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Money Hacks Carnival #105: The All Government, All the Time Edition

Welcome to the 105th edition of the Money Hacks Carnival: The All Government, All the Time Edition. Deep in the bowels of tax season, it’s not surprising that tax- and government-related articles are popular.

Editor’s Picks

LeanLifeCoach presents What Is Your Learning Style? This is an important lesson for anyone trying to teach. My main side hustle involves teaching. We try to address each learning style to engage all of our students. I’m a visual learner. In school, I always read ahead and I’ve never been able to focus while someone reads to me.

Consumer Boomer presents The Best IRA for You. Holy Educational Post, Batman! Be careful, you’ll learn something if you read this post.

PT presents How to Find Free Stuff Online Without Getting Spammed. I like free things. I hate spam. I’m a part of the target audience of this post. I use an active Gmail account for getting freebies. The spam filter can’t be beat.

Fanny Seto presents 5 Tips on How to Get a Job in this Economy. I’m glad I haven’t had to deal with this recently. If you’re unemployed, take the opportunity to develop a hobby or explore other opportunities. You may be out of work, but that means you have the one thing you can’t replace: time. Use it wisely.

Taxes or Feeding the Monster

Jeff Rose presents How to File Taxes with Your 1099s. All you’ve ever wanted to know (and more!) about the 1099.

Paul Williams presents Deduct Haiti Earthquake Relief Donations on Your 2009 Tax Return. If you itemize, make sure you include any donations to Haiti relief.

freefrombroke presents TurboTax Online 2009 Overview. I love TurboTax. I use it every year and have done so since I discovered I wasn’t capable of figuring out the Earned Income Credit.

Four Pillars presents What Happens If You Lose Your W2 Form?. Keeping track of your tax documents is always important, but what do you do if that doesn’t work?

Matthew Paulson presents Troublesome Tax Myths. Taxes aren’t optional. Ask Wesley Snipes.

Working for a Living or Earning the Monster’s Feed

Darwin presents 10 Highest Paying Degrees 2010 – Best Majors in Demand Now. The part that doesn’t surprise me is that the hard sciences pay well. Art-as-science comes with a smaller paycheck. Hmm….

J. Money presents Life in Grad School Doesn’t Have to Suck…All Your Money. I’ve didn’t make it to grad school, but I did work my way through college with a small baby. It’s good to have a support network.

The Financial Blogger presents Getting Ready for Another Purchase!. I’ve never given any thought to buying a blog. It’s a fascinating read. Make sure you read the related posts to get the full value.

Banking, Credit, and Investing or He Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune

GLBL presents What to Expect From Mortgage Rate Trends for 2010. I learn something every day. Define “intraday”.

pkamp3 presents Cutting Up the Card. It may be caused by a down economy, but less consumer debt isn’t a bad thing.

D4L presents 20 Dividend Stocks Riding The Tsunami Of Dividend Increases. My first dividend-paying stock paid me 16 cents once. Stocks kind of scare me. In my mind, they’re not much different than a slot machine, so I don’t buy much. I think I had 20 shares of that first stock.

Personal Finance or The Government Doesn’t Have to Be Involved

Matt_SF presents Personal Finance Equations You Should Know: the Cash Flow Equation. If equations make you smile, this is the post for you.

Craig Ford presents 101 Ways To Improve Your Marriage Money Relationship. This goes beyond finance and dips firmly into happy relationship territory.

Hedy presents My Better Business Bureau experience. I’ve found that the sincere threat of a Better Business Bureau complaint can be effective, too.

2 Cents presents Economics: Your Personal Finance Weather Forecast. As a sci-fi junkie, I love the quote at the beginning of the article.

Dodging Taxes and Anarchism

Nope. No submissions in this category.

That’s all. While you’re here, don’t forget to subscribe to my rss feed and follow me on twitter.

Selling Your Home: The Real Estate Agent

Finance

If you are not able or willing to sell your home yourself, you’ll need to find a real estate agent. A realtor is someone who deals with all of the hassles involved in selling your home in exchange for a fee of up to 7% of the selling price.

The hassles include marketing, an objective price analysis, advertising on the internet and in newspapers, providing a yard sign, negotiating the sale price, reviewing and filling out the contracts, and navigating the entire process for you. The aren’t meaningless duties, so make sure you are getting what you pay for. You need to find the right realtor for you.

