The 100th Carnival of Personal Finance

Wow! I don’t think that Madame X slept at all this weekend.   She has put together a huge carnival of personal finance (100 entries) for our entertainment and education.

I liked the post about what the war in Iraq is costing each of us.   Makes me even more pissed off about the whole thing.   Of course, we would still be paying the same amount of taxes without the war, but the money could be used for things that actually improved the lives of American people.

I also enjoyed the post about spendable net worth as opposed to total net worth.   The point is that you can’t use your house to retire on (unless you plan to sell and retire to a cheaper home).   If retirement is the goal, we need to be focusing on actual savings, rather than material assets.   I do include the value of our home in our net worth calculations, but it’s really just a morale boost.   We plan to stay in our “starter” home forever, and I use a low estimate of its value when I figure our net worth.   I will keep using that same number, so that the housing part of our net worth on paper will only go up as we lower the balance on our mortgage.   This post is a good reminder that having a $500,000 house does not necessarily mean that one is wealthy.

Great posts everyone!