Penny Nickel has the latest Festival of Frugality available now, and you’re in for a real treat!

She’s written limericks! Fun stuff. I would say ignore my submission because the Technorati survey call has been taken down now. But go read the submissions by others. Good stuff.

Note: Penny Nickel has changed my submission since the old one isn’t useful anymore. Thanks Penny!.

Every year I go to a camping event for 10 days in the desert. Tickets are usually $200+ by August. If you are smart, you buy them in January for $185. Even with the ticket handling fees, it ends up being a good deal than buying one at the gate for $300. Talk about Time Value of Money!

Because of four weddings, I have to forgo my personal vacation just because of vacation days. Now that I know I’m not going, I have found a buyer for the ticket who is willing to pay me for all the extra stupid fees I had to pay for postage and handling.

What does this mean? This means that the ticket covers the cost of a plane ticket to Boston in September. Yay! Hooray for saleable assets!

On other wedding plans, I have found a taker on splitting a room in Boston and a car rental in Seattle. I am very pleased, sharing a room and car with an old friend is going to be fantastic! I am still out over a thousand dollars this year on airline travel alone, but really if you want me to attend your wedding, you need to tell me a year in advance. The only one for which I was prepared was the first one, where I was sent a save the date card well in advance.

Please as a courtesy for your frugal friends, give them as much advanced notice as possible!

Please talk to your bride and groom and let them know where you stand!

I got a mass email from one bride and groom and replied to the other guests asking if anyone wanted to share costs in Boston. I was surprised at the number of responses I got back from guests. I’m actually trying to coordinate them into their own room and ride share arrangements now. Man, I should charge a fee! *winky*

Thank you new visitors! Please leave a comment and say hello. (I am sorry that Blogger was down on Monday, but come back again to leave a non-anonymous comment.)

Yesterday, I had a banner day for traffic. I think it was the most traffic I’ve ever had on a single day when I wasn’t a Carnival or Festival host.

On other bloggy ranting, I am part of a different online community and I hate getting testy smackdowns from people who aren’t list moderators. I think that’s one of the beauties of running a blog like this one, if I don’t like your comment, I can delete you! [cue evil laugh]muhahaha!

Just remember, one of my comment rules is that you have to be able to say it to my face, i.e. in person. That should remind us all of what good manners are and how to treat strangers we don’t know on the internet. I hope I can treat you all with graciousness as well. Remind me when I don’t please.

Thank you and good night!

College Saver on Nalgene bottles. If you’re a PF Blogger, I am sure you drink lots of tap water. (Will that be filtered or unfiltered?) Read more here. It’s the reason I picked it as my best advice for saving money.

I love my Nalgene. It’s easy to clean, goes anywhere, handles warm beverages or being stuck in the freezer. It has marks on the side so I can use it as a measuring cup on camping trips. It does not impart a funky smell or taste to your water. There is a reason why Nalgene bottles are used in labs to store chemicals and reagents. However, keep in mind that I’m talking specifically about the clear Lexan bottles, which is actually a different kind of plastic.

They come in cute colors now, but I prefer the smoke Lexan 32oz wide mouth bottles, although I actually use a narrow mouth one since that was all they had in stock when I bought it, oh, I don’t know… 7 years ago?? These things really last a long time. Short of you carrying it by the lid strap and breaking the loop, you’ll probably never really need another one.

I like dumping a little drink mix powder into it, but I religiously rinse it out. Otherwise, I never put sugar into it since that’s what makes bottles get sticky and moldy. Ewwww.

Care well for your Nalgene and you’ll save a lot of money. Yes, I know they are more expensive than pull top water bottles, but I promise they will not get icky unless you neglect to clean it. Those pull tops get nasty anyway. How do you clean them except with bleach? (Cue song “I’m so bored I’m drinking bleach” by the Dead Milkmen)

One last point: I have a small 16oz one that was a trade show freebie. I made a mistake thinking that I could put some soda into it and take it to work. Wrong. It fizzed out everywhere. However, this was not a Nalgene brand bottle and the seal at the top leaks whether you put fizzy soda or tap water into it. Make sure you are mindful what you put in the bottle and don’t overfill.

Savvy Saver has it available now!

She had a little glitch with Blogger and so it’s not as fancy as she’d like it. That’s ok because there was a ton of submissions anyhow. Just email her if she missed your submission.

There’s good stuff in there. I recommend you check out My Money Blog, Don’t Mess with Taxes, Blogging Away Debt, Tired but Happy, and The Weight of Money. Sorry no hyperlinks this morning.

As of close of busines today, ING Direct will take out my automatic savings deposit and I will be done my Save-O-Meter!

That’s $4K saved in the bank, not to be touched until I get laid off or whatnot.

It’s mostly in short term CD’s earning at least 5%, because otherwise I will pillage it for some expenses I have this year or to pay down credit cards. Then it wouldn’t be much of a cash cushion for me if it’s all gone.

So what’s my next step? Why another little Meter! Today I give birth to the Debt-O-Meter. Right now, it’s sitting at about $8,000.00, which represents my credit cards. I think after the final wedding trip is over in October, I’ll have to adjust that figure upwards. My goal really is to pay this stuff down and pay my credit cards off monthly. I’ve never been good at living below my means on a monthly basis and I’m not 100% sure if I can do it. I usually rack up the cards and then pay them all down. I’d say that’s been my M.O. since getting a card in the first place. Though the huge difference now is that I have more means of paying stuff down now that I don’t have student loans or a car payment.

