No Debt MBA

For a four day week it sure felt long.  We've been very busy around here but have a lazy weekend lined up.  In case you want to read a bit during your weekend, here are some articles I enjoyed reading recently:

Visualize This: Brainstorming book ideas @ Flowing Data - I found the evolution of Nathan's book theme pretty interesting.  I like the idea of  the concept flowing naturally from emails he was getting.

How to Make Your Own Luck @ I'm a Money Grubber - Paul summarizes some really interesting research about attitude and success.

Budgeting for Graduate School @ Budgeting in the Fun Stuff - These are really great strategies for paying for a graduate degree.  I've done #s 1, 2, and 5 but so far haven't really acted on 3 and 4 which tackle the income side of things.  I expect to work on those once I'm closer to the start of school or just after once I'm familiar with my schedule.

Personal Finance Geekdom: The Economics of Picking Up Pennies @ Squirrelers - Let me just admit that I love picking up change.  It's fun to see that others do the same.  I also love their "Squirreling Gone Wild" series - it makes me feel positively normal. 

Did Lobbying Contribute to the Financial Crisis? @ Freakonomics - This is something I assumed to be true to some extent, but the fact that there is data correlating the two is fascinating.  May I also admit that I am hopelessly cynical about our political system?

Congress Gets To Trade Insider Information @ Weakonomics - While not surprising to me (see cynicism above) I'd be interested to see the impact of blind trusts on this study.  I'm pretty sure that the working paper could not include politicians who had set up blind trusts since they don't have to report specific assets.  So perhaps there is a bias in favor of insider traders since theoretically honest politicians would be more likely to have blind trusts set up to avoid conflict of interest.  I'm not sure a blind trust would be able to prevent insider trading since there's nothing really constraining the flow of information from the politician to their trust manager, right?  Thoughts?