Below Your Means: Living well by living within and growing your means

Below Your Means Favorites of the Week

With so many great posts in the world of Personal Financial Blogs, it is hard to keep up with them all.  Here are a few of our favorites from the week:

Personal Finance / Etc.

• The Power of a Well Written Letter – The College Investor provides a real world example of how a well written letter can get things done.  I complete agree and have personally taken advantage this approach many times.
• How Do You Earn Your Money – Discusses the “poor” and “rich” ways of making money.
• Cut Your Budget: Allison – These posts are great.  It’s a real-life account of The Saved Quarter helping someone cut their budget.
• Insure with friends – I am a big fan of self-insurance, but I had never thought of “social insuring”.  Krant Cents has a post about a German company that does this.  I think its a very interesting idea.
• When do balance transfers make sense? – I have posted about balance transfers in the past and they often are not as good of a deal as they seem.  My Personal Finance Journey has a pretty good post on the topic.
• Top 10 Cheapest Places to live in the US – I have often thought about moving to a cheaper place to live (Seattle is pretty expensive), but never got close to making the switch.  This post is from someone who did.
• A pension, seen as a blessing and a curse – Budgeting in the fun stuff, has a interesting post on pensions.  I am used to reading about pensions in the macro-economic sense, so its fun to see the other side of the coin.
• Car Insurance Discounts: Are you getting all the discounts you are eligible for? – This is a good post and worth reading to make sure you aren’t missing out on anything.
• Why student loans are the worst kind of debt – If you have read any of our posts on student loans, you know we are not fans.  No Debt MBA has a good post exploring the problems with student loans.

Economics / Investing

• QE2 Was a Disaster: Here is why US Fiscal “Stimulus” was a complete failure as well – This post is a bit heavy, but it is amazing to see what actually happened from the fiscal stimulus plan and how it was a complete failure.
• Europe’s Central Bank could be whipped out with a simple 4.25% drop in assets – Zero Hedge has a very interesting post on just how much leverage and risk the ECB has.  Greece, Ireland and other Europe countries are buckling under the strain of debt… when those countries start to default, things could get messy in a hurry.
• Bernanke’s Self-Serving Bold-Faced lies – Mish is certainly not a fan of Mr. Bernanke and shares his views of Ben’s recent speech here.
• Valuation-Informed Indexing vs. Passive Investing – Which is better? – This is a very interesting post with some excellent analysis over at My Personal Finance Journey.