Weekend Reading – “It’s finally here!” edition

Ta-da! Today’s the official release date for my new book–Oblivious Investing: Building Wealth by Ignoring the Noise.

You can learn more about the book here, or take a look and see what reviewers are saying.

If you’re interested, it’s available for less than $10 on Amazon.

For reference, the book is not written for the “expert investor” crowd. Rather, it’s intended primarily for investors who:

• are new to investing, or
• have been investing for a short while,  but aren’t completely confident that they’re making the right decisions.

If that describes you (or someone close to you), I’d encourage you to pick up a copy. If it doesn’t, no worries–I hope you continue to enjoy the blog.

And now on to the links!

Investing

Yielding Wealth reminds us not to treat our 401k’s like savings accounts. (That is, don’t borrow from them.)

Confessions of An Active Investor from Investing School. Even somebody who is convinced he can beat the market is pondering passive investing. Hmm…

Bad Money Advice shares his thoughts on the recent 60 Minutes piece about 401k’s.

Tim from Psy-Fi has a guest post at Monevator about psychological quirks that destroy investment returns.

Four Pillars asks whether future contributions should be included when determining asset allocation.

The Dividend Guy shares an article by Jason Zweig about lessons learned from Ben Graham.

Bad Money Advice reminds us that Dave Ramsey gets paid to recommend brokers (and thus, loaded mutual funds).

Taxes

The Tax Foundation gives us a look at precisely how little sense there is behind the tax rates of the estate tax.

Taxgirl informs us that the $250 economic stimulus checks for retirees will be mailed in May.

Other Personal Finance

Dan Royer has a guest post at Moolanomy asking “when should I start taking social security payments?”

Frugal Dad writes about tiny houses. (I love these things. Not too many of them in the city of Chicago though.)

Bargaineering explains some psychological tricks we can use to improve our finances.

Green Panda Treehouse has a guest post at Five Cent Nickel explaining how to negotiate and lower your ongoing bills. I tried it on Wednesday. Took me 48 minutes on the phone (yuck!), but I got $25 knocked off my ongoing internet/phone bill. That’s not a bad hourly rate!

Smart Family Tips reminds us to reuse rather than recyle whenever possible.

Wealth Pilgrim discusses charitable giving as the secret weapon for success.

As always, thank you for reading. And to anybody who decides to pick up a copy of the book, I hope you enjoy it.