Lovely title huh?  Found out today that one of my crowned teeth is abscessed.  But there’s a silver lining.  The dentist I went to today was not my regular dentist.  He was covering for my regular dentist, who is on vacation.  I found out that he is in the preferred provider network for my supplementary dental insurance, meaning that if I chose to have the work done there, it could save me hundreds of dollars.

Anyway, of much better impact were these posts from the past week:

• Bargaineering discusses the extension of the estate tax.
• Generation X Finance shows some things he does to organize his finances.
• Five Cent Nickel hosts a guest post about whether cash is making a comeback or not.
• Consumerism Commentary wonders where the office gift exchange is this year.
• The Millionaire Nurse asks about what your budget-busters are.
• Tough Money Love says that people think it’s the season to be saving.

I also welcome and thank Fiscal Fizzle for participating in Cash Commons for the first time this week!

Have a great weekend!

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As you may be aware (or not!) the FTC has revised its guide concerning the use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising to include social media, which include blogs like the very one you’re reading now.

The short version is that bloggers are required to be explicit about their relationships with advertisers so that you can take it into consideration as you evaluate the opinions I present to you.

This post spells out how I handle these disclosures.  There will be a prominent site-wide link to it.  I may also refer to this post on other blogs of mine, as the policies there will be the same as they are here.

• Are there advertisements on this site? Why, thanks for asking!  Yes, they’re are ads on this site.  Like most personal finance bloggers, I earn money through advertisements, and I think they’re pretty easy to spot.  The FTC guide, though, is really all about disclosing things that aren’t obviously ads, so I’ll address that now.
• How do I handle paid posts? I’ve only done a very small number of paid posts, and I don’t believe I’ve done any over the past year.  (Basically, you’d have to dig to find the ones I’ve done.)  How I handled them before (to the best of my knowledge) is that I’ve stated that the subject of the post was a sponsor of the blog, or I’ve disclosed the third-party review broker that paid me for the post.  This is how I will handle all future paid posts.  I’ll state up front that I’ve been compensated for making a post.  Otherwise, you can assume that I have not been paid for writing that post.
• Are guest posts paid? No.  Guest posts are not paid posts, ever.
• How do I handle product reviews? On occasion I will receive a product (usually, but not limited to, a personal finance book or some personal finance software) free of charge in exchange for consideration of writing up a review.  If I write a review of a product, and I received a review copy free of charge, I’ll say so, as in: “The author’s PR firm was kind enough to send me a copy of X.”  (To the best of my knowledge I’ve mentioned it this way with the reviews I’ve already done.)
• How do I handle affiliate programs? Some of the links to various online sellers and service providers from this blog and other blogs of mine are affiliate links.  This means that if you click on one of these links, the merchant (or a third party designated by the merchant) records that I sent you to the merchant, and if you do something — like sign up, or buy something — I get paid for facilitating that transaction.  I haven’t gone to great lengths to point out each and every affiliate link in the past for a few important reasons: (a) I only will have affiliate links to products or services that I already use myself or would use myself, (b) it sometimes ends up costing you less to click through from my site than if you had gone there directly because of special promotions that the merchants were offering at the time, and (c) it will never cost you more than if you had gone to the site directly.  Many of the links from this blog to Amazon.com, EBay.com, Restaurant.com, MyPoints.com, LendingClub.com, ING Direct, credit card offers, MrRebates.com, Intuit products, and almost all of the links on my coupons page are affiliate links.  If you have particular questions about affiliate links, you’re welcome to contact me, but here are some ways you can identify which links are likely to be affiliate links:
  • The address of the link reads like alphabet soup and doesn’t look like the website you’re being sent to.  (You can see the web address before you click on the link by hovering over the link with your mouse pointer, and looking in (usually) the lower left of your browser window.)
  • The address has the form http://www.mightybargainhunter.com/r/SOMETHING or http://www.mightybargainhunter.com/ref/SOMETHING.

Again, if you have any questions, you’re welcome to leave a comment, or contact me.  Thanks!

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In my last post announcing an 80% Off Restaurant.com coupon, I decided to highlight some things to bear in mind before buying a dining certificate package.  Jeff Conlin from Restaurant.com responded to that post in a message to me:

Mighty Bargain Hunter,

Thank you for your recent write-up about Restaurant.com. I appreciate your thorough thoughts and critical look at our site, particularly with your financial savings expertise. I wanted to reach out and address a few points in the piece to clarify our services for you and your visitors.

