This isn’t new news, but I don’t think I’ve mentioned before that my Wise Bread post How to Spot Counterfeit Money was reprinted in the handsome educational magazine The Forensic Teacher. It appeared in the Winter 2008 issue.
Category: Economics
Fellow sf/pf writer Karawynn Long
Just heard from Karawynn Long, a fellow sf writer who’s also keeping a personal finance blog: Pocketmint. (With Catherine Shaffer, this makes three of us sf/pf writers–I wonder if there are any more?)
Pocketmint is full of personal stories turned into larger lessons. I rather liked Downsizing appliances to save money, which tells the tale of finding perfectly good freezer in the garage of a new house. Because it was so handy–already there and running–they started using it, rather than going to the work to reorganize the garage to use their own smaller freezer. The core of the article is a link to the US government’s EnergyStar calculator, which she used to figure out how much money they’d save using their own newer, smaller freezer. Then there’s the story where she caught a mistake the bank made that could have cost them $6100. Lots of good stuff.
I’d actually read her sf work back in the day. She had a story in Enchanted Forests, where she shared the table of contents with Bruce Holland Rogers, and she had a story in Century, a market that I submitted to but never sold to.
I’ll be keeping an eye out for her new work, both pf and sf.
Lifehacker on my “stuff” post
Cool! Lifehacker picked up my post Stuff will never make you organized, as Save Money by Organizing Before Purchasing Organizational Tools.
Lifehacker links to posts by other Wise Bread writers pretty often, but I can’t remember the last time they linked to one of mine.
Interviewed by Laura of Green Panda Treehouse
I did two interviews recently with Laura of Green Panda Treehouse:
- Up on Green Panda Treehouse is an interview where I talk about personal finance and the path I took to being a personal finance blogger.
- Up on Vega Baja Productions is an interview where I talk about the writing life and being a blogger.
She’s looking for other people to interview, so I thought I’d mention that it was fun to do. If you’re a personal finance blogger, consider getting in touch.
Profiled in the local paper
Christine Des Garennes of the New-Gazette did a profile on me and my writing for Wise Bread. It made the front page! Checks and Balances: Living large on a smaller budget.
Although some of his blog posts are practical, such as “how to make sourdough bread and save a buck on every loaf,” Brewer’s “central shtick,” as he put it, is all about doing what you love.
Ask yourself, are you working a job just to earn enough money to support your lifestyle?
“If you live frugally enough, you can change your work based on what you want to do,” Brewer said. After your family, he said, there is nothing “that has such an importance on whether or not you’re happy than your work.”
[Updated 29 May 2009: It used to be that the News-Gazette closed articles behind a pay wall after a week, but as of today the link seems to still be working.]
Translated into Turkish
It seems that someone translated my Wise Bread post The line between frugal and crazy into Turkish:
http://www.tutumluol.com/tutumlu-ile-cimri-arasindaki-ince-cizgi/
I’m kind of chuffed about this–translating a whole article is a lot of work; I’m pleased that there’s someone out there who thought this article was worth the trouble. I hope it’s a good translation–it’s kind of hard to tell, based on the Google translation:
Nature of diseased condition that does not bring happiness. At this point the question must be asked is: Does it make you happy to make thrifty behavior? In this way, make you happy is to live a frugal man, you are normal and others that it does not matter what you think. For example, to use bicycles for transportation or walk to me very happy.
Two nice mentions
I picked up two nice mentions for Wise Bread articles.
Lifehacker, in a piece by Jason Fitzpatrick, linked to my most recent post, Plan for your wants, in an article that they called Plan for your wants to make budgeting enjoyable.
And, in a piece by Farhad Manjoo, Slate included my post Not the sort of person who (along with mentions for Wise Bread in general and my personal site) among The best Web sites to help you scrimp through the recession.
Ronald M. Laszewski’s peak debt paper
Ron has kindly let me host his fascinating peak debt paper on my site.
I take a quick look at the paper in my Wise Bread post on Peak Debt:
Is there a limit to how much Americans can spend? Clearly there is: All they earn, minus savings and service on their existing debt, plus new borrowing. Since the Bureau of Economic Analysis puts numbers on those very items, it’s possible to see just how close we are to the edge. In a fascinating paper, Ron Laszewski does exactly that. The results are rather depressing.
Whether you read my Wise Bread piece or not, if you can follow the math, I urge you to read Ron’s paper itself: peak-debt-pd-020708.