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We're going to try posting the Money Saving Links on Sundays from now on — hopefully you'll have some light reading and we'll be able to highlight some great content from around the Web.

This week, we participated in the Carnival of Personal Finance #173 hosted by Girls Just Wanna Have Funds, who has a lot of great stories on finance for women.

Some of the highlights from this week's carnival include …

Mint.com Review: Beautiful Money Management Tool - Blueprint for Financial Prosperity

In Summary, I think Mint is a pretty slick tool (after looking at the screenshots, I think you have to agree with me there). Can you live without it? Of course you can. Will you likely learn more about your spending if you use it? Definitely. Is it worth the security risk? That depends on your level of risk aversion and how well you trust the securities measures they’ve taken with your data.

Six Ways to Get Intense About Your Money and Finances - Prime Time Money

Read Personal Finance Blogs
Browse the Personal Finance Sections of Your Local Paper and Online News
Head to the Library and Check Out a Few Personal Finance Books
Learn About Other People Who’ve Had Success With Their Money
Find a Money Mentor
Analyze the Details of Your Own Finances

My 3 Biggest Personal Finance Successes - Value for Your Life

These are my three biggest successes because they changed my focus, my relationships, and how I live my life and look at money.  They have made my marriage stronger, my life happier, and my relationship with money so that I rule it–not the other way around.

While ING Direct and Washington Mutual are dropping the interest rates on their online savings accounts, the Dollar Savings Direct account from Emigrant is going up (via Interesting Money).

The account now has a 4.00% APY (up from 3.75%), putting it at the top of highest online savings accounts.

When we first heard about Dollar Saving Direct, we wondered why Emigrant Bank was introducing a new account to compete with its own EmigrantDirect.

Bank Deals has a theory behind why Emigrant offers both:

Why does Emigrant Bank have two different online savings accounts? This seems to be a common technique for banks. They can use the new account to bring in money from new customers but they don't have to pay the high interest to existing customers who don't take the time to sign up for the new savings account.

It's always a good idea to keep your eyes on the best available rates. In addition to Dollar Savings Direct, check out FNBO Direct (3.50% APY), WT Direct (3.26% APY) HSBC Direct (3.25% APY), or ING Direct (2.75% APY).

ING Direct's Orange Savings Account has fallen from to 2.75% APY (down from 3.00%).

While this is probably in reaction to the Fed's rate cut of 0.5%, it's the first drop we've seen from a major online bank (this side of WaMu's acquisition by JP Morgan Chase).

ING also changed their rates on their Electric Orange checking account:

• $0-49,999.99 earns a 1.50% APY
• $50,000.00-$99,999.99 earns a 3.05% APY
• $100,000.00 or more earns a 3.25% APY

ING's online savings account hasn't been in the top tier of APYs for some time now, but many of their customers enjoy the service so much they don't seem to mind.

Personally, I have an Electric Orange account for my business and an Orange Savings Account for a short-term car fund.

If you're looking for other online savings accounts, check out DollarSavingsDirect (3.75% APY), FNBO Direct (3.50% APY), WT Direct (3.26% APY) or HSBC Direct (3.25% APY).

FNBO Direct's Pay Yourself First contest, which chronicles the savings journey of everyday people, has announced its five finalists (there were 20 semi-finalists).

According to the Web site, the challengers are ….

Alexa
Alexa was adopted from Korea as a child. She now lives with her husband Seth in San Francisco. Alexa is saving for a trip to Korea in the hopes of finding her birthmother and to learn more about her heritage.

Dave
Dave and his wife Glenda are saving for a larger house for themselves – and their five daughters. They want to move their large family to a newer community – and a house with more than one bathroom.

Tim
Tim and his wife, Beth, are saving to pay off his student loans. Tim hopes that by participating in the Challenge he and his wife will learn new tips and tricks to accomplish their goal.

Kristen
Kristen, her husband, Michael, and their daughter have just returned from 3 years in the Dominican Republic. They are saving to pay for Kristen's nursing school so that they may return to the D.R. with no debt.

Phil
Phil and his wife, Teresa, live in Texas and are saving for expenses related to their first baby – due in March 2009. Phil looks forward to sharing his savings journey – and the story of their first child – with others throughout the Challenge.

You have to hand it to FNBO, who has really put together a well-meaning contest. Encouraging people to save — and rewarding them for it — is a great way to show that they care about their customers.

Each of the five finalists will get their savings matched dollar-for-dollar by FNBO (up to $5,000). The grand prize winner will receive an all-expenses paid vacation, worth up to $7,500.

FNBO Direct's online savings account is currently paying a 3.50% APY, making it one of the top currently available.

Personal finance is about 95 percent mental and 5 percent physical. Once you've put the right system into place, you just have to block out all the noise and plow ahead.

So as much as you may have been led to believe otherwise, the biggest thing blocking your success is you.

You are your biggest investment — and sometimes you make the wrong decisions. That's simply human nature.

The 7 Psychological Money Traps

Bankrate has a great story about 7 'psycho' money traps and how to beat them, highlighting how we cause ourselves problems.

Their seven mental money traps:

1. The lure of 'free'
2. The 'anchor-price' persuasion
3. The instant-gratification attraction
4. The dollars-to-donuts decoy
5. The separate-buckets blunder
6. The 'sacred-fund' slip-up
7. The lost-money fallacy

These are all great examples of how we naturally make poor financial decisions. You're not the only person who's ever made these mistakes. But you can easily overcome them.

