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Another great week of posts, everyone!  I enjoyed reading them all.  Some of you made picking the posts to share this week very difficult, because everything you wrote was so good.  Of course, that's why I also link to your blogs, and not only one particular blog post. 

If you are unfamiliar with any of the blogs below, I highly suggest you check them out.  Have fun reading!

Let's face it -- when your surroundings are more organized, your life is more organized. The same holds true with finances. Creating a physical area in your home where you can store financial materials and track your financial progress is an essential step in the financial planning process.

Order Out of Chaos

At some point in my elementary school career, my mom took me to our small town's local bank and helped me open a savings account.  I had earned money off and on through my earlier years helping her out with her home-based wedding cake business, and it was time to move from keeping loose change and dollar bills in the piggy bank to depositing that money into a real bank.  It was a pretty neat experience.  I got the little brown book with my life's savings totaled in it, and every so often I would bring in a bit more to add to that total.  I kept at it, saving some here, taking a bit out here an

To continue our series on Relationships and Money, let's get down to brass tacks: how to talk about money in the first place. It's a point of contention for many couples, and the subject has caused countless broken marriages. Let's find out how to step gingerly on the minefield of money...

Why is Money Difficult to Talk About?

I'll never forget the fun, lovable characters from the Baby-sitters Club book series. Kristy, Claudia, Stacy—we all had a favorite. If you’re not familiar with the series, what those witty adolescents did was form a club of babysitters. Then they capitalized upon each others' strengths to help them make it through the trials and tribulations of three things: being a teenager, being a babysitter, and making money.

Most economists claim that the economy is turning around, however slowly, and many people are considering purchasing a home. The harshness of the economic downturn has left a wide variety of potential home buyers: those relocated by a change in work, previous owners who have had to change residences, first-time buyers, etc. While these individuals, families and couples may all come from different lifestyles, they may also have the same question: Is now a good time for me to buy a house?

Can you believe it’s already Sunday? It still seems like last week Wednesday to me. At this rate, it won’t be long and we’ll be celebrating a new year already! Okay, so maybe I’m getting ahead of myself a little bit.

Over the course of this last week, I read many great blog posts:

In today's Internet age, the concept of reading a book may seem positively quaint. It's still the case however that to get the kind of broad foundational knowledge you need as a beginner, a book can still be the perfect starting point. So what are the best books for investing beginners?

We love this list of best investing books for beginners. The first book on the list in particular is very useful for those trying to get their head around investing.

For years, I had heard about my brother, who is some years older than me, and his high school buddies meeting once a year for a long weekend guys' trip.  One year it was in Vegas, another it was skiing in Colorado, and another was the sunny shores of Florida.  Then, I heard that Nancy, my sister-in-law, did the same sort of thing with a group of her friends - an annual girls' retreat of sorts. 

As many of you know, I was raised by a poor single mother. What I have not yet mentioned is that my mother was in college during some of my most formative years, and she took an interest in feminism while I was still playing with dolls.