How has the summer been treating you? On our end, it’s been great. Nice warm CONSISTENT weather, nothing too hot nor too cold. Kids have been attending their summer schools and next week, my eldest is attending his first computer camp. The interesting thing about these summer camps that I’ve learned thus far is this: some can be pretty cheap while others cost an arm and a leg.

Kid Summer Camps: The Cheap and Not So Cheap

This year, we opted to splurge a little to try out the rather expensive computer camp. It’s set up for 7 to 12 year olds and is all about teaching kids develop their own video games. Yes, what kind of parents are we to be sending our kid to build these games, you may ask? After all, too much video gaming can be a hazardous thing. But we’re not having him play the game, we’re having him develop it, which should be good for his creativity. Plus I’ll let you in on a family fact: the spouse had at one point, devoted his career to the video gaming industry. So I can make the excuse that it runs in the genes?

Then again, if you think about it, most families will find themselves paying more for summers than they do for the rest of the year. Why? Because summers equate to family vacations. And many people end up trying to figure out how best to keep their kids preoccupied during this time of year. During the year, kids go to school (and that’s public school for most of us) where tuition is free. While for summers, the kids spend it in fun camps and other summer fun activities. But for those who want a fancier family experience, there’s always travel for everyone. In our case, it’s usually a trip abroad to visit relatives, and airfare can be pretty hefty when we account for 4 round trip tickets halfway around the world.

So to take things in perspective, computer camp may not be that bad. Although a sports camp or other local community kids’ summer program is probably much more affordable — usually under a hundred bucks or at most, a few hundred dollars for many weeks of fun. Now if you’ve got our own local waterhole or cave network around where you live, then consider yourself lucky. Nature is something you won’t need to spend on. Here are some other cheap ways to enjoy the summer.

Quick Roundup

• Mike Fanelli: There Is No Shortcut To Making Money
• Saving Money Today: Organizing 101: Filing Your Bills Neatly
• Lazy Man and Money: My New Career: Stealing Cars in Oakland
• One Mint: Decoupling is evident in the long run
• The Simple Dollar: Ten Big Mistakes #3: Lifestyle Funded by Credit Cards
• Nerd Wallet: Carnival of Personal Finance

This is a post from The Smarter Wallet.

Kid Summer Camps: The Cheap and Not So Cheap

Thinking of getting a high end home entertainment system? Get ready for an expensive lesson. After installation costs, get ready for maintenance costs.

Long day. We had to rework our entertainment system because our remote control units went on the fritz. Yes, you read that right. Our remote controls quit working so we had to resort to manually operating our TVs. But this becomes particularly cumbersome given that our manual set up for our televisions happens to be in an inconvenient area of our house. We’ve got a weird, complicated set up where all our TVs and projector and DVDs are all wired up to one central brain in this one room. And sometimes, when one unit goes wrong, all the rest follow suit.

How did we get to this point? You see, it was during the peak of the dot com boom when we somehow committed ourselves to buying and installing this rather expensive home entertainment system that had a central controller. Yes, we were crazy. Yes, we thought we had the money back then — or so we thought — and we ended up treating ourselves to something we thought was cool and awesome.

When you come by and check out our entertainment system, you’ll think that it’s a fine piece of work. But it’s one of those things that looks great on the outside but is quite a pain to use. When it works well, it’s slick. But when it stops working (which happens way more often than with normal television sets and non-networked electronic devices), it quickly becomes a time and money sink. The whole thing is hard to maintain and has very expensive upkeep. It’s our fault for falling for the siren song of luxury, during that one brief period in our lives when we thought we were “set”. Now that the dot com bubble era is but a fading memory in the annals of Silicon Valley history, and we’re no longer paper millionaires, we have to live with the consequences of our impulsive decisions and this lemon of a home entertainment center.

Well, we’ve learned our lesson — that sometimes, you don’t even get what you pay for.

Personal Finance Posts For The Week:

Here are some great personal finance reads for your reading pleasure:

• US News Money Blog: When Credit Cards Come to the Rescue
• Wise Bread: 10 Tips To Lower The Cost of Banking
• Sylvia Blake: How To Protect Yourself From Debt Collectors
• TDL Hub: Student Credit Cards and Teens: Napalm and Matchsticks?
• MintLife: Evaluating a Company’s Health: Equity vs Debt
• Ginger Won’t Snap: Should you outsource your household chores?
• One Mint: Wall Street Cheat Sheet: Psychology of a Market Cycle
• Lazy Man and Money: Why I’m not a Fan of Internet Marketers

This is a post from The Smarter Wallet.