Use Automation to Remove the Human Element

If you want to ensure that you aren't blocking your own financial success, automate the processes.

Want to save for a new car? Set it and forget it.

Leave your paycheck sitting around instead of cashing it? Get direct deposit.

Working hard to time the stock market? Automate your investments and you'll benefit from dollar-cost averaging.

When you take the 5 percent action required, you've set yourself up for financial success. Turn around your bad habits and start to feel comfortable with your decisions.

When Technology Can't Help You

Online banking and the Internet can do a lot to improve your money management shortcomings, but they can't do it all.

No one's going to stop you from buying that videogame you don't really need.

No one's going to stop you from living beyond your means (except maybe the bank, and you don't want to go there).

No one's going to stop you from being lazy and putting off the process to your financial freedom.

You've got to be the one who steps in and makes smart decisions. The tools are all there, but you need to make it happen.

I have talked with many people about last week's bailout and they are all angry.

Some that I have talked with were complete strangers who started ranting and raving at the newsstand and several at my neighborhood library. In my unscientific poll it is unanimous: everyone regards the bailout plan as a payoff to politically connected cronies who caused the defaults.

Many recognize there are better alternative plans.

Where Abuse is Likely…

For the federal government to buy the current defaulted mortgage-backed securities has enormous potential for abuse. Salomon Brothers got the idea to bundle home mortgages together and re-sell them as bonds back in the 1980's.

They call these bonds various things like collateralized debt obligations or mortgage backed securities, but they are not the same as bonds at all.

For example, if I buy a $10,000 municipal bond at 5 percent for a term of 10 years, I get $250 every six months and after 10 years I get my $10,000 back.

If I need money before the 10-year term is up, I can sell my bond. If the interest rate is up I will have to accept less than $10,000 because potential buyers know they can earn 6 percent instead of 5.

To sell my bond, I will have to discount the price so that $250 twice a year will earn a 6 percent yield. If I sell after 5 years with a 6 percent interest rate, then $250 twice a year and a $10,000 final payout will sell at $9,573.*

… Don't Be Surprised When It Happens

A home mortgage all by itself is like a bond because it has known payment and maturity dates, which make it possible to determine the yield at any time. Mortgage-backed securities are many mortgages all bundled together as a lump sum and then divided into smaller but different parts to be resold to investors.

Trouble is the underlying mortgage holders can prepay at anytime and for investors who have mortgage-backed securities that contain many mortgages there is no way to know when prepayments will come.

Mortgage-backed securities were marketed by selling them at a discount over the total of their final payout. It is just that the date of the final payout could not be specified. Without a known maturity date or a known number of payments, a yield cannot be determined, but only guessed at as a gamble.

Any transaction of these securities will be a negotiation between sellers who do not know for sure what they are selling and a government that does not know for sure what it is buying. It is a situation ripe for cronyism and abuse.

Congress has the authority to ban the use of securities without a known yield, instead they did nothing but decide to buy them. It looks like a bad deal for savers and taxpayers.

*[Computations are Excel functions YIELD("1/1/2004","1/1/2009",0.05,95.735,100,2,1) also FV(0.06/2,10,250,-9573.5,0)]

Fred Siegmund covers America's jobs as part of work doing labor market analysis and projections for a client base of recruiters, trainers and counselors. Visit him at www.americanjobmarket.blogspot.com

Without getting too deep into politics, I must say that I'm more disappointed than ever about the current state of the election.

Both candidates are running on a platform of change, but the more you listen to them and watch how they act, the more you realize that it's all politics as usual.

It's depressing to think that, despite what the candidates say, we're more out here on our own than ever. (Don't take this to mean I'm in favor of government meddling in our lives. I'm in favor of government helping us out by getting out of our way.)

When it comes the economy, the candidates are trying to solve problems — that's understandable. But they're not looking long-term; they're saying whatever they need to in order to get elected.

Here's what they should be saying.

I Can't Really Do Much to Help You

While the president certainly has the power to sign bills into law and pressure Congress to pass legislation, he can't affect the stock market.

The president can't do much to lower gas prices. And he can't put food on your table.

Stop thinking that either Obama or McCain will make a radical difference to your bottom line.

You Shouldn't Have Gotten That Sub-Prime Mortgage

The candidates aren't going to tell you that the sub-prime mortgage you got was a dumb idea. But guess what? It was.

If you can't afford a mortgage, you shouldn't get one.

For sure, there were some stupid lenders out there looking to make a quick buck. But they didn't make you sign on the dotted line, did they?

You have to take some personal responsibility for what has happened.

Why Weren't You Prepared?

It's not the government's job to take care of you.

We just ended a time with a record-breaking stock market, a ridiculously high real estate market, and you even got a stimulus check.

You're right, gas prices did get pretty high pretty quickly, but sometimes those things happen. It's not like gas guzzler is a new term — did you consider it might cost you more one day?

Washington Mutual has dropped the interest rate on its online savings account to 3.00% APY (via Bank Deals).

WaMu had upped their OSA all the way to 4.00% APY in the past few months, so this is a pretty big drop.

It's not a huge surprise, especially with the recent news of their acquisition by JP Morgan Chase.

The drop takes them pretty far out of contention for the highest online savings accounts currently available.

If you're looking for a good place to stash your money, consider an online savings account from DollarSavingsDirect (3.75% APY), FNBO Direct (3.50% APY), WT Direct (3.26% APY) or HSBC Direct (3.25% APY).