Saving Solider took a lot of issue with my Festival submission. He jumped all over me highlighting the downsides.

1) There’s a reason why there’s a question mark in the title. I’m not saying that it’s fully guaranteed like FDIC. I think I outline some of the risks in the post. I was just presenting a personal finance idea that appeals to me.

2) Along with the risk of participants defaulting, I also outline how participating is potentially less risky than some other investments because of the sociology of immigrant status. Imagine you are an immigrant who barely speaks English. Banks aren’t willing to lend to you because you have no credit history. You aren’t willing to go to the bank because no one there speaks your language. You can barely fill out the form. You don’t have pay stubs. You don’t have tax returns, a mortgage, or a credit card. What do you do to raise capital then? For many people, participating is the best and only way of raising entrepreneurial capital for buying a business for $30K-70K. What if you want to raise more capital? You aren’t going to screw over your friends. And word will get around if you do. My mother’s gossip channels run around the country, into Canada, and Korea, of course.

3) My reasons for considering participating are that I know this social group very well. These are families who took care of me while my parents were hard at work. These are the people who went to church with me. They will be the pall bearers and eulogizers for my parents, guests at my wedding. I have a lot of trust in this group. As I stated, it’s about vetting the participants, something not easily done over the Internet with a credit rating on Prosper.com.

So I have very good PRO arguments why I should do this. I see Saving Soldier’s point, but I’m not in it with con-men. I’m in it with my extended community of people who are like family to me. If anything, I’m the young one who’s most likely to let them all down if I get laid off.

I may have made a mistake in writing about this subject at all, but to me, ‘geh’ is a real life example of micro-financing like Grameen Bank and Prosper.com. If you set it up right, it can work. I’ve watched it work and it can work very well.

This is a great article from CNNMoney. It kind of highlights the problem of ARM’s and easy credit/access to money. My favorite point is that the 3rd and 4th years of a mortgage are when most forclosures happen. Then there are relavant statistics on who has mortgages and who doesn’t.

It’s worth reading. It kind of highlights why I’m saving up a cash cushion right now instead of putting all my money towards my debt. Techincally, per Kiplinger’s tools, I should be putting away almost $8000.00 in cash reserves. If I meet my goal this year, I’ll be halfway there.

I know it’s totally uneven on the bottom. But my girlfriends didn’t even notice I cut it until I pointed it out to them. It’s still long hair. Though as soon as I took my ponytail down, they saw how badly I had it hacked off. Since I wear my hair up most of the time in a bun on ponytail, they agreed that I can get away with this. However since it was craft-day, they offered to trim it up for me. It’s nice when your friends are frugal with you.

I have noticed immediately that I use less shampoo and conditioner. I am trying to stretch out this expensive bottle of salon conditioner which I bought to rescue my hair from the damage of a cheaper silicone-based hair product. (Silicone is very bad and dries out the hair, though it’s marketed as a way of making it smoother and sleeker.) I can tell already that I use at least one third to a half less every day.

This hair experiment is definitely a keeper. I know if I have a fancy event or wish my hair to look really good, like for my cousin’s wedding this summer, I’ll go to a salon for a real trim, but at this point, I’m very happy that I’ve put off spending $40.00 for another few months.

There was a commenter on the previous post about getting a cheaper cut from national chains. Well, I’ve gone to Haircuttery many times for a cheap blunt cut. It’s about $12.00 for a cut now. Add on a long hair charge or two for the length of hair, tax and tip, it’s easily still a $35.00 cut. My hair was so long, that it’s been dry cut before and I’ve received a double long hair charge at establishments like this.

What’s interesting is that one of the girls at craft-day has naturally curly hair and her boyfriend (who was in attendance) cuts her hair for her. She says that the curls tend to hide any mismatched lengths, so it’s more forgiving than poker-straight Asian hair. Give it a try! What’s the worse that can happen? You have to go to a salon for another cut.

Dawn at Frugal for Life has the newest Festival of Frugality available now.

This Festival has the most submissions ever this week. She’s divided them nicely into concept categories. I think it’s a really good way to sort them out. Everyone out there can shop for a good deal and often knows where to root them out. I think the real meat of Frugal Living is found in those posts at the very bottom that help you maintain your frugal mindset.

Cheers and good luck with your frugal journeys!

The Checkout is one of my favorite consumer news websites. It’s the WaPo’s blog by Caroline Mayer. It’s a good one stop location for product recalls, class action suit information and general news of use to consumers when the go shopping. (The recent yogurt post and its follow up are two of my favorites since I’m also kind of short.)

Much has been written about former Congressman Randall ‘Duke’ Cunningham’s nefarious bribery activities, so I won’t write about it here. But a small half column article in the WSJ caught my eye.

The Treasury Department is auctioning off this man’s ill-gotten gains, namely some antique home furnishings which a defense contractor purchased for $12,000.00 and had delivered to Cunningham’s house. Presumably Cunningham asked for these items so that he didn’t have a paper trail of cash deposits to be tracked through the the bank. It seems that this stuff isn’t worth the money that was paid for it, or that they can’t command top dollar for it at auction.

From the article:
[Victor Weiner, an independent appraiser from NYC] says, Mr. Cunningham’s items aren’t that impressive…”I would have taken the cash.”

