The other day, I saw a penny on the ground. So I picked it up. My fiancee gave me a funny look. I gave her one back and told her that every penny counts. With a smile, she said that was so like me – picking up litter and growing financially all at the same time. But I never thought twice about it, nor about what the action said about me as a person. The extent of my thinking was – “Hey, there’s a penny on the ground, I should pick that up!”. Picture perfect proof that our values and attitudes affect our actions, whether we’re conscious of it or not.

Here’s a look at what I’ve been reading this week in the blogosphere:

• The Financial Blogger asks what you would be willing to do to work only 4 days a week. Would you give up a portion of your salary in exchange for freedom? It all comes back to the value of time.
• A guest post on Million Dollar Journey reviewed the new MBNA Worldpoints Mastercard and compared it to some of the other popular rewards cards on the market.
• Give Me Back My Five Bucks broached the classic topic of talking about money with your significant other. This will never go away as money is frequently cited as one of the biggest causes of breakups. In my mind, its all about communication and compromise.
• Musings of an Abstract Auklander muses about the issue of managing multiple online identities. When you have a lot of web-based projects like I do, this can sometimes be a big challenge.
• A guest post on Sustainable Personal Finance highlights the fact that you can never make someone else care about something – the desire for change has to come from within. Too easily forgotten in a world where advice is free of charge.
• Given my thoughts of becoming a teacher in the future, I was particularly interested in a post written by Teacher Man over at Canadian Finance Blog on how teaching is a great job if you want to start a side gig (like a blog).
• Speaking of Teacher Man, over at his own blog, My University Money, he wrote a post on which casino games you should play or avoid based on your odds of winning. From personal experience, I know the odds of winning at blackjack can be shifted to your advantage with a little shiftiness.
• Finally, Young and Thrifty reviewed a new personal finance/budgeting software called You Need a Budget. Personally, I’m an Excel user myself (to be the subject of upcoming blog posts), but I’m curious to give this new software a look if only to see how I could improve my own spreadsheet. If you’re looking for an easy to use piece of software, this might be it.

Happy Weekend Everyone!