83rd Carnival of Money Stories - Election Day Edition!

If this is your first time here, welcome! When you’ve finished reading all the great money stories, I hope you’ll come back, look around and consider subscribing.

After standing in that long line at the polls, sit back with a glass of something relaxing and enjoy all the really good reading to be found here.

Desperate to be first in line at the polls, you arrive before the sun comes up. Keeping all your candidates in mind, you dash up to the door. Seeing no one there you breathe a sigh of relief, set up your camp chair and settle in to wait. Three hours later, when the polls open, you greet the poll watcher, shove your way in the door, wait impatiently while they turn on the lights and the electronic balloting machines and, finally, cast your vote. Head held high, you stride back out to the parking lot, feeling virtuous. You unlock your car, get in, turn the key and…nothing . Oops, you were so preoccupied with deciding the course of the future that you forgot to turn off your headlights. Like Free Money Finance you understand “Why AAA is Worth the Annual Fee”. You flip out your cell phone, make the call and, within a short time you are on the road again!

Are you having an election night party to celebrate (or commiserate) over the outcome? Take Di$tilled Rose’s experience with A “Very Pricey Chocolate Cake” to heart and stick to your list when you head to the store for your supplies!

The Digerati Life puts a human face on all those foreclosure signs with, “Foreclosure Alley’s Personal Stories of Financial Loss: The Aftermath of Foreclosure”. No matter at whom you point the finger, the mortgage crises probably sounded the death knell for the current administration.

The elections are over and the results are in. [Insert either candidate’s name here!] has won. The world will shortly end. We’ve all lost our jobs. While standing in the breadlines we begin to think of new ways to make money. Hopefully, before we lost the ability to afford Internet service we read My Family’s Money’s story about “Learning Entrepreneur Skills From Kids”. We recall the article and, with a renewed sense of purpose, we head home to dig in our backyards.

Even if your candidate wins and manages to fulfill his promise to help by lowering gas prices, Blueprint for Financial Prosperity wants you to remember that “OPEC Despises You, Stop Buying So Much Oil”.

We’re all worrying about our retirement accounts these days and will be anxiously watching the stock market’s reaction to who will be moving into the White House on January 20th. Green Panda Treehouse has been wondering, “How My Retirement is Currently Doing”. I’m sure she’ll be checking again soon.

Florida has six amendments on the ballot this year. Figuring out the convoluted language of an amendment can be tricky. Figuring out your finances can be painful. That exercise recently cost Big Ass Superstar $75 when he “Took Another Shot at Quicken”.

How will the new administration manage to get our hugely upside down budget under control? Maybe the new president should take some time between now and January to check out Debt Prison for some pointers. Debt Prison managed to reduce their debt by 80% in two years and explains how in “5 Ways to Escape Credit Card Debt”. Adding no more interest, and rounding the debt off at $10 trillion we’ll only have to come up with $1,095,810,410.00 a day to match that record. No problem!

Down through history, some of our elected representatives have paid a little more attention to our country’s financial situation than others. Perhaps they need to take a page from Living Almost Large’s book with ”Managing Joint Finances” and have a quiet annual dinner to discuss the budget. Maybe the inattentive half could try managing the finances of a committee or two, just for practice.

Two Pennies Earned has a story about “Signing Loan Documents for Our House”, which outlines how she tried to be careful and well prepared and was still rushed to sign-off on error filled documents. She wanted everything to be correct but she didn’t want to delay her closing. I wonder if that’s how the bailout bill managed to pass.

Joe at Penny Pinchers compiled several video stories detailing the life of “Dave, The Cheapest Man in Canada”. Dave’s Farm looks like a giant junkyard to me. I certainly wouldn’t want our country to look like that but perhaps we could selectively follow Dave’s lead in learning to reuse some of the stuff we already have instead of always buying new stuff from some other country.

Funny About Money explains that good neighbors make good neighborhoods in “Hallowe’en: It’s the neighborhood”. A good neighborhood positively affects the value of the homes therein. Is it too much of a stretch to think our current mortgage crises says anything about what good neighbors we are? I don’t know, but most of the other countries don’t seem to like us much these days.

After the passing of the bailout bill, the government is spending a lot of money buying bank stocks. Maybe they can pick up some pointers from Me, My Kid and Life, who writes about “Buying Stocks in a Volatile Market”.

Intelligent Speculation for the Small Investor explains, “Why I think we need Obama as president”. By the time you read this perhaps we’ll have a new commander-in-chief. Who will it be?

Both of the presidential candidates have expressed some consternation about the rising cost of obtaining a college education. Each candidate has a different approach for addressing the issue. I’m sure The Chief Family Officer’s dentist hopes that whoever is elected will help him with “Paying for a Private University Education”.