I just ordered a two tech books from Barnes & Noble. I got a free sample of Starbucks coffee. Not just for one small pot, but enough for 3 or 4 of those small pots for one or two people.

They must think that if you’re a developer, you need caffeine. Well, in this case, I do.

There are three books total in my order and for some reason all three shipped separately. I think that the second shipment may also have coffee in it, which is great. What’s not so great is that I am a dork and I bought a book I already own. That’s ok. I’m going to take it to a brick and mortar Barnes and Noble for a store credit.

I am hoping that when the third book arrives, it’s got more coffee!

This is going to sound like one of my automobile focused posts, but it’s really about web traffic.

Tim at asks what draws in subscribers to his feed.

In the few short months this blog has been open, I’ve tried to follow FreeMoneyFinance’s advice on generating web traffic. He’s got pretty good advice and a lot of it has worked for me.

1) Comments drive traffic. Be polite, funny and helpful, folks will naturally click-through to your blog.

2) Participate in Carnivals and Festivals. It really drives traffic to your site from all over the Internet.

3) Get linked on non-PF Blogs. I’m lucky to know some longtime bloggers (5+ yrs) as real life friends. They list me on their blogs, though I don’t return the favor since I’m trying to keep mine on-topic. (And also because I haven’t devoted time to changing this template to make a second sidebar to add non-PF links.) The broader base of readers you can attract, the more traffic you’ll have. My blog friends range from knitters, web designers, to political writers. I’m always grateful for the traffic from wherever it comes.

4) Be grateful for the traffic. If you have new readers, welcome them and acknowledge their presence and how much you appreciate it. Folks who get a lot of press like Jane Dough and Jonathan always thank readers that arrive from new referrals.

5) Have stimulating content. Write it or reference it, but make sure it’s something people want to read. I often hesitate when I’m writing. I ask myself a few questions. A) Is it on-topic? B) Is it useful for other people? C) Is it funny? One of my pet peeves about a lot of PF Blogs is the bombardment of advertisements. I hate ads so much, I don’t own a TV because of it. There are some PF Blogs that have an annoying amount of ads, but their content is too fantastic that I can’t ignore it. Those sites get my eyeballs because there’s always a gem in there.

6) Make a connection. Often I feel that I’m taking a risk posting some of the things I do. I’ve been on the interweb since 1992 when I got my first email account. I first discovered Yahoo! in 1994. But even with the fastest broadband speed innovations of the last 10 years, people really only want one thing, a connection to other people. I think part of the appeal of my blog is that I try to write about real things that have happened to me, that ellicit an empathetic reaction. Why are folks like Save Karyn so popular? It’s because they’ve got a compelling story to tell. Folks relate to it. I don’t think my story is very compelling, but I know I’m writing about stuff that draws people in.

7) Patience. Slow and steady wins the race. There are good days, there are bad days. There are days where I don’t want to post anything. There are days when I post a gazillion times. Give it time. Things don’t happen overnight. Sometimes it’s slow moving word of mouth that gets it done. Read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell if you want some insight on it.

Run themes for topics. That’ll keep ‘em coming back. FreeMoneyFinance is really good at running a series. I’m not so great, but readers know I get stuck on a topic for about a week even if I don’t label things 1, 2, 3…

9) Read and link to other blogs. This goes back to #1, but making friends with other bloggers helps. Email folks privately. When I first started, I asked Caitlin at Clutter2Cash if I could steal her Save-O-Meter, and my first referral was born! I had a private email exchange last night with a very prominent PF Blogger and we shared a good laugh. I got a new referral link and #6, a new connection. Reach out. The premise of Google’s Page Rank system is essentially that if a site is linked to a lot, it must be a valuable site that is a popular destination, therefore, it is useful.

10) Time your posts. I write most of my content late at night. I publish them out during the next day during those peak coffee-break moments in the work day. I’ve noticed 10AM EST, Lunchtime, and 4pm EST are three of those moments when people are reading. This makes sure that readers of PFBlogs.Org see my posts in the first three pages at those times. I used publish at 8am before I left for the office, but I noticed if I waited 2 hours, there was a noticable bump in traffic.

Carnival of Personal Finance #41 is available now at Financial Baby Steps. I have to thank the Carnival hostess, the beautiful baby Margo for again posting me towards the top!

The quick two that caught my eye:

I liked NCN’s ‘pouring’ of savings little by little into the empty glass of his savings account.

Health and Savings from Single Guy. I swear, this is excellent advice on maintaining your size, good health and finances. I was ticked off at having to buy all new pants when I got all muscle-y from ice skating. (Went from a size 4 to a size 8!)

A full section from The Washington Post. Gotta love WaPo with the timely feature. The warm weather is just a few weeks away and there were a mad number of open houses today on my short drive to Old Town Alexandria.

My particular favorite is the guy who wants to buy a condo in the area I live in. I admit, it’s insanely priced around parts of Arlington, but if his ambitions are modest, he could probably buy a place for less than $300K. I think he’s just being stuck up about where he wants to live. The article does not address exactly why he thinks he can’t buy a place in Arlington. I suspect he has some criterion that can only be explained by some weird irrational bias he has about a neighborhood. I won’t even speculate about that, but note that he’s only looking in Clarendon and Ballston.