I’m still saving money in my 401K plan. In fact, I am putting nearly all of that measly raise I received into my 401K. I will pretend as if I never got it, which is easy to do in my case.

Drink Tap Water whenever possible.

By far it’s the best money saving and weight reducing tip I can offer. I’ll actually have more this week about this subject.

For some reason, the Wall Street Journal still wants my eyeballs. Though my subscription expired in May, I’m still receiving it. That’s fine by me since it’s pretty expensive to get it which is why I chose not to renew.

This weekend had some pretty spiffy articles. If you can get a copy of the Saturday edition, that’s what I’m looking at.

1) Milton & Rose Friedman Interview - They are a charming couple and it’s kind of amazing sometimes to think a Nobel Laureate like Milton Friedman, ultimately is just a really nice, humble old man. Kind of reminds me of one of my favorite professors in college, fiesty and witty even as he turned 75.

2) “The Most Inventive Towns” - GREAT topic! Technically my major is in economic geography, so I am a big fan of AnnaLee Saxenian’s Regional Advantage. It formed the core of my independent study major and it’s the premise of the article. The idea is that geography/region forms some of the basis of why innovative ideas come from specifc locales. For instance, when the article lists its top 20 locations for patent filings, naturally a lot come from Silicon Valley. However, as you reach down into 21-40, you start getting into regions where good state technical universities are located. Brain synergy is very exciting stuff.

3) “New Headache for Homeowners: Inflated Appraisals” - Front page story, beneath the fold. I’m not surprised about inflated appraisals and sellers getting dinged when the appraisal doesn’t come through with the listed price. Right-pricing a listing seems to be an art form and I know I was really glad when my realtor had a funny twitch at a seemingly great apartment we saw. I liked the unit a lot, but I didn’t care much for the neighborhood. After we ran comps at her office, she steered me away from the place since it was overvalued at the listed price, plus given my concerns about safety it wasn’t a good fit for me.

What bothers me is why the lady highlighted in the article, Karen Ammon, wants to refinance her home a twice in 5 years. The first time she did it was to roll up her credit card debt into a cash out refi. I know I’ve been tempted this week to do the same thing, but I know with diligence and discipline, I can pay my credit cards off without paying the sunk costs of another loan closing. In fact, closing would cost me just about the same as my credit card debt, so what would be the point?

Ms. Ammon finds herself 3 years later unable to pay her adjustable rate mortgage with the increase in rates. I’m not necessarily fiscally conservative. I’ve written about my spendthrift tendencies on this blog, but undertaking a mortgage was very serious business for me and I did my homework (See Peter Miller’s book in the sidebar). Let this be a cautionary tale (because I love those!) for readers of this blog. Don’t get a mortgage you can’t afford. Don’t get more house than you can afford. And if you go with an ARM, fix your rate for as long as you possibly can by asking for longer term hybrids (7/1’s and 10/1’s).

I didn’t intend for this to be a rant, but inflated appraisals are going to cause a world of hurt for a lot of folks and there is nothing to be done about it since these were done in the past. I’m really sorry if you’re sitting out there with an inflated appraisal. I can’t offer you a miracle, only some resources where you might find some good advice.

As always, go to Bugmenot for a login if you do not have one. However, I’ve never been spammed by the NYT, nor the Washington Post. Really, just get your own.

First off, a little international intrigue. I’m Korean and the man with the big hair and lifts scares the bejesus out of me. Economic terrorism in the form of mass counterfeiting sounds like a William Gibson meets Tom Clancy novel. In this case though, throw in a rip-off Irish Republican Army that has its economics wrong and you’ve got a case for money laundering on an international scale. Terrifying. And it only gets scarier when you realize we’re not pursuing it since we’ve got Daddy’s Little Oilman’s nuclear agenda to follow instead.

Second is a story about the shrinking middle class in world-class cities. I love a good discussion about regionalism and economics. This article kind of scared me though. I mean, who is going to live in cities? Rich people and their servants? That seems like a terrible imbalance. In a place like DC, I guess that means the wage taxes on all those VA and MD commuters is going to go up. Or the consumption taxes on dining and shopping. If it’s not middle class parents pushing for a better quality free education, then who?

The sad part is that I live in a city and I’m not about to leave Arlington for Washington, DC. At one time I would have, but now I don’t see any benefit for me in moving into the city. To encourage middle-class wealth building, I get a nice property tax break. I have a lot of the amenities of the city, but with nicer municipal services. I am hoping there is a tech resurgence in my neighborhood so I can stop commuting outward for an IT job. Hopefully Class A office rents are going to collapse slightly and make my wish come true. (A lot of government offices are leaving Arlington because someone in the government assessed that it could not be made secure enough post 9/11. Many of those 5-year leases are expiring now.)

I was on Technorati today, just checking links when I saw an ad in the top left corner. I figured I should click the survey link since I don’t ever do that, but lots of PF Bloggers have been filling surveys and getting cash for it. Why not?

I won’t say anymore about it other than it takes about 30 minutes, not everyone will qualify and I think it pays $15.00, but now I forget.

If you are a blogger, why not try it out?

UPDATE: The page layout seems to have changed and there is no more survey link.