Hopefully everyone has filed their taxes already. Hopefully you got a small yet decent refund. And if you owed money… my apologies!

If you haven’t filed taxes yet, make sure to file for an extension. Here is the IRS page that explains how to do so.

Fun Facts About Taxes

• Taxes throughout history are quite interesting. When the British levied taxes on the colonies, we were not happy… to say the least. But England did need to fund a war, right? We all know how this ended up…
• When we finally separated ourselves and created the Articles of Confederation we made sure to not include a national tax system. Isn’t that an argument from many… that donations will take the place of taxes if tax rates are lowered? But I digress, the states soon realized they were going bankrupt.

Previously I discussed the expectation that more bank failures are coming. I posted a little comic within that article on the safety of investing in the space under your mattress. How many of you are doing just that? Maybe you are doing it without even realizing it?

This article is going to give a brief overview of the basic places in which we can put our excess money… Hopefully you have extra money, right? If not, do not worry, you have plenty of time to create a budget and start saving some money!

Under the Mattress (Cash)

Obviously, this is a very conservative “investment.” The reason I put investment in quotes?

This is not a personal finance article, really, but it is an issue that has me on the fence. It has to do with graffiti and street advertising.

I guess in the end it could affect the personal finance realm, but that would be a stretch I don’t feel like outlining. It would probably follow along the lines of street advertising infesting our cities, bombarding us with messages that make us want to buy things we don’t need, and then actually influencing us to buy those things. Seems like an equation for debt.

But that isn’t really my issue with street advertisements. My issue is that they are ugly, plain and simple.

The Evolution of Advertising?

This week you can find me in 3 different carnivals:

• ABC’s of Investing hosted the Carnival of Personal Finance and included my article on Considering Lifetime Subscriptions.
• Ask Mr Credit Card hosted the Festival of Frugality and included my article How to Get Ahead of the Game: Three Tips for Students. For those of you who forget, this was a guest post from Roger @ The Amateur Financier.
• Greener Pastures hosted the Money Hacks Carnival and included my article on Utilizing Technology to Slash Cable Bills.

Other articles I enjoyed:

Welcome to the 8th installation of the Friday webcomics.

I don’t know why but this comic reminded me of an employee appreciation week that my company had a few months ago. The idea was that every day management would show the employees that we care.

One day we had a facility wide BBQ for the afternoon guys and night guys and a breakfast for the morning guys.

But one of the days we had a carnival of sorts in the parking lot. Lots of events and specticals. And this graphic of people rolling down a hill with their homies just makes me think of that. I didn’t say that thought process was rational!

What do you think of first when you see this?