My post on being a solar cell skeptic was included in this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance hosted at Money Crashers.  Here are a couple of other posts I enjoyed:

• Madison at My Dollar Plan wrote about a calculator at Vanguard.com that compares the cost of an ETF vs. a mutual fund.  It’s a particularly thorough calculator that includes, for example, the bid-ask spread on the ETF purchase.  Now if only the calculator was available at a more general site that included more than just Vanguard’s funds.  (Hint:  Are you listening Google?)

• The Canadian Finance Blog had a solid post with financial tips for soon-to-be-parents.  As the Mom of a young son, the best suggestion I have to expectant parents is to not go overboard in buying stuff (Canadian’s tip #5).  When in doubt, resist the urge to buy.  Babies need a lot less than you might think — a few clothes and toys, but mostly your bountiful love and attention.  They grow out of the baby stage quickly, so thoughtful friends and family might consider buying books or toys that will be useful in 6 or 12 months.

My writeup on over-amped CD’s was included in the Money Hacks Carnival hosted last week at Green Panda Treehouse.  Other notable articles include:

• Mrs. Accountability’s first hand account with Credit Karma and tracking her credit rating.  I’ve been considering trying Credit Karma, but I just hate the idea of putting more of my personal financial information out there on the internet.  Maybe I should just get over it.

• Adam Baker wrote a thorough guest post over at Get Rich Slowly on 9 Ways You Can Knock the Socks off Your Next Landlord.  But really Adam, a rental resume?  I guess it would help in an unusual situation (like when you were trying to land a short-term lease in New Zealand), but it seems a bit overboard for more pedestrian situations.  Regarding rental situations, I’ll add a tip on getting back your deposit:  clean up a bit and then spray the better part of a can of Lysol in the apartment.  And then leave for awhile so you don’t have to breathe the stuff.  It’s never failed that the landlord walks in, takes a whiff, and is impressed.  Maybe the harsh chemicals temporarily blinded them to the bit of crud I left on the baseboards.  Whatever.  It’s worked every time for me.

• I read Bucksome’s post on the benefits of business travel with extra interest, as I am currently on a three-week exile business trip in California.  My favorite personal experience of the trip was introducing a colleague to the joy of tidepooling.  Once she poked a sea anemone and saw it react, she was hooked.  I apologize to all the sea creatures she has subsequently perturbed.

Image credit: brockvicky at Flickr.

Full Disclosure: I have accounts at Vanguard; otherwise, no positions.

Tonight I have a little luxury of time, so I thought I’d peruse the web and write about what’s out there.

My first stop is the Carnival of Money Hackers, hosted this week at the ABC’s of Investing, which included my article on the Three-Minute Portfolio.

1.  The host has a post that will interest you the most, as he takes you through the ABC’s of REIT’s.  I’ve been interested in real estate investment trusts; because, as the posts points out, they are said to have a low correlation to the stock market.  I thought I’d take a quick look at this bit of “common wisdom,” by graphing the return of an REIT ETF that he suggests, VNQ (blue), against the S&P 500 index (yellow).  Here is the graph from Morningstar:

They look rather strongly correlated to me.  Now perhaps this is an unfair comparison; because, the overall markets were so strongly affected by housing and mortgage-related issues over the last several years.  But it’s not clear to me that they are truly uncorrelated — I think this will take some more studying to convince me.

2.  OneMint compiled a useful collection of China-focused ETF’s.  I’m not sure I want to hold such a region-specific fund, but it seems like a good list and, overall, a good blog.

3.  FourPillars wrote about the possible “Cash for Clunker Appliances” program in which you can turn in old appliances for new Energy Star rated ones.  I’ ll nitpick that he didn’t include a link to a government website with a definitive description.  Here it is.  The DOE site also has a list of all of the Department’s recent initiatives to both develop new sources of energy and to use what we have more efficiently.  It’s really quite an impressive list.

4.  Matt at Debt Free Adventure wrote about his foray into worm composting.  I especially like that he made his own composter inexpensively rather than shelling out cash for an off-the-rack version.  I’m a huge fan of composting.  I long ago gave up my gym membership in favor of a little sweat equity in my garden.  Plus, it’s more fun hanging out in my backyard than a sweaty gym.

I also recommend reading:

5.  Jim Blankenship’s post on Index Investing over at his most excellent blog, Getting Your Financial Ducks In A Row.  He tells a compelling “story” about how success statistics for mutual funds can be manipulated.

I also enjoyed the video of Warren Buffett giving investment advice to Girls Scouts while eating a Blizzard.  Never too young to start talking about retirement, I say.  I thought the girls did a great job, too, asking good questions.  Frankly, I’d be pretty nervous sitting there.  I hope they at least awarded him an honorary Junior Girl Scout Cookie Biz merit badge.

Jean at Keener Financial Planning let us know about a series of free Webinars sponsored by NAPFA.  Great idea, but they’re all scheduled at 1pm (ET) on workdays — so that eliminates most of us from participating.  Hopefully they’ll be available to replay later.

Frank Curmudgeon at Bad Money Advice frames the discussion of when to tap into your Social Security benefits in terms of annuities.  I would have used the price of inflation-indexed annuities instead of conventional immediate annuities.  After all, the Social Security payment stream would rise both with the numbers of years that you delay the start of payments and with inflation.  The analysis would be similar and would most likely result in the same answer (the intuitive one you would arrive at without all that math) — if you expect to outlive the average life expectancy, delay the start of payments as long as possible.