High End Home Entertainment System, An Expensive Lesson

If you’re an active trader and have been using technical analysis to gauge how things are going so far in the stock market, you may be interested in this INO.com video’s assessment of what’s in store for U.S. equities in the near future.

Time To Short The Stock Market? A New INO.com Video

According to this stock trading video, we’re headed for much lower numbers in the investment markets. While there is no guarantee of what could happen down the road, the MarketClub stock trading system’s indicators are all flashing red at the moment, pointing to a Fibonacci retracement to 944 in the S & P 500 index. This is ultimately a 50% slump from recent highs. Technical analysts call these numbers and points in the chart as “targets”. Right now, the call made by INO.com’s resident technical analyst, Adam Hewison, brands this market as unhealthy, and so if you’re a market timer, you may be inclined to stay out of the market or to think about possibly shorting it.

Personal Finance Articles

• US News My Money Blog: When Credit Cards Come to the Rescue
• Gen X Finance: 3 Ways to Wipe Out Debt Quickly
• Dollar Stretcher: How To Tackle Credit Card Debt
• Survey Magnet: Useful Credit Card Tips to Help You Live Debt Free
• Savvy Money Tips: Harnessing the Power of Vision
• Sylvia Blake: How to Finance a Mobile Home Purchase
• TDL Hub: Can You Live On A Budget?
• Lazy Man and Money: Maximize Your Airline Miles with these 8 Tips
• One Mint: India ETF List

This is a post from The Smarter Wallet.

Time To Short The Stock Market? INO.com Video

There’s a very insightful article by Funny About Money that caught my eye, as it discussed the concept of a glass ceiling in the world of blogging. It makes mention of how there’s a dearth of female bloggers who are successful enough to make a living through blogging. No, let me rephrase that — there’s a scarcity of female PF (personal finance) bloggers who are able to make money online and earn a living off of their blogs. I can agree with that particular observation — there are very few female PF bloggers I know who are indeed making money off their sites. I feel very lucky to be one of those who have been able to wing it as a full time PF blogger whilst running two main sites (this one and TheDigeratiLife.com). But allow me to point out at least one other female PF blogger who’s been able to do this as well: Madison DuPaix of My Dollar Plan.

Here’s the thing though — there is some truth to the analysis made in the “glass ceiling” article, about how content drives success. There are also many things you need to do to a site in order to make it highly monetizable. The issue here is that it takes a humongous amount of time to make it all work. You’ll increase your chances of success if you decide to take the leap and put in the time and think up a strategy to run a site more as a business rather than just as a hobby. Of course, there’s always the risk that even with making such tradeoffs and sacrifices, one doesn’t end up with enough income to merit going into blogging full time. But you won’t know till you try. All I can say is that the work requires me to wear many hats, with the creative aspect being one of the smaller factors in the equation.

One more thing — the whole glass ceiling concept doesn’t necessarily apply to other blog niches. Take mommy bloggers for instance; a number of them are doing fairly well in that niche. The key is to drive traffic to your site and then find out the best way to monetize that traffic. And a lot of mommy bloggers (and other types of female bloggers) have been able to do just that.

Personal Financial Articles

Some good reads you may be interested in checking out:

• Wise Bread: 5 Strategies To Wipe Out Your Credit Card Balance
• Mint Blog: Survive the Choppy Market: Personal-Finance Blogger Picks
• The Casual Observer: Make Money Selling Photos
• Back Taxes Help: Ways To Maximize Your Tax Refund in 2011
• The Financial Student: Reflections on the Mortgage Crisis
• Money Hackers: A US Oil Spill Map and Analysis

This is a post from The Smarter Wallet.

Running A Successful Personal Finance Blog: Is There A Glass Ceiling?

The latest S & P 500 trading video from INO.com (a well known stock trading site) ponders the question of whether the S & P 500 index has finally hit its peak in the near term. If you’re an active trader or investor, then you may be curious to see the latest analysis on the market’s behavior, as offered by INO. Their claim here is that by using their MarketClub Stock Trading System, you could have avoided the latest slump in the stock market and could have bagged some profits over the last couple of months.

S & P 500 Trading Video: Has The S & P 500 Topped Out?

The Trade Triangles (signals) technology from the MarketClub Stock Trading System indicated a buy in mid February, when the market bottomed out earlier this year; it pointed out a sell in early May, just after the stock market had a huge run up and right before the latest market trend solidified and confirmed its downward direction. If you trusted these signals enough to follow them, you’d have made around 7% in the span of two months. Not bad!

Personal Finance Articles

For more on personal finance, please check out these articles around the web.