The key to to ask questions, particularly the right questions. You can ask the wrong ones if you’d like, but they tend not to help much.

Helpful questions include:

“Can I call your previous clients?” If the answer is no, run away! If the answer is yes, get the list and call them.
“Have you sold any homes near here recently?” Get the names and numbers of the customers and call them. Find out how it went and what they wish would have happened differently. If the realtor hasn’t sold nearby homes recently, keep looking.
“Will you put your sales strategy in writing?” If it’s not in writing, you may be left paying the full commission, without getting the full promised service.
“What will you tell a potential buyer that wants to negotiate?” Make sure you and your realtor are on the same page.

Now for some secrets that realtors will not volunteer.

The selling fee is negotiable. If you live in a popular development, or if nearby homes have sold quickly, you should be able to get your fee reduced a couple of points.
You don’t have to sign an exclusive listing agreement. With an exclusive agreement, you will pay the realtor a fee if the house sells. Period. With a non-exclusive agreement, you can list with several agents and only pay the one who actually sells your house. If you find the buyer, you won’t pay a selling commission at all.

Selling your house can be intimidating and realtors are there to make the task easier for you. Have you had any problems with real estate agents?

Sunday Roundup

Misc

I just realized that I screwed up on Friday’s post and accidentally scheduled it for July 31 instead of July 1. Sorry about that.

I am pretty excited about tomorrow’s post. I’m going to…well, that should wait for tomorrow. It’ll be fun, though.

Best Posts

It’s a basic economic principle: If you want to sell less of something, charge more for it. That works for labor costs, too. Raising the minimum wage, especially when there is a recession, will only cause less employment.

This is a neat business idea. Sometimes, a small business wants a mailing address that isn’t the owner’s home address.

Foreign CDs seem tempting. You can make a decent return in India. Just make sure it’s a legit bank, instead of the “Cayman Island” banks that exist just to collect wire transfers from the US.

In a high-tax, high-regulation environment, the underground economy will thrive, every time. Working for cash and no paperwork can be tempting.

Here’s a sample email to help you buy a car.

Carnivals I’ve Rocked and Guest Posts I’ve Rolled

Shattering Taboos was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.

Thank you! If I missed anyone, please let me know. I’ve been slacking off on carnival submissions lately.

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Have a great week!

Selling Your Car

Finance

: English: Jalopy car in Joshua Tree National Park in Hidden Valley Campground (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When it’s time to replace your car, most people focus on the new car, instead of the old, but that is ignoring real money. Your old car–unless it has disintegrated–still has value. Sometimes, it’s just time to ask yourself, “When should I sell my car?”

When you’re looking to sell your car (like with We Will Buy Your Car), you generally have several options:

Tow & crush. If your car has been wrecked, doesn’t run, or is just old and beat up, you may be stuck with calling a junkyard and accepting $50 for them to pick up your car and crush it for scrap.
Trade it in. This is probably the least hassle, but–other than #1–doesn’t pay well. Dealerships are willing to pay something under what they will get at a wholesale auction, which is quite a bit less than the blue book value.
Sell it yourself. Now you’re thinking, “He’s going to buy my car! Oh, bother.” It can be a pain, but it’s also the best way to get a decent price for your wheels.

When you sell your car, there are a few things to keep in mind, much like when you sell something on Craigslist.

Don’t be alone. There are bad people in the world, but they don’t like witnesses. Bad things are much less likely to happen if you have company.
Know your price. Specifically, know three price: your dream price, the price that would make you happy, and the absolute lowest price you are willing to accept. Make sure you figure these numbers out ahead of time. Know what you are comfortable with before it comes time to close the deal.
Check IDs. The buyer is going to want to test-drive your car. That’s fine, but you want to make sure you know who is driving off in your car. “Officer, Sumdood took my car. He was wearing jeans.” That won’t get your car back.
Clean it up. Get the car detailed before you show it to a potential buyer. A sparkling-clean car will almost always bring in a few hundred extra dollars. It’s well worth the expense.

Following this plan should make the sale go as smoothly as possible and bring you the most possible money.

Readers, what have you done to dispose of an old car?

This is a sponsored post written to provide some insight into the world of used car retail.

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