A Super Longevity Roundup

Let’s start this week’s roundup with one of my most prolific fellow PF blogger, Miranda Marquit, and her post Is Your Rebate Check Really a Gift Card? In my case, the answer was yes, I bought a hard drive that after rebate was a great price, of course, the rebate came as a gift card. Fortunately, my local grocery store cashiers are great at partial ring-ups and easily applied the card’s value. So, yes, I do buy based on post-rebate prices, whatever form that rebate takes.

I don’t know what share of my readership are fellow bloggers vs interested readers, so I don’t often post about blogging itself or about making money blogging, but my fellow Money Maven Craig Ford’s Make Money Blogging | A Guide for Beginners on How to Make Money Online is an excellent read.This is no ordinary post. Most blog posts top out at 500 words, this one is 7500. Enough so after Craig posts parts 2 and 3, he’d be close to having a full book’s worth of information. Good job, Craig.

My favorite tax tweep Kay Bell had an interesting post on Where does your taxable income rank? As I read her post, I thought how we are a nation obsessed with rankings. You know what I mean, from our sport teams to our school’s rank within our state and our child’s rank within her class. Income is no different, we compare ourselves to our in-laws, our friends, our neighbors. Take a read at Kay’s Don’t Mess With Taxes and see where you rank.

Next, at Wealthyboomer, Jon Chevreau asks Super longevity — are baby boomers up for it? In this post Jon discusses a book titled You Could Live a Long Time: Are You Ready? That’s the trick, I’d say. Die tomorrow, and you can’t take it with you, but live too long and you may easily outlive your money. Jon is one of my fellow PF bloggers from Canada, but nearly all his posts are relevant in the states. With the exception of some specific tax issues, and a bit of an accent, we’re not much different, eh?

Next, we have Financially Poor’s Debunking 401(k) Theory, at look at why cashing out to pay off some high interest debt may actually benefit you in the long run. My observation is that after taxes and penalty, you lose enough on a withdrawal that a loan, currently at 3-4%, may make better sense. I’ve said it before, finance is an individual matter. What’s right for one may not be right for the next guy. For every person who borrows and pays off his 401(k) loan, there may be three who blow it, rack up debt on the cards again, and when losing their job, can’t repay that loan.

Joe