Thanks very much to all the readers and contributors who have helped make Consumerism Commentary a complete community for the past five years. In the span of those five years, the “blogosphere” has exploded with thousands of new blogs that write about personal finance, the economy, budgeting, and every money-related topic you could possible conceive in your mind.

The problem now comes with finding the best of what’s out there. I have a number of suggestions.

Carnival of Personal Finance

The Carnival of Personal Finance is a weekly column, featured on a different host blog each Monday. Within the column is a select list of the week’s best articles, submitted by their authors and reviewed and screened by the host. The host also selects a few articles for “Editor’s Choice.” These five to ten articles are often great examples of the excellent writing found across the blogosphere. Note: The Carnival of Personal Finance was founded here at Consumerism Commentary.

pfblogs.org is an aggregator of over 1,000 personal finance blogs. This is a great way to keep your finger on the pulse of this niche in the blogosphere. Most importantly, pay special attention to the Friends of pfblogs.org; these bloggers take their writing seriously and work hard to produce the best content. You will find the popular listings on pfblogs.org the most useful. The most frequently-visited articles from the past 24 hours are presented in order of popularity. Note again: I created pfblogs.org.

If you like Digg for finding the best news and articles in general, take a look at