Oct 15th, 2009
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Linklist 091014: Probate and a Deathwatch
My thanks to David at Credit Card Offers IQ for selecting my post as an Editor’s Pick for this week’s Money Hacks Carnival. Well, “Editor’s Pick” is my term — he categorized the top tier as “VISA Black.” After all, it is a credit card site.
I liked several other posts at this Carnival:
- Mrs. Accountability at Out of Debt Again measured the energy consumed by some of her refrigerators and freezers (she seems to have several of each). I am amazed at how efficient the newer model is. She gets bonus points for collecting her own data, and I appreciate the extra data point taken “with the ice maker turned off.” I’m pretty sure the older appliances are eligible for the current “Cash for Clunkers” appliance program. If she’s going to continue using the additional units, I’d strongly encourage her to update. (But do you really need two refrigerators and two freezers?)
- Ray at Financial Highway wrote a good three-part article on the probate process and its costs. Probate is a topic that most of us avoid like ____ and taxes. It’s good to know what really is beyond the end of the tunnel, past the bright light, well, at least for your heirs.
Beyond the Carnival, I found more recent posts of interest:
- Ron at Invest With An Edge maintains an ETF Deathwatch List, including an ETF that shorts platinum that trades less than $1,000 per day. How can you keep such a fund open for 17 months? It reminds me of Jim’s story over at Get Your Financial Ducks in A Row of loser mutual funds and how they are merged into winning funds to keep up appearances. I’ve never thought of platinum as fodder, but the E-TRACS CMCI Short Platinum Excess Return ETN (PTD) seems to qualify.
- Tadas at Abnormal Returns provides more insight into ETF’s with his post on how larger ETF’s can have lower expense ratios even if they charge higher management fees. The answer: Larger funds have lower average transaction costs.
Full Disclosure: No positions.
Image credit: Miss Barbara at Flickr.
Affine Tips Feed
Thanks for mentioning my post in yours today. Just for the record, we have two freezers and two refrigerators because we also have chickens and dairy goats. One fridge is for milk and eggs, and my fermented food products (sauerkraut, kefir, kombucha ala Weston Price/Nourishing Traditions). One of the freezers is to store meat when we butcher, and also frozen milk. I remember years back thinking to myself how ridiculous (and wasteful!) it was for my mom to have a refrigerator and freezer inside the house and a “spare” fridge on the porch. My sister has had two refrigerators as long as I can remember. Now I’m worse than they ever were! That’s some karma for me, lol!! Thanks again for the mention!
Thanks for the clarification, Mrs. Accountability. Sounds like you do need the additional capacity. Best wishes to you, your family, and the chickens and goats!
Thanks for the mention, Helen, as well as the links – always nice to see what other folks are reading!