What do extra loan payments, toilet paper, and Monopoly have in common?

One of the best parts of the weekly personal finance carnivals, including this week’s carnival hosted by WiseBread, it the wide variety of personal finance topics covered.  In addition, I always take the time to enjoy an article or two that I’ve been meaning to write myself but just haven’t gotten to.  This week was no exception, even if my post about The New Frugality made the cut. Here are my three favorites of the week:

J. Money from Budgets Are Sexy presents Paying extra towards your loans now, goes a long way later! This is so true it hurts. How much pain?  As J. Money says, “It’s like kickin’ compound interest in its head and getting away with it ”  How could you not enjoy?

Another favorite:  Save Money By Buying the “Good” Toilet Paper by That One Caveman. Two very important lessons from this title. First, you can never go wrong putting “toilet paper” in a blog posting title, something I learned a while back when I wrote Toilet Paper As an Economic Indicator last fall – still is a bizarre way to look at the world.  Second, sometimes paying for quality is actually cheaper than paying for quantity.  (Amazingly, this was also the theme of the toast my brother gave for my wife and I at our wedding, but that’s another story for another day.)

Money Lessons from Monopoly is another wonderful article.  Free Money Finance reminds us that Monopoly is a great teacher not only of the importance of cash-flow (how much fun is it to mortgage our properties?) but also of luck (the frustration of your opponent consistently missing your hotels as he marches around the board).

Quick FYI: The Total Candor web site was featured in the Philadelphia Inquirer over the weekend for savings help.  Did you see it?  If not, see it now.

Tags: saving