First all, thanks for everyone who participated in my Thanksgiving Giveaway. I think it was a huge success, and I was overwhelmed by the response. As for my weekend, my family was in town and despite all my anti-consumerism ramblings we did a fair bit of shopping. It was great to see them and I look forward to seeing the other half of my family over the Christmas holidays. I truly have much to be thankful for.

Enough of that, let’s get to giving out some prizes! First, I had to split up them up between guessers and bloggers. This was simply done by Excel’s random number generator add-in. Here are the results:
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Sprinkled throughout my ramblings are various mentions of my wife, mostly in passing. Because of these, I may have given a skewed perception of her as some stereotypical one-dimensional woman that doesn’t like math or shops all day. That’s my fault. Let’s nip that in the bud, shall we? First, she doesn’t like to deal with money issues because she’s female. She doesn’t like dealing with money because, well, she just doesn’t. Obviously, I do. While growing up, my mother was an active money manager, teaching me about frugality and saving money for the future. Without her, I doubt this blog would even exist.

Now that I’ve made that clear, let’s add some dimension to this “wife” character. 🙂 Sure, she fits some stereotypes. But don’t we all? And what’s wrong with that, anyways? Here are the facts:
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Thanks for taking a peek at my detailed journal of our personal path to early retirement. You can see exactly how far along I am with the chart on the top right (We are in our late 20s). Here I reveal my current net worth, and write daily about the big things that help guarantee I’ll reach my goals, and also the small things that will make those goals arrive earlier. Please consider subscribing if this interests you!

My list of free budgeting software has more than doubled since I first posted it, and I’ve discovered a lot of quality software that I need to explore further. Who knew there were so many free alternatives for those looking to manage their spending?

If instead you’re looking for more ideas on growing your money, the Carnival of Investing can provide a lot of great ideas. This week’s edition is at Journey to Financial Freedom. Any blogger can submit an article, and after participating you can host one yourself!

This is just a friendly reminder that my free Thanksgiving Giveaway is going to end on Tuesday, so if you haven’t entered now is a good time. The response has been great, with over 400 entries so far! Since I underestimated the number of entrants, if more people guess the correct number than there are prizes, I will guarantee that everyone will still win a prize. So there’s no reason not to try!

Another feedback from my readers using Bloglines is that entries keep popping up as unread. My apologies, that is definitely annoying. (I don’t use Bloglines myself.) It is mostly due to my obsessive need to re-edit my posts for spelling or grammatical errors.

In order to fix this, if you aren’t already, log into Bloglines and go to this feed. Now, on your top right there should be a tab called “edit subscription”. Click on it. Now where it says “Updated Items”, change the option from “Display As New” to “Ignore”. Thanks to Rebecca for the tip.

If you aren’t subscribed, check out my new subscription page.

Okay, the old geezer that is I has finally opened up a Del.icio.us account. Here’s what I’ve been reading this week:

What?s the Difference Between ?Fee-Based? and ?Fee-Only”? at AllFinancialMatters – If you’re paying someone else to handle your money or are thinking about it, you should know this.

Remodelling a home AKA Contractors that stink at GetRichSlowly – It almost makes me happy I don’t have a house to fix up.

Dating and Coupons? at Make Love, Not Debt – Even though it may not be logical, please don’t use coupons on a first date. Unless you have a blind date with Borat or something…

Here are the money thoughts that are swirling around my head these days:

I need to find a job. My wife needs to find a job. We need to move. We need to find a house that we can afford.

No big deal, eh? It’s a very weird transitional place for us. A year from now, we both hopefully will have good-paying jobs and be making double what we’re earning now, and be living near one of our families. It’s the like the calm before the storm. I know that everything will work out in the end, but I still can’t stop worrying about it now and then.

It’s a time for giving thanks, and I am very grateful for all you awesome readers of this blog. Honestly, this blog has helped me keep on track and it was really fun along the way. I started blogging in December 2004, revealing our net worth of $55,750. As you can see on your top right of the screen, two years later we have doubled that! What better way to celebrate this success than to give away a bunch of stuff! 😉

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My Money Blog participated in some carnivals again this week:

• Carnival of Personal Finance #72 at It’s Just Money
• Carnival of Investing #46 at 1st Million at 33
• Festival of Frugality #46 at Lazy Man and Money

If you are interested in participating in the Carnival of Investing either by entering a submission or hosting, please see here.

If you haven’t filled out my feedback survey yet, doing it now would be simply fantastic. I’m only going to keep it up until the end of Wednesday, so let your voice be heard!