Weekend Link Love

So apparently a bunch of high profile personal finance bloggers spent a bunch of money to go to an elite blogging retreat.  Then blogged about how awesome it was.  News Flash!  Expensive vacations in exotic places are usually awesome (unless you’re the unfortunate person who contracts one of those exotic diseases).  Some other bloggers probably got married and spent a ton of money on it.  That seems to be common these days.  Also, at least 12,000 posts were written about how to save pennies on something or other.

If you’d rather not waste your time, read the below.  Your net worth will thank you.

Links!

This week I recommend that you check out the following links.  Presented in the order that I came across them.

1. DQYDJ follows up on his post about savings rates with a calculator that helps you get an estimate of when you can retire vs your savings rate.  DQYDJ’s calculators have a history of being awesome.  This one will not disappoint.
2. Financially Integrated wonders just how much emphasis you should put on stock valuation.  More than zero obviously, but just how much more.  Check out the Integrator’s article for his thoughts on the matter.
3. Dividend Growth Investor elaborates on how chasing yield for the short term can hurt your long term income and capital gains growth.
4. The Weakonomist (I don’t give this fellow anywhere near as much link love as I should) has a great couple of posts about the problems with all of those studies that compare household income over time.  First he presents the data.  Then he explains the problem in his follow up post.  Never trust a study unless you’ve looked at the data.  The fact of the matter is that the news agency reporting the study hasn’t looked at the data and isn’t interested in doing so.  All they want is a headline and a story that grab the reader’s attention.  The actual accuracy of the analysis is secondary.  I know critical thinking is going out of style, but sometimes being a dinosaur is the right approach to take.
5. Control Your Cash features a great guest post from Jason at Hull Financial Planning about being both a renter and a landlord.  Despite what you are probably thinking, they are not a mutually exclusive combination.

 

Stock Analyses

1. Dividend Growth Investor explores whether any advertising companies that pay dividends are worth investing in.
2. The College Investor takes a look at International Business Machines (IBM).

 

Readers:  How did your week go?