First, thank you very much for using Restaurant.com. I’m just sorry to hear that you found a favorite restaurant only to discover that it was no longer participating in the program. If your issue was not resolved we will follow up and take care of the matter immediately. Our policy for any similar instance of a restaurant no longer taking part in the program is to issue credit to customers holding their unused gift certificates. That credit can then be applied for thousands of other options on our site. Again, I apologize for the disappointing experience and please do let me know if it’s still unresolved.

Second, a binding contract is in place between restaurant owners and Restaurant.com, requiring restaurants to honor our restaurant gift certificates. The contracts allow us to promote their restaurants and obligate them to honor the certificates. We need a restaurant’s permission and cooperation before ever including them within our program. As long as diners are using the gift certificate according to the stated terms, the restaurant is required to accept the gift certificate. We never like to hear when restaurants fail to hold up their end of our agreement and it’s neither our policy nor our practice to allow restaurants to breach their contracts at the expense of our customers. If there’s ever any doubt, customers can always reach us at 1-800-979-8985 or at info@restaurant.com.

Finally, you are correct to point out that one gift certificate is valid per restaurant per month. This term and others are stated before, during and after purchase. Terms of use are a very important part of using our gift certificates. We post them conspicuously in the following locations:

• Main “Terms” link at the footer of each page
• Within each specific restaurant micro-site page
• On the actual printed gift certificate

I hope the above information answers some of the questions that you raised. I also hope that we can get you back to visit another Restaurant.com restaurant soon!

[ ... ]

Thanks again,

Jeff

Jeff Conlin
VP, PR & Corporate Communications
Restaurant.com

A couple of comments on his note:

1. First, it was not the case that a restaurant failed to honor a certificate that I had printed out because they had dropped out of the program.  The restaurant dropped out of the program entirely, which they are entitled to do, which meant that I could not exchange my Dinner of the Month certificates (essentially uncommitted dining certificates for particular restaurants) for that restaurant anymore.  Every certificate that I’ve printed out for a specific restaurant has been honored.
2. I wasn’t sure about the one certificate per restaurant per month rule, but Jeff clarified that this is true.
3. I’m very satisfied with Restaurant.com and the fact that they took the time to write a note to me improves my feelings about them.

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First off, a big thank-you to beta testers Flexo, SuburbanDollar, J from Budgets are Sexy, The Frugal Lawyer, and a number of others who expressed interest.

Now that the hosting platform is in open beta, so am I …

… Please allow me to introduce Cash Commons!

Cash Commons is a place for asking any and all questions about money. Personal finance, debt reduction, student loans, debt consolidation, banking, mortgages, investing, saving money, spending money, and earning money, of course, but also coins, currency, games about money, books about money, money and the Bible, money gurus … anything about money.

I’ve used this platform elsewhere and it’s simply the best knowledge exchange platform I’ve seen.  It’s a joy to use, and it works extremely well at getting the right answers to the top, completely naturally.

Registering is a piece of cake (and you get lots of goodies with your registration, like reputation, badges, stats, the ability to track favorites, etc.), but you can also ask questions without registering if you like.

I’ve already posted a few questions of my own over there, like:

• How to deal with receipts without discarding any of them?
• When are federal income tax rules for a given year firmed up?
• What’s the purpose of a mortgage offset account?

There aren’t any answers (yet) but that’s fine.  I have gotten answers to others, like:

• What are the consequences of having a loan go into forbearance?

These are real money questions I have. I’m not just posting stuff that I know already.  I’d love to have my questions answered, and if you know the answers to any of them, I’d love to hear them.

But presumably you have money questions as well that you want answered, and you can ask, too!

Everyone has the right to use the questions and answers on Cash Commons how they see fit, as long as the source is properly attributed.  This is in accordance with this Creative Commons license.

(I mentioned that this is a beta — meaning that the platform is still under development (as is the website as a whole) so things might not look, or run, exactly right yet.)

What I’m hoping for with Cash Commons is a place for getting rapid, correct answers to all kinds of questions about money, and that we can all learn from one another.  Everyone is an expert in something, and everyone can learn something.

And for now, you’re guaranteed that if you post a question over there I’ll take a crack at answering it.   Care to join?

Got tweet? I do!

I have a new site in the works and would love some trailblazers to come over to take it for a spin!

All you need to bring with you is some questions about money.  For bonus points, you can bring some answers for other people’s money questions.

Just contact me and I’ll hook you up!

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Aww, shucks!  This contest has expired.  But if you have excellent credit you can still get great rates if you borrow from Lending Club!

You could get enough funds in your Lending Club account for one hundred peer to peer loans — if you just happen to be Lending Club’s 25,000th registered investor!

Lending Club has gotten even better recently with its secondary marketplace, so not only is it possible to fund loans — which have had a net average annualized return of over 9.6% — but it’s also possible to buy and sell notes mid-term, essentially the same way mortgage companies do.  (Certain restrictions and eligibility requirements apply.)  In other words, there are now options for investing in loans besides holding them to maturity.

Anyway, back to the $2,500.  Here’s what you need to do for your shot at it:

1. Open a Lending Club investing account for free and complete the registration process — which includes creating a password, verifying your ID, and linking up a bank account — before the clock strikes midnight on the East coast on October 1st, 2009.
2. There is no step 2.  You do not even need to fund your account to enter!

The winner will be announced October 1st, 2009.  If you’re the winner, please let me know and I’ll brag about you!

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(This post is a bit off-topic but I want to get the word out quickly on this.)

I’ll take time now to thank Debt Sucks for hosting this week’s Carnival of Debt Reduction and also for his next post on why he’s never, ever hosting a blog carnival again.

I’ve been watching as hosting carnivals has gotten to be more and more work for very little reward.  There were thirty submissions to Jake’s carnival this past week, and he included only four of them.  He deemed the rest to be spam, off-topic, or astray of the rules that I had set up.

And I applaud him for holding a high standard like that.  Carnivals have gotten out of hand with the volume of submissions, and if these things are to remain useful and viable, the rules have to change.

BlogCarnival.com has done a lot to make the blog carnival popular.  There’s a flip side to that popularity though:  blog carnivals are easy one-way links for the submitter.  Intentionally or otherwise, it’s become too easy for people to submit to carnivals there.  There is no limit to how many times a particular URL can be submitted at BlogCarnival.com.  What’s more, I know of services that will submit one link per week to between ten and fifteen carnivals through BlogCarnival.com, for only $25 per month!  This is possible because there is standalone software that automates the submission process.

So, starting as of about 25 minutes ago, I’ve deactivated the submission form over at BlogCarnival.  The only way to submit to the Carnival of Debt Reduction is now through this submission form on the carnival’s website.

I’ll also be encouraging hosts to be more selective about what posts they include.  Free Money Finance has a good thing going with the Best of Money Carnival.  It was a breeze to host that one.

What I’m hoping this will do is reduce the number of submissions from search-engine optimization companies on behalf of paying clients.  They’ll still be able to do it if they really want to, but now they can’t just click a button to submit a post to the Carnival of Debt Reduction.  They have to come over to the form on the website and do it all themselves.

I’m hoping that’s too much work for them.  I’m also hoping that it’s not too much work for people from whom I actually welcome submissions.

(If you already submitted your post for next week’s Carnival over at BlogCarnival.com, don’t worry, it got through.)

OK, back to regular content.

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It’s a great honor to be a new member of the Money Tips Network, a network of personal finance blogs aiming to “educate the public with honest and helpful money tips.”

What else can I say?  I join quite the stellar group of bloggers:

• Bargaineering
• Consumerism Commentary
• The Digerati Life
• Five Cent Nickel
• Free Money Finance
• The Frugal Duchess
• Generation X Finance
• Get Rich Slowly
• No Credit Needed
• The Simple Dollar
• Squawkfox
• Stop Buying Crap
• Wise Bread

No doubt you’ve read at least a few of them but please check out the ones you don’t.  They’re all well worth your time.

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Well, it’s either the smallest discrete unit of money in the known universe, or it’s a new social money site place for people who deal with money started up by Flexo at Consumerism Commentary.

I’ve been playing with Money Quantum in private beta.  The site is built on the Ning social platform engine, and though the comparison with, and perhaps longing for, the capability of Facebook is inevitable, Money Quantum doesn’t have all the creepy big-brother overtone of Facebook, either.  Which is a plus:  I’m mildly disturbed about having my “profile” built up a little bit each time I say something on FB.  No company needs to get into my head that much.

It’s tailored for money talk at different levels of granularity.  There are general forums, and there are “groups” that whittle the discussion down to specific topics, like frugality, cheap dining, bargain hunting, peer-to-peer lending, home ownership, buy-and-hold investing, financial planning, retirement planning, and more.  (I’m a member of the Bargain Hunters group, for obvious reasons.)  There are other opportunities for making Money Quantum more personal, including video and photo feeds and blogs for individual members.  Or, there’s always the chat room!

There are lots of familiar faces over there (familiar to me as a blogger, anyway) but likely you’ll recognize some yourself.

The official launch date is August 11th, 2009, but if you absolutely, positively can’t wait, contact me and I’ll hook you up with an invitation.

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A merry Christmas to you and your loved ones.  Enjoy the day, and rejoice!

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