Pimp Your Finances

Another month gone by! Where does the time go? I don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to some nice spring weather so I get really start working outside.

Here are this week’s links.

Shrinkage is Good explains How Banks Steal Almost $2 Billion A Year From Customers. Long story short? Overdraft fees. Don’t be one of the victims.

Wise Bread added a new tool this week to their already good site. It’s a list of the top financial blogs, ranked in categories such as popularity, subscribers, incoming links, and even Twitter followers. This is a great idea, both for readers and webmasters. The list contains 197 blogs, but still has some accuracy problems – they didn’t include Pimp Your Finances! Soon enough, maybe.

Wallet Pop writes about some of the Incredibly Pointless Stimulus Funding Requests that the state of Ohio has received from its residents. Some of the strangest include $200,000 to retrain wrestlers, $10,000 to facilitate the dreams of children online, $75,000 for a home based birdhouse business, and my personal favorite: $20 billion to a man explains that “as long as Uncle Sugar is passing out money, I thought why not stick it to those yet unborn suckers….”

The Truth of Credit has a great list of the Top 10 Worst Financial Habits. Nothing too shocking here, but the best advice tends to be simple, and they’re all easily avoidable.

And last but not least, Lazy Man and Money writes about Three Investing Lessons Learned the Hard Way. The lessons are 1) it hurts to lose money, 2) people want to sell when it’s time to buy, and 3) establish risk tolerance before investing. They’re all great tips. It’s too late to undo mistakes you made before the crash, but if you follow his tips, you might be able to avoid further damage or possibly prevent future mistakes.

And the fun link this week has nothing to do with money, because I think we already hear way too much about it as it is.

It’s too easy to think about all the things that are going wrong in life, rather than being happy with what we have. Sometimes, reading about the misfortunes of others can be a good way to put things in perspective.

I found a site recently that is perfect for that. It’s called F My Life. The premise behind it is that people send in funny stories about how bad their life is. It’s a bit off color at times, but it can be addictive. Here are some examples:

Today, while at work at my grocery store I sold a TON of eggs to a bunch of kids. We joked around that they were “going to bake a giant cake.” When I got home I found out someone had egged my house. FML.

Today, I was playing with my 2 year old sister. She was “making” me tea with her new tea set, and I would “drink” it. After awhile, she ran off and returned with actual water in the cup. I drank the water, which made her happy. Then I realized the only water she can reach is from the toilet. FML.

Today, I walked home from a guy’s dorm early in the morning, still wearing my dress and heels from the night before. I walked by a mother and her little daughter, who said “Mommy, why is she so dressed up so early in the morning?” and the mom replied “Because honey, she makes bad decisions. FML.

Check it out… it’s a great place to go next time you’re feeling down about yourself. It’s basically like a Fail Blog for life.

I hope you enjoyed this weeks links. Thanks for reading – I sincerely appreciate it!