewarded in skills that help get a new job in a field you’re really interested, a promotion to a position you deserve, or your first positive cash flow month for your business.

It takes a lot of time and effort to achieve your goals, but the effort if often rewarded. Put your mind and heart toward your goal, know that there are few easy paydays in life, and keep that original excitement and passion going hard until you reach it.

I love automatic processes and saving time on mundane activities. Excel helps me do that lal the time with its fancy functions and awesome macros. This week while I automated the standings for the Alexa Challenge in Google Spreadsheets, I learned two amazing functions that are currently competing for my favorite.

The first is ImportHtml, which pulls in data from the site of your choosing into a cell. It’s how I get the data automatically (using a today function).

The second is Sort, which allowed me to bring in the information I want while automatically sort the standings by any row I choose, in our case “Today’s Alexa Ranking.”

Just thought I’d share that. What’s your favorite Excel or Google Spreadsheet function?

Let’s start off this week by featuring a post by Own the Dollar on why Your Stockbroker May Not Be Your Friend. How do you feel about commission based brokers? I could never use one because, like Hank points out, they are discouraged from employing the buy and hold strategy.

In contrast, Evan at My Journey to Millions asks: Why Does Everyone Hate on Financial Planners? He highlights some of the reasons why we need financial planners and makes an excellent point that many people need advice and we can’t do what they do, so we should pay for their expertise.

Studenomics provides some Unconventional Personal Finance Advice. I love his ideas and the thought of earning money off of credit cards (while others are paying crazy fees) excites me!

Jim from Bargaineering tells us why Being Frugal is Foolish. My time is not worth much (I spend a few hours a day lounging around), but I do agree that spending your time improving yourself or finding a way to make more money is probably more lucrative than making your own detergent.

Finally, Five Cent Nickel goes through Visa Credit Card Acceptance Guidlines. Merchants are not allowed to set minimum purchase amounts and this drives me absolutely crazy. At the restaurant next door to my apartment, they insist you pay in cash, but it’s hard to argue with a worker who doesn’t care about merchant agreements.

This week, I was a part of the Carnival of Personal Finance hosted by J Money at Budgets are Sexy.

Finally, FiscalGeek let me guest post about my opinion on budgets in response to his pro zero based budgeting stance.

Think of a fun excel function or tool yet??