This is our weekly roundup, where we share some interesting posts written by personal finance bloggers we follow. As always, when we list a post in this roundup we stick with our favorite themes: setting up a budget, household expenses, lower debt, and general personal finance topics that can aid in reaching financial goals. We hope that you enjoy the insights of these blog posts!

Lower Debt

New Rule: Pay Only The Minimum On Your Credit Cards. - This post informs us that Suze Orman apparently also has caught on to the fact that paying off debt and diminishing one’s cash position may not be the best thing to do these days.


Life Insurance

How (and Why) to Buy Life Insurance - Nora wrote a basic guide to life insurance: it covers the two main types of life insurance policies (term and whole-life), the reasons why you should get life insurance, the right amount of coverage, and gives us a way to actually buy a life insurance policy.


Investing

When Your Broker Account Has Problems - This post sheds another light on a technical problem a prominent online brokerage encountered on April 1st. It also tries to answer the question whether it is still okay to open up or maintain an account with that brokerage.

How to Calculate Your Net Worth - This post gives us a step-by-step guide how to calculate our net worth on our own.


Economics

Not Just Another Recession - How This Economic Crisis Stacks Up - Philip of Weakonomics compares the current state of the US economy with how things were in 1920, the start of the decade that ended with the Great Depression. He also gives us hope that we are in a better position now since we have additional tools and institutions that did not exist 80 years ago. (We are also hopeful that the US leadership is as good as we can hope for. For one, Bernanke’s area of expertise is the Great Depression. He is most likely to know what went wrong then and what we can do differently now.)

Unemployment Numbers - If you ever wonder what the unemployment numbers actually measure, read this post. It explains the different types of measures.


Miscellaneous

Finding Balance Between Time and Money - This post points out that there is more to life and happiness than money - like time spent with others. We like this kind of post because it reflects the theme of our own blog, that is, money is simply a means to another end.

Talk to Others About Financial Decisions - Jim of Bargaineering - gives us the very good advice to discuss financial decisions with others. This forces us to delay our decision a little bit, which may prevent us from doing something rash and stupid.

Tags: life insurance, lower debt