Carnivals of Fun For Personal Finance Posts #3

This week a there have been some great personal finance carnivals out there.  I encourage you all to stop by and take a look at all the great posts.  I guarantee you'll have hours of enjoyable reading and find some new favorite posts.  Teaspoon Finance is proud to have a post participating in the following Carnivals.  The Teaspoon Finance post participating this week at these carnivals was: Do You Have an Emergency Fund? - If Cash is King, Then Don't Neglect His Good Looking Brother, the Prince of Credit!

Carnival of Personal Finance
This weeks Carnival of Personal Finance #114 is hosted at The Simple Dollar.  Trent at The Simple Dollar spent a ton of time reviewing the 60+ posts submitted and choosing his editors choice posts.  I confess that I haven't had a chance to read all the posts, yet.  I plan to by this weekend.  I did go through and read all the titles that caught my eye and from those, read many many of the posts.  From those, I found 2 that are my favorites from the Carnival of Personal Finance #114. I covered these in: Carnivals of Fun For Personal Finance Posts.

101st Carnival of Debt Reduction
This weeks 101st Carnival of Debt Reduction is hosted at I've Paid For This Twice Already...  Paidtwice reviewed 25 posts submitted and I'm very excited that Paidtwice picked Teaspoon Finance's post as their favorite!  I've reviewed all of the posts at Paidtwice and I'm sure you're going to find some great info and new insights into personal finance in one or more of the 25 posts.  You can find more about my favorites at: Carnivals of Fun For Personal Finance Posts #2

Festival of Frugality
This weeks 88th Festival of Frugality - About Me Edition is hosted at The Happy Rock.  The Happy Rock reviewed 35 posts submitted and you can visit to find all of them.  I was happy to have my post in their carnival.  I read through all the posts and here are my favorites from the Festival of Frugality:

• Why We Shouldn’t Be Careless With Automatic Bill Pay and Why The Pentagon Should Really Use FedEx For Shipping by MoneyNing
  I liked this post, because it served as a reminder of one of those pesky things that I keep on my mental to do list, but never really get to regularly enough!  Stop by and check this one out.  Make sure you're not making someone rich, by being too trusting and lazy.
• eight ideas for saving money on books by plonkee money
  Another great post to save some money on something that 'really' adds up, books!  Like plonkee, I find myself reading the covers and a couple of pages, and then grab this book and that book.  Then when I get home with them, I'm not always satisfied.  This is a great reminder for me to take a little more time browsing at the bookstore (they really encourage it with all the comfy couches and chairs).  Also, get my library card going again.  I haven't visited my library in the last 3 years, that's not good.
• Baby Steps to Wealth: My $2 a Day Challenge by Frugal Duchess
  I always love reading about how folks incorporate baby step approach to all areas of self improvement.  This is another great example.
  

OK, I think I'm sticking to 1 carnival a week from now on.  This is a lot of reading, I'm enjoying it.  I just need some recovery time to process all these great ideas that I have rolling around in my head after the reading fest.  I encourage you to stop by the carnival sites and read through and find some new favorite posts of your own.

I think that's it for this week :- ), otherwise ... I'll be following up with any additional Carnivals that Teaspoon Finance was a part of with my post: Do You Have an Emergency Fund? - If Cash is King, Then Don't Neglect His Good Looking Brother, the Prince of Credit!

Update (Listing of additional carnivals):
The following additional carnivals had the following post from Teaspoon Finance participating: Do You Have an Emergency Fund? - If Cash is King, Then Don't Neglect His Good Looking Brother, the Prince of Credit!

Carnival of Debt Management #21
This weeks Carnival of Debt Management #21 is hosted at Debt Consolidation Lowdown.  They had 31 posts in the carnival.  I encourage you to stop by and find your favorites!

Carnival of Financial Planning
This weeks Carnival of Financial Planning is hosted at The Skilled Investor.  They had over 45 posts in the carnival.  I encourage you to stop by and find your favorites!

What's Your Net Worth Grade?

I was curious about what the average net worth is at my particular age to see how I'm performing. The wonder of the web, is that if we want it we can probably find it. I found it. CNN Money has a nifty little calculator to give you an idea. You plug in your age and income and it will give you some stats. For example, I plugged in 40 years old with annual income of 70K, here's what I found out:

Median Net Worth For Your Age Is: $44,875

Median Net Worth For Your Income Is: $109,975

OK, that was cool. I now have an idea of how I'm doing against some national averages. Surely I could find more stats. But, of course. Here's another good site, NetworthIQ.com, you can browse for stats on age ranges and it looks like more details if you register. Here it looks like you browse data of actual members. A quick browse through all data for ages 40-44 shows a median of about 324K. Hard to tell how accurate this is and how inflated the data may be.

I kept searching and found that Free Money Finance did some digging in one of their posts Median Net Worths - Are You Ahead or Behind? I liked this one, as I found I'm doing ok:

Age: 20-29
Median Net Worth: $7,900
Top 25%: $36,000
Top 10%: $119,300
Age: 30-39
Median Net Worth: $44,200
Top 25%: $128,100
Top 10%: $317,800
Age: 40-49
Median Net Worth: $117,800
Top 25%: $338,100
Top 10%: $719,800
Age: 50-59
Median Net Worth: $182,300
Top 25%: $563,800
Top 10%: $1,187,600
Age: 60-69
Median Net Worth: $209,200
Top 25%: $647,200
Top 10%: $1,429,500

Free Money Finance, warns you about how you might read and interpret these numbers:

If you're above these levels for your age, it doesn't mean you're doing well. Just because you're 65 and have a net worth of $300,000 (almost 50% higher than the median) doesn't mean you're in good financial shape. In fact, it's more of a reflection on how little everyone else has saved

Well, I feel ok about where I am. There's always something comforting about knowing that you're doing better than 50% or more of the rest of the folks out there. but, as Free Money Finance warns, don't mistake this for being ahead of the game. Get to work and build some wealth!