The 2nd Anniversary Edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance is up over at Get Rich Slowly. Even if you’re not a fan of blog carnivals, I would highly recommend checking this one out. It’s a best-of PF blogging extravaganza. J.D. has categorized the posts, so it’s easy to skip past any topics that don’t interest you.

A few of my favorites:

Dori and Paul talk about turning off the TV at One Year Exit Plan. I don’t plan to put my TVs in a closet anytime soon, but I do enjoy living with very little TV. My co-workers, who spend 30-45 minutes every morning discussing what was on TV last night, don’t understand why I don’t watch TV, or what I do instead. I just smile.

Adventures in Money Making offers up some excellent pointers on real estate investing. As we get closer to the time when we plan to take the plunge into rental properties, I’ll be sure to come back to this post.

My Money and My Life discusses voluntary simplicity and offers up some advice on how to make the necessary changes.

Blunt Money introduces the concept of a savings snowball (the opposite of the debt snowball). He shows how to set it up, and throws out a great incentive - savings snowballs can work faster than debt snowballs, due to the magic of compound interest.

Trent at The Simple Dollar presents a great list of helpful career tips. No matter where you are in your career — even if you’re still in school — this is excellent solid advice.

An excellent food-for-thought post is Atheists Should Tithe. Plonkee discusses how donating 10% of your income can go a long way toward a good cause: “…if nothing is going to get done unless somebody does something about it, you’d better start doing it yourself or nobody will.”

Paul at Extreme Perspective talks about why he thinks we are in the middle of the greatest economy ever. This post is a few months old, and I’d be curious to see if his feelings have changed since the latest personal savings rates numbers were released.

Advanced PF raises questions about medical tourism. I haven’t heard this term before, but an acquaintance of mine traveled overseas for surgery with excellent results. She did it for financial reasons, but also did her homework - the doctor she saw was one of the best in the business.

Finally, the Family Finance Blog points out the importance of knowing yourself when it comes to budgeting and spending. My favorite part of this article is the closing line: “if there are ways you can manage your money to make you happier rather than wealthier, do it.”

There are a number of other fabulous posts, including our own iLuddite. Do yourself a favor, and go check it out.

Every Monday is Intents and Purchases day at Living Behind the Curve.

Do you remember spaving? It literally means “spending to save”. For a summer in the late 90s, it was sort of this kitschy pop culture injoke that the entire country was having with itself. I even remember Oprah doing something on her show about spaving. (That’s how I know it was the late 90s, because I was class of ‘99, and at no time before or since have I ever been at home with the free time to watch Oprah.) It didn’t last, though. Go ahead - google it. I’ll wait.

The lack of information on the net about spaving gives me a little bit more faith in humanity than I had a few minutes ago. Formal spaving is equal parts conspicuous consumption and New Math. In a nutshell, if you spend enough money the right way on the right bargains, your savings will trend towards 100 percent, determined by any mathematical pablum you can come up with. We agree this is ridiculous, right?

Now google “spend to save credit cards”. Tons of relevant hits flood your screen. Spaving was once a bargain-hunting technique. Now? No bargains required — it’s all done on your credit card. So what’s going on here?

Recently, the US government reported that the national rate of savings is not only negative, but at its lowest point since the Great Depression. There are many good reasons to believe that this number is worthless, but the complexities of this situation don’t make for good media sound bytes, and so we have consumer anxiety over “rates of saving” as a result.

Credit card companies, always willing to “help” when it’s profitable for them, stepped up to the plate and created a variety of cash-back cards that funnel the money directly into high-yield savings accounts. AmEx’s “One” is a good example. With this card, 1% of your purchases are deposited into an adjustable-rate savings account (they currently advertise February’s rate, which is 5%), and you can add more money at any time.

So what does this mean in real money? Using the savings calculator thoughtfully provided by AmEx, let’s assume that you charge (and pay off, right?) $1000 on your credit card every month for one year. 1% of that, or $10, will go into your savings account. After one year, assuming that the interest rate remains constant, you’ll have roughly $123. After 2 years, you’ll have $252, but you also get to pay the yearly card fee of $35, so you’re down to $217. That doesn’t sound like a whole lot of return to me.

If you spend more money, or funnel more of your bills through the card than I would, your numbers will obviously be higher. I may end up with 200 bucks I didn’t have 2 years ago, but a card like this isn’t a solution to my personal savings dilemma. Just like any credit card, the trick is to use it intelligently. 5% interest is really good, and with this account you can put more money in at any time, and I hope you would. As long as access ing the money in this account isn’t a complete pain, you could treat it like any internet high-interest savings account. However, since interest rates have been trending upwards over the past 4 years, it’s really not that difficult to find an account with 5% interest or more that, unlike AmEx, will disclose their current rate and happily give you a very good idea of what their adjustment schedule is. Card bonuses are great, but don’t believe the hype. There’s no magic bullet.

Every Friday is 11 Things day at Living Behind the Curve.

Making the decision to get out of debt is the first step on the road to financial freedom. Once you make that decision, however, where do you go from there? Inspired by this post at Zen Habits, here are my recommendations.

1. Create a realistic budget. Put as much money as you can towards paying down debt and having an emergency fund, but allow for a little bit of fun. Only the truly dedicated can live with no social/recreational activities for the amount of time it takes to become debt-free.

2. Take a hard look at what’s truly necessary, and be willing to make compromises. Cable TV, satellite radio, and lunches in the office cafeteria are not necessities. If you have a hard time letting go of these things, run your numbers through a debt calculator twice - once with your current budget, and once with the additional money that is currently paying for niceties. You’ll be amazed at how much of a difference those few extra dollars make.

