Don't Quit Your Day Job…

I hope I convinced you in my earlier article you’ll soon be dealing with higher taxes. I’ve got some more slightly depressing news for you… you might be dealing with a reduction in the amount you can contribute to your 401(k) in the near future.

Yes, as Robert Powell says in this MarketWatch article, to go along with retirees not getting an increase in their Social Security payments, you may be losing some of your ability to sock away money in your 401(k). Nice.

Ever made a mistake in investing? Yeah, I bet you have. I have too.

The reasons that investors make mistakes are numerous and hard to detail, but the Wall Street Journal took a really good shot at it today. Covering everything from the pain of selling at a loss to mental accounting, it’s one of the best personal finance articles I’ve read in a long time. Oh, and I read a lot. Everyone has biases which make mistakes possible, the question is how can we recognize them and adapt? Read on…

Carnivals DQYDJ articles are featured in for the week of August 10, and select links from around the internet on interesting and relevant topics.

Our article, “Investing in the 79th Element”, is hosted over at Man vs. Debt for the Carnival of Personal Finance! Go check it out, the theme is New Zealand!

Check out the 210th edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance. They are linking to the article “Eggs and Baskets”. Find it under the category ‘Bald Bull Does Bull Market Investing.’

Carnival of the Capitalists features the article “The Minimum Wage Mistake.” Check out this week’s edition at the CotC site.

A commonly heard refrain in the personal finance world is ‘Keep 3 months of living expenses in an emergency fund!’ If fact, this is heard so much it’s almost become a mantra for people taking control of their finances for the first time. Where does this ‘3′ come from? Why do you keep it? All this and more will be answered, read on…

My article “A Penny Saved is 1.76366843 Pennies Earned” was included in this week’s Money Hacks Carnival!

Head over to this week’s carnival, hosted at Own the Dollar, and check out the 69th edition of the carnival. The article is located under the heading “Frugality & Saving Money – $10,000 Federal Reserve Note 1914″.

If you come into money, don’t ignore paying down debt as an option. Oftentimes paying down debt can save you much more money than you can earn with another option. Additionally, paying off a loan in full will increase your future cash flow. Read on for a look at debt as an investment and a closer look at tax-equivalent yield.

“Bennet Sedacca announced to the world at 10:15 on the morning of March 5, 2008, that venerable Bear Sterns & Co., the nation’s fifth-largest investment bank was in trouble, big trouble.” The first paragraph opens with a bang. Ten days after Sedacca made that call, he was proven right. Bear Sterns was no more. William D. Cohan’s House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street, explains how Bear Sterns got there.

Take a look at a CNN compiled list of the largest bankruptcies in U.S. history, by assets. Also listed are the assets of Citigroup, Bank or America, AIG and Wells Fargo.