Don't Quit Your Day Job…

Our article “On Cigarette Laws and Pigovian Taxes, Part I” was hosted in the Money Hacks carnival for this week. Go check out the carnival, and the Moolonomy site!

The article “Use Irrationality Against Yourself!” is hosted at the Carnival of Financial Planning for this week, over on CashMoneyLife. There are some interesting articles there, check it out.

Go check out “Go Home Already! Congress vs. the Stock Market”, hosted on ChristianPF for this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance.

Our article “Know the Signs! Pyramids and Ponzis…” is featured on the 101st edition of the Carnival of Financial Planning! Visit the carnival, and the host, Watson Inc.

Our article “Jevon’s Paradox, and More Ado About Gas Taxes” was featured in the OneMint Economy and Your Finances Carnival. Go check out the carnival, and the OneMint blog.

“Debt: Invest in Yours” was a featured article at LivingAlmostLarge, which is hosting the 201st Carnival of Debt Reduction. The site’s host, LAL, poses an excellent question, however: “…if you pay off debt with a windfall, how do you know you won’t do it again?” If you know the answer, post a comment over there.

“Putting a Mortgage in Reverse” is included in the 74th edition of the Money Hacks Carnival, over at Suburban Dollar. Check it out!

Our article, “Investing in the 79th Element”, is hosted over at Man vs. Debt for the Carnival of Personal Finance! Go check it out, the theme is New Zealand!

Visit Darwin’s Finance for the 212th Edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance! Our article, “Are California IOUs Constitutional?” is a featured article for this week. Keeping with the emotions of the 4th of July, the theme is countries which have declared independence.

Check out this week’s Money Hacks carnival, posted at the Personal Finance Playbook!. Our article, “The Failure of Dollar Cost Averaging” is hosted this week.

The article “If You Don’t Have One… Get One” has been featured in the 211th edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance! Check out the carnival, and the hosting site, Green Panda Treehouse. The theme is a good one too…

“Of Risk and Men”, an article about the state (and the state of the budget) of California, was featured in the 71st edition of the Money Hacks Carnival. Check out the carnival, and the host, The Canadian Finance Blog.

Check out the 210th edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance. They are linking to the article “Eggs and Baskets”. Find it under the category ‘Bald Bull Does Bull Market Investing.’

Carnival of the Capitalists features the article “The Minimum Wage Mistake.” Check out this week’s edition at the CotC site.

One of the more interesting questions that has cropped up recently is whether the Roth or traditional 401(k) is the superior savings vehicle. Most people know that if you expect your tax rate to increase in retirement, a Roth is better, and a Traditional 401(k) is better in the case you believe it will decrease. I would like to show you some of the considerations where this may not be the whole story. I am not a financial planner; I just like to think through these sorts of decisions on my own. The following is my judgment of the situation, and you should discuss your own situation with a financial planner. Hopefully you can use this information for your own purposes. Also, if the middle is too dry, skip to the end. Enjoy!

The Health Savings Account, or HSA was introduced in 2003 and has revealed itself to be a solid choice in saving money on health insurance. Beyond the obvious saving advantage that comes from empowering consumers to pay for most of their everyday medical expenses, the HSA also has a hefty tax benefit. HSAs are free from federal tax when accumulating, compounding and distributing money (although some states, like California do tax it). Of course, the tax benefit is only when using the HSA for qualified medical expenses. After the beneficiary turns 65, non-qualified distributions are taxed at the normal tax rate, just like a traditional 401(k) or IRA.