Carnival of Wealth, Carpenter Canyon Fire Edition

 

And behold, I saw the 7 angelic trumpeters

And behold, I saw the 7 angelic trumpeters

 

End of the World? Naw, it’s just the end of our neighborhood. This was the sight from Control Your Cash headquarters last week as the Carpenter Canyon fire burned 3 square miles of forest, caused the evacuation of the nearby community of Mt. Charleston, and headed in search of fuel and oxygen. Will it engulf the entire area, leaving us to file a claim with our insurance company? Or will it just scare the woodland creatures and little else? Most importantly, will it impact our ability to create yet another Carnival of Wealth? Of course not. Here goes:

Dividend Growth Investor knows only one song, but he plays it to perfection. Investing in stocks with proven dividend records might not remove unsightly bathtub rings nor keep your cat from shedding, but he recommends it as the ideal gateway for young investors. As you might have heard before on this site, with most investments you make your money going in. A steady history of increasing dividends (and the concomitant stable price) is probably a safer bet than hoping for appreciation.

So you graduated high school, and by some measures you’re now what they call an adult. The world is your oyster, if not some other waterborne hermaphrodite. What to do with your life? With all that possibility at your feet, how about deferring meaningful existence for a few years while borrowing money you’ll never be able to pay back? It sounds brainless to us, but we’re apparently in the minority. Jen at Money Rebound assumes you’ve incurred such debt if you want to take up space on this planet and breathe its air:

In a world where education is prized and often a necessary catalyst for establishing a successful career, it can be a hard realization that mountains of debt might come along with the fancy new diploma.

False premise, but if Jen acknowledged that she wouldn’t have much of a post. Jen’s solution for slashing that debt include a) living cheaply and 2) earning more. Fortunately she doesn’t write much beyond that, saving you precious minutes.

Another false premise – in fact, practically the same one – from Kevin Mulligan at Free From Broke. As he puts it, “We want to do the best for our kids and pay for their college education. But should we save for college at the expense of retirement savings?”

Who’s this “we,” Kemo Sabe? Parents, stop feeling guilt or unnecessary obligation. Once they get past the age of majority, you know what you owe your kids? Not a thing. If you’re financially independent enough that you can afford to sock away a bachelor’s degree worth of tuition and books while your kids are growing up, more power to you and thanks for reading our site even though you presumably know all this stuff already. But it’s not a moral imperative to save for college. That’s what part-time jobs are for. Hell, that’s what cheap trade schools are for. To his credit, Kevin concludes that saving for Junior’s college loses out to saving for your own retirement.

How does homosexual marriage impact personal finance? Well, if you and your similarly endowed spouse wed in a jurisdiction where such unions are legal, and move to one where they aren’t, Michael at Kitces.com explains the tax (among other) implications. Even better, if you happen to be studying for a Certified Financial Planner designation, there’s a link to Michael’s latest newsletter, which will earn you 1 1/2 hours of continuing education credit.

By our unscientific guess, 70% of our CoW submitters are American, and 20% Canadian. Both countries celebrated their independence in the past week – America having defeated its overlords 237 years ago, and Canada successfully getting the “Request for Sovereignty” forms notarized and mailed back to London 91 years later – and thus it seems that most of the regulars took the week off from submitting. Either that, or they were so distraught by our unspeakable cruelty of a week ago that they’re never going to stoop to submitting again. Although we did have a paucity of submitters a year ago, too. It’s surprising to see how many of those robust contributors from the summer of 2012 have disappeared without a trace. If you were committing to spend hours reading this week’s CoW and feel you’re been shortchanged, there are ways around it. In the meantime, we’re still on Investopedia. And by the transitive property we’re also on Yahoo! Finance, although we only got paid once for that article. Maybe we should run it on here too, and triple-dip.

Whoa…we’re almost there. Finally! 800 words, including the few to follow. Our self-imposed minimum for blog posts. It’s also Rick Reilly’s minimum for his ESPN pieces, for which he’s grossly overpaid. Not as overpaid as we were for that Investopedia piece, but close enough.

Thanks again, and we’ll see you tomorrow.

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