• TDL Hub: Clever Budgeting Strategies – Streamline Your Budget
• PT Money: Making Money From Junk
• Balance Junkie: Is Your New Business Hiding Inside You?
• Wise Bread: Survive The Bear Market: 10 Steps To Ride The Downturn
• One Mint: India’s Bank Interest Rates
• Lazy Man and Money: CollegeAdvantage is Giving Away More Money
• Credit Karma Blog: How To Prepare For A Stock Market Meltdown
• Canadian Finance Blog: Carnival of Personal Finance

This is a post from The Smarter Wallet.

S & P 500 Trading Video: Has The S & P 500 Topped Out?

Occasionally (maybe once a week), I’ll feature an interesting stock trading video that may share a particular perspective about how specific investment markets are doing. My favorite source for these videos is INO.com, a site dedicated to investment research, and training and education in stock trading. I may not practice daily trading — in fact, I’m not confident in my ability to succeed in it — but I remain fascinated by how the markets work and am interested in how more experienced individuals come up with ways to analyze or predict what could happen down the road in these markets.

With The Dow Jones Index Down, Guess How Low It Will Go

The video I’m about to introduce will show that INO.com’s resident technical analysis expert is not too optimistic about the U.S. stock market in the short term. Adam Hewison shares his concerns about the market being in a rotational phase: we’ve just faced a strong upward trend since February, gaining around 12% on the DJIA (from 9900 to around 11,200 points). But just a few days ago, we began to see some cracks in this trend when the market stumbled. This is not viewed as a good thing. As Hewison insinuates, there won’t be any highs anytime soon and 11,200 may very well be the high for the year. That of course, is just a brave prediction based on technical analysis signals such as one often used by Hewison: the Fibonacci retracement.

Check out INO.com’s short video about the Dow Jones’ recent performance through this link. It points out where the potential downside targets are and also demonstrates how the MarketClub Stock Trading System works, which is the flagship trading product from INO. At any rate, you can see this software at work when you review the video.

For additional free videos on trading and investing, please check these articles:

• Investing In Gold: Trading Spot Gold vs Buy and Hold
• S & P 500 Chart Trend Watch: Reversal Coming Up?
• Trend Analysis For The US Dollar Index and Crude Oil Market

Personal Finance Articles

Some write ups I wrote or enjoyed this week!

• Green Sherpa: Save Big By Repurposing
• Wise Bread: Who Cares About Where The Stock Market Is Headed?
• Lazy Man and Money: I Bought a Mutual Fund…
• Don’t Mess With Taxes: Carnival of Taxes
• Well Heeled Blog: Carnival of Personal Finance
• CODR: Carnival of Debt Reduction

This is a post from The Smarter Wallet.

With The Dow Jones Index Down, Guess How Low It Will Go

It’s been a while since I’ve featured an INO.com video here. But if you’re interested in watching a stock trading video, I’d like to present one from the trading and investing site INO.com, which features the behavior of spot gold in recent weeks, along with the big picture for gold over the last 6 years. This short 3 minute video takes a look at gold and discusses the challenging market we face right now. Seems like new highs may not be in the “tea leaves” over the next several months.

Anyway, here is the link for the video. Where do you think gold is headed in the short term?

Personal Finance Articles

For some other money topics, check out what my friends have written about recently:

Wise Bread: Here’s an article defending credit cards. In fact, it was something I wrote over at Wise Bread sometime ago. I give reasons for why I prefer using credit cards over cash. Do you agree with my point of view? Am sure there are a lot of you who don’t; I do agree that credit cards are not for everyone!

Lazy Man and Money: Here’s a guest post from yours truly that asks the question: how much do you really spend? What kind of expense tracking do you do and how aware are you about your spending practices? Surprisingly, not everyone is on the ball on this one.

Len Penzo: In his usual humorous style, Len covers how duct tape can fix your finances. Say what? (I often say this about Len’s work… ). You have to see what he writes, to believe it! It’s hard to find a more creative thinker than Len, as evidenced by this piece.

One Mint: If you’re in India, here are some great places where you can buy gold coins. There was something unexpected in Manshu’s list: the fact that you can buy gold coins in post offices in India!

Online Investing AI: There’s more talk of trading here in this article that discusses how technology is opening new markets and allowing us to trade everything, including results for American Idol and Dancing With the Stars! Now that’s exciting for a couch potato like me!

I joined a few carnivals too, including the Carnival of Personal Finance. All this rounded out a great week in the blogosphere.

This is a post from The Smarter Wallet.