3. Get creative. If there’s something you think you don’t have time to do more frugally, find a way around it. For example, cooking at home is much cheaper than eating out. If you don’t have time to cook, try investing in a slow cooker.

4. Be patient. Debt reduction is a long, slow process. Depending on the method you use, you may see no significant progress at first, but it will happen.

5. Have an emergency fund. It may seem counter-productive to direct money away from your debt reduction plan, but having money set aside will keep you from creating more debt if something happens. This is something I wish we had done better - we only had $1000 set aside in an emergency fund when Mer’s car went in for inspection a few months back, and ended up charging a fairly large chunk of change so that her car would pass inspection.

6. This should go without saying, but stop using your credit cards. It is impossible to pay off your debt if you keep generating more.

7. Do the math, and spend less than you take in. This goes hand in hand with budgeting, really. If your take-home pay is $2000/month, and your expenses are $2300/month, something has to change.

8. Use the layaway concept. Does anyone other than me remember layaway? When you put an item on layaway, you gave it to the counter clerk, and set up a payment plan with the store. Once you paid it off, they gave you the item - no credit involved. I furnished my first apartment this way. I don’t know if this is still in use anywhere (it seems to have been chased out by the instant gratification of credit cards), but you can do it yourself. If you really, really want that plasma TV, put aside a set amount every week for that purpose, and buy it in cash.

9. Recognize that it takes money to get out of debt. If housing+utilities+food is just barely equal to, or even more than you are bringing home, you need to find a source of money. Get a roommate, start selling your stuff, get a 2nd job - do whatever it takes to find extra cash, and apply that towards your debt.

10. Get complete commitment from all involved parties. If you are focused on becoming debt-free, but your spouse is a spendthrift, it will be difficult (if not impossible) to achieve your goals. Make sure that you are in it together, and truly make the commitment to the plan and each other.

11. Don’t remain stagnant - constantly reevaluate your plan. What makes financial sense now may not be the best thing a few months down the road. Interest rates may change, or you may get a raise. Set a firm goal, but be flexible in getting there.

~~~~~

There’s no magic pill to get your debt under control, just like there’s no one-size-fits-all financial plan. I hope I’ve inspired you to look at your own plans for financial freedom. How are you taming the debt demons? Inspire others by leaving your methods in the comments.

Every Thursday is Simplicity day at Living Behind the Curve.

Recently, I read an article on a simplicity blog that extolled the virtues of living without a microwave. When this blogger looked at her microwave use, she saw that she was using it for heating water for tea, defrosting meat, and not much else. So, she pitched it.

She went on to explain the repercussions of going ‘waveless. Defrosting meat, she said, took a little more planning than she was used to, but she found the experience to be an excellent exercise in being more organized. In heating her tea water, however, there were big changes. Post-microwave, she uses her teakettle to boil water, which has given her a calming start to her day. She’s found extra time to devote to other things while the water boils, and the ritual helps her appreciate the little things in life a bit more than she used to. Incidentally, she also got to develop a much more intimate relationship with her collection of teapots.

I love my microwave, but if I used my microwave as little as she did, I’d lose it too — I can think of so many better uses for that space. My hat is off to her for a decisive move that challenges assumptions all over the place. Rock on!

Oh, hey, one more thing. Microwaved food gives you cancer.

Wait, what?

She goes on to cite some very questionable sources and a BBC article that was later retracted. There were two “studies” done, but they weren’t published, peer-reviewed, or even detailed enough to say what allegedly precancerous gunk they found floating in your body. If you’d like to read more, this is an excellent and exhaustive article detailing the more common claims about the safety of microwaves and the food they heat, along with safety guidelines for microwave cooking.

It’s nothing but Internet pseudo-science, folks: Internet legend based on a grain of truth.

OK, now the link. I didn’t share it at the top because I didn’t want my rant at the bottom to take away from the fact that, before the fear-mongering, this was a damn good concept. Examine your stuff and question how much you really need it. If you don’t, out it goes. It’s one more thing taking up space, and one more thing you have to clean.

Also? Don’t believe everything that you read.

UPDATE! I was pointed out to me that “Johns Hopkins” has a lot to say about how plastic wrap in the microwave releases cancer-causing dioxins into our food when microwaved. They certainly do.

Every Wednesday is Domestic Science day at Living Behind the Curve.

This week, I bring you one of my all-time favorite slow cooker recipes. It’s incredibly lip-smackingly, plate-lickingly good.

Sweet and Sour Shin Kicker

In your slow cooker, combine:
2 cups brown sugar
1/4 cup flour
1 cup water
1/2 cup vinegar (red wine or apple cider work best)
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons ketchup
1 teaspoon ginger paste or diced fresh ginger
1 teaspoon garlic paste or diced fresh garlic
3-4 lbs. beef shin meat, with bone

Cover and cook on low for 7-10 hours. Serve over your preferred starch. (We prefer cous cous made with beef stock.)

Chef’s Notes:

• I don’t recommend using dried/powdered ginger or garlic — fresh or jarred is best here. If buying jarred, read the label before you buy - many are packed in corn syrup and other un-necessaries. Try to buy nothing but the ingredient and olive oil.
• If making this ahead for freezing, dump all ingredients into a gallon-sized zip-top freezer bag. When ready to cook, cut the bag away from the frozen block of goo, and dump it straight into the slow cooker. Cook for 10 hours on low.
• Beef shins are a weird cut of meat — they’re traditionally used for making stock. If you just threw a beef shin on the grill, it’d be ridiculously tough. However, since we’re cooking this at a low temperature for so long, the connective tissue that would otherwise make this meat tough dissolves into gelatin, and the result is tender fall-apart meat and deliciously unctuous sauce.