Greener Pastures: Personal Finance asks, “Would You Buy an American Car”? Evidently GP’s husband bought a GMC truck in 2004, which is becoming more of a liability every day. She believes American car makers are churning out faulty products. Did you know they are now lining up for a bailout? After 9/11 we bailed out the airlines. Recently, banks, insurance companies and brokerage firms all made the cut. Will the new administration green light our big car companies as well? I wonder if private individuals and small businesses will be the only ones told to sink or swim.

Economic Crunch explains why “Debt Consolidation was Not The Right Answer” for her family. One size definitely does not fit all when we are looking for the answers to our problems. That’s probably why it’s so hard to figure out for whom to vote.

All over my blogroll, people are writing about Quicken. I didn’t know why until I read The Sun’s Financial Diary’s “Quicken Online Review: A FREE Online Money Management Tool”. Evidently it’s free to try and $2.99 a month if you decide to keep using it. Wouldn’t it be great if we could try the plans our politicians are touting before we decide to buy? How many do you think we’d choose to keep?

Speaking of buying, The Smarter Wallet has been doing some back to school shopping. In “How to Shop for Back to School Supplies”, she talks about where to put your dollars for the most impact. What if your budget was $7 billion (or $10 trillion)? If you shopped carefully, I bet you could make that go really far.

At last, it’s your turn! You go into the booth, close the curtains and review your ballot. You’ve done your research and you know which boxes to mark. You work swiftly, emerge and go on your way. Across town, you run into Starbucks, reach into your pocket to pay for your mocha latte and come up empty! Oh no, you must have left your wallet in the voting booth! What to do? Who to call? Mighty Bargain Hunter had to figure it all out and gives us some tips in “What I did when my wife lost her wallet”.

Personal Finance Analyst wants us to learn from his home buying experiences, which he relates in “IRS Tax Liens: What Legal Issues Should Be Considered When Buying Your First Home?” Shifting foundations, broken promises, a lack of full disclosure? What does that remind you of?

Credit Withdrawal has a very sad story about “Hiding Bills and Other Stupid Considerate Things To Do”. Keeping people in the dark about what is happening in their life is always a bad choice whether on a personal or a national level. In order to make good decisions we have to have all the facts.

Are you “Feeling the Need to Spend”? Harvesting Dollars is. Does anyone in Washington, D.C., not feel this way?

“Is Your Life Insurance Company Stable?” The issue of stability wasn’t enough to keep AIG from partying hard on our money. Money and Such is wondering how his insurance company is holding up.

According to Penny Jobs.com, “Larry Burkett Was Right” in his predictions for our present. I wonder which of the current prognosticators are going to be proven right about our future?

No More Spending.net is combining the envelope system and some tenets of the Automatic Millionaire to get her finances turned around. She wants to know, “How Simple Are Your Finances”? She’s making impressive inroads into her debt, with a plan to be debt free in 2009. Who else is going to be able to say that?

A lot of people are facing layoffs right now. We’re all worried about what’s coming down the road. We know that things will get better eventually but eventually can be a long way off when you’ve just lost your job. Not The Jet Set talks about his experience with layoffs in, “How to: Survive Layoffs”.

How I Save Money.net is keeping track of expenses with spreadsheets, online tracking software and judicious use of ING accounts and explains how in “Revising My Budget”. Spreadsheets, hmm…
It could work!

Try though I might, I was too feeble to think of any election analogy for KCLau’s Money Tips’ story of “Financial Considerations for New Parents in Malaysia”. No matter how different we think we are, some things are the same everywhere. Having a baby is expensive; nevertheless, most of us think it’s worth it!

I hope you enjoyed this week’s big Carnival of Money Stories. Please be sure and post a link to this week’s carnival on your site. Also don’t forget to Stumble It, Digg It, Tipp It, Del.icio.us err it, Add it to the Mixx, Twitter It, however you roll, it would be appreciated. More traffic to the carnival helps all of us.

If you haven’t voted and the polls are still open – GET OUT THERE!!!!

Note: The Carnival of Money Stories is a tough carnival to compile because, in addition to ensuring that the submissions relate to the subject, the host is also charged with ensuring they are stories. This determination can be a bit subjective, which makes it tough. As an aside, it also makes it tough to know what to submit to this carnival! If your article was not included in this carnival it either was not a story or it was not about money. Although it was hard for me to reject any of the entries, some just didn’t seem to fit the criteria.

Finally, on this election day, I had to include the Obama v. McCain Dance-off. No matter which side you are on, it’s just too funny to miss!


Submit your blog article to the next edition of the Carnival of Money Stories using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.