Spot Gold Chart Update, Credit Cards vs Cash: Roundup

It felt like I wasted a lot of the day today due to a network problem we couldn’t resolve immediately. Diagnostic checks left us barking up the wrong tree. We thought it was some problem between our location and the data center. In the end, after many hours of slow performance on our end, it turned out to be the obvious: our home router was acting up. A simple reboot got my connection back up and running, but not before it kicked off a migraine that’s still bouncing in my head a little bit.

Oh yes, and there were probably also a few other contributors to that migraine; with April 15 coming up, those last minute tax preparation issues that crop up are never much fun. Especially since we’ve been walloped by additional taxes despite having paid what we thought were hefty enough estimated taxes. As it goes, Murphy’s Law is at play here: no matter how much you think you’ve paid the IRS, it’s probably never enough. Okay, just made that up!

Well, despite the inconveniences, I got around to covering the financial beat and am happy to bring you a few articles for your reading pleasure.

Personal Financial Articles

• Wise Bread: Read about how the economic crisis challenges our financial beliefs. It’s one of the earlier pieces I’ve written for Wise Bread. By the way, do check out the latest and greatest version of their site. It struck me as awesome. I’m pretty impressed by the new design and was glad to see how my profile here has been vastly improved. I still have to make a few adjustments on my writer’s profile page (as one of their writers) but overall, it’s an even lovelier site now. Make sure to stop by!
• Taking Charge: Credit lessons from top personal finance bloggers
  
• Credit Karma Blog: Shave $1,000 Off Taxes With The Saver’s Credit
• Lazy Man and Money: Filing Tips for the Last Minute Filer
• The Wisdom Journal: Carnival of Personal Finance

This is a post from The Smarter Wallet.

Tax Payments, Credit Lessons From Top Bloggers, Wise Bread’s New Design

Spring is here, and things are pretty eventful in our household these days. We’ve got a lot of family over as I work out some health issues over the next few months, so they’re helping us run the household a little. Plus I’ve got to give my thanks to my long-standing blogger friends like Lazy Man and Cap for pitching in to help this damsel in distress…

Anyway, permit me to be vague for now (about my personal details), but needless to say, I continue to enjoy and peruse the blogosphere as a goldmine for great information on personal finance. Here are some of the reads I managed to fit into my week:

Personal Financial Articles

• Wise Bread: For many people, the 401k is where they store most of their long term funds. So how about checking out these tips on how to make the most of your 401k?
• Green Panda Treehouse: So what happens when banks fail? Here’s a review of how the FDIC steps in and takes over once they sniff out trouble in the financial industry.
• Lazy Man and Money: Lazy Man pulls an April Fool’s prank when he tells us “no more alternative income reports”. Say wha? His alternative income reports are mainstays that he should keep delivering, especially for the inspiration .
• Online Investing AI: Advanced Technology That Will Propel Your Financial Future
• Trees Full of Money: Made it to the Editor’s corner in this week’s Personal Finance Carnival! Woohoo! Thanks for choosing our article on how to get the best travel deals for budget vacations as one of the picks! By the way, this is a new carnival on personal finance (not to be mistaken for the older Carnival of Personal Finance.
• Mighty Bargain Hunter: Carnival of Personal Finance
• Frugal Upstate: Festival of Frugality #224
• Make It From Scratch: Make It From Scratch Carnival #162

This is a post from The Smarter Wallet.

Alternative Income Reports, Bank Failures, 401k Tips

Time for another informative roundup of links around the financial web:

Personal Financial Articles

Wise Bread: Why is our nation deep in debt? This article on the debt trap discusses the factors that contribute to our consumer debt load. Understanding the causes may be the first step to taking a stand against debt.

Lazy Man and Money: Just like my buddy Lazy Man, I turned one year older just a few days ago. He mentions how he was a happy recipient of free birthday food and muses about how it would probably be easy to dine out for free if you are resourceful enough.

One Mint: Manshu has been shopping for a new car lately. He’s sharing his experiences at the car dealership and being open about what sales tactics could potentially work on him! How about these tips of our own for those who are planning to buy a car?

Len Penzo: Here’s a list of stupid fees that presumably, consumers hate to pay. I agree that many of these fees just grate on your nerves. Particularly airline fees. Now if they did a better job servicing passengers, then I wouldn’t be whining so much.

The Financial Blogger: Mike talks about his painful experience going through a “homemade detox” program as he is trying to lose weight. I can commiserate, having gone through a lot of physical pain over the last 10 years (for various reasons). But losing weight? It can be tough but you just have to train the body to get used to healthier foods and exercise.

This is a post from The Smarter Wallet.

Causes of Consumer Debt, Free Birthday Food, Car Shopping: The Roundup