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Tuesday, December 4, 2007

The Carnival of Personal Finance #129 - World Currencies Edition

Hello everyone, and welcome to the 129th Edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance! This edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance contains 80 wonderful entries to help you learn about personal finance issues, investing, saving, budgeting, and many other great topics. This week’s theme - world currencies. I hope you enjoy this great list of articles, and fun trivia. :)

The United States Dollar was officially adopted on July 6, 1785 - 9 years after the American declaration of Independence, and 8 years before the British surrendered control of the colonies to the American population. Even with an official currency, silver Spanish coins were legal tender in the US from 1791-1857.*

Editor’s Choice Awards:

  • Steve from Brip Blap presents Making Overseas Experience Count. I spent a good bit of time overseas while I was in the USAF and the experience has been invaluable to me. Steve writes, “Just because you spent time overseas in a non-business role doesn’t mean you have to gloss over it on your resume. These experiences can still be powerful resume-boosters if you present them in the right way.” I agree 100%.
  • Rob from Two Wise Acres presents 5 Lessons Monopoly Can Teach Us About Real Estate Investing. Anyone can learn real estate investing principles from this classic game.
  • Generation X Finance presents A Visual History of the Stock Market: 1996 - 2007. Does the current market situation concern you? Take a look at some historical charts, and you will see it’s all one big cycle.
  • Pinyo from Moolanomy presents Using Pareto Principle to Improve Personal Finance. The 80/20 rule is a popular and tested business principle for focusing on the most important factors that deliver the most results. Pinyo uses this principle to provide more insight about his personal finances and spending habits.
  • Kay from Don’t Mess With Taxes presents Are credit cards appropriate ‘toys’ for kids?. Wow, this article is an eye-opener. Many toys this holiday season include fake charge and debit cards. I never thought about toy companies making games with credit cards in them - conquering the next set of customers (victims?) before they can even ride a bike. I only add the word victims because children should not learn how to use a credit card from “Material Girl Barbie.”
  • Mighty Bargain Hunter presents Invest in yourself by learning things of value, and says, “You can learn how to play Guitar Hero or you can learn how to play the guitar. The choice is yours!”
  • Money Walks presents Homeless Guy on Roller Skates Inspires a New Name Brand. I couldn’t figure out how to categorize this entry, then I realized it should be an Editor’s Choice. It touches on career, economics, and self-fulfillment, and is an interesting read.
  • paidtwice from I’ve Paid For This Twice Already… presents Budgeting and Time Management: Two Surprisingly Interrelated Skills. There are quite a few correlations between budgeting and time management, and I agree with the biggest difference - you can make more money, but you can’t make more time!
  • The Baglady presents When Did the American Dream Become Debt? I wish more people felt this way. Consumerism and consumption is not a dream for me.

There are at least 26 countries that use the term “dollar” to represent their national currency. Some of these include the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Fiji.

Budgeting:

The coin as a monetary unit was invented between 643 and 630 BC in Lydia. These first coins were made of electrum, a naturally occurring pale yellow mixture of gold and silver. However, because these coins were a mixture of gold and silver, their value was often hard to determine. As refining processes improved, pure gold and silver coins became more common.

Career:

The Scottish pound is legal tender only in Scotland, and not the rest of the United Kingdom. They are, however, fungible (exact equivalent value) with the British Sterling Pound, and are accepted in most places in the UK on good faith. However, the Bank of Scotland produces the only One Pound Note in the UK, and it is sometimes refused as a form of payment in Wales and England. The rest of the UK uses One Pound Coins.

Credit:

  • The Better Credit Blog presents, How to Remove a Chapter 7 Bankruptcy From Your Credit Report, and says, Removing a chapter 7 bankruptcy from your credit report can be a very painful process (as you would imagine), but it is possible to do if you follow these steps.
  • The Truth About Credit Cards presents If You Want a Lower Interest Rate, Just Ask, and says, “Credit card issuers aren’t in the business of losing customers, and if they feel the threat of you leaving them, they’ll do whatever they can to keep you onboard.”
  • Amanda from Me vs. Debt presents November Cashback Rewards: 2.8%, and says, “Using a two card approach I was able to get 2.8% cash back in credit card rewards. I think this is pretty good for low spenders like me.” That’s a pretty good return in my book.
  • Jim from Blueprint for Financial Prosperity presents Credit Cards with 0% Interest on Purchases. Jim presents holiday Christmas shoppers with an excuse to SPEND MORE MONEY!!! After all, you won’t have to pay interest, right? ;)
  • Property Innovators presents Which is better - Great Credit or Money Savvy? Should you buy your next car with a traditional loan or a 0% credit card offer?

Australian notes are printed entirely out of polymer plastic. This helps with counterfeit prevention and ensures the bills last longer in hot, humid climates. The first Australian polymer notes were printed in1988, and were rolled into production to replace old notes in the following years. Mexico, Singapore, and Malaysia have also adopted polymer notes in some fashion.

Debt:

Many coins have serrated ridges on the edges because long ago, coins had an intrinsic value based on their metallic content (usually gold, silver, or copper). Thieves would clip small portions of the metal from the coins, then melt that into a larger amount for later resale. The old coin weighed less than it was supposed to, and it’s value decreased. This started the first use of the phrase, “A dollar doesn’t go as far as it used to.” OK… I made that last part up. ;)

Economy:

Some countries peg their currency against that of another country at a fixed exchange rate. This is called a currency board. Sometimes the countries issue their own currency at a 1:1 exchange rate, other times they use the actual bills and coins in place of their own currency. Some examples include Panama, Ecuador, and El Salvador which use the US Dollar as the basis for their currency, and many Arabian countries peg their currency to the dollar as world oil prices are measured in US dollars.

Frugality:

Paper money has been used in China since the Tang Dynasty (618-907), the Medieval Islamic world adopted it around the same time 700-1200 AD, and it was not adopted in Europe until the mid-1600s.

Investing:

In Europe paper money was first introduced in Sweden in 1661. Sweden was rich in copper, which had a low value compared to other coins such as gold or silver. Because of this, extraordinarily large coins (often weighing several kilograms) had to be made. Because the coin was so big, it was more convenient to carry a note stating your possession of such a coin than to carry the coin itself.

Money Management:

Where’s George is a popular website used to track US currency locations. The serial numbers on US Dollars are entered into the website and the bill is stamped with a logo or written on to entice other people to participate. Owners then enter the serial number of the dollar and their zip code into the website, and the dollar’s location and travels can be tracked. This website has spawned several imitators in multiple countries including Canada, the UK, Russia, Norway, countries that use the Euro, Japan, South Africa, China, India, and others.

Real Estate:

One of the first forms of counterfeit money was a fourrée - a coin, that is made from a base metal core that has been plated with a precious metal to look like its solid metal counter part. The US Penny from 1982 and later is an example of a fourrée since it is zinc which has been plated with copper in a manner to deceive. These pennies are much cheaper to produce than pure copper pennies.

Saving:

Wikipedia lists 194 current official or de facto circulating currencies of the 192 United Nations member states, one UN observer state, three partially recognized sovereign states, six unrecognized countries, and 32 dependencies.

Taxes:

The closest thing there ever was to a “world currency” was the Spanish Dollar, or Pieces of Eight. From the 17th-19th centuries, the Spanish dollar was accepted as legal tender throughout Spain, France, Italy, the US, all of Central and South America (excluding Brazil), Canada, most of the Pacific Island nations including the Philippines and Guam, and later in China and other Southeast Asian countries.

Other:

Most “money” is based on a fiat currency, and has no intrinsic value - only the value of the backing from the government that issues it. The US Dollar for example is not pegged to anything other than the US government’s word. Though the US holds billions of dollars worth of gold reserves, the amount of printed money far exceeds the reserves.

Thanks for all the wonderful articles everyone! I’ve enjoyed learning and giving back to the on-line personal finance community.

If your article was not included in this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance, it is most likely because it had previously been entered into another carnival or did not meet some other entry guideline. Next week’s host is Money Smart Life. Be sure to check back!

*all facts sourced via Wikipedia.

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3 Comments:

Anonymous Guitar Arbitrage System said...

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences to us. God bless and thanks again for sharing your blog.

August 18, 2009 at 3:04 AM  
Anonymous Guitar Arbitrage System said...

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences to us. God bless and thanks again for sharing your blog.

August 18, 2009 at 3:04 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Apology for the double entry. kindly remove one. Thanks. :)

August 18, 2009 at 3:05 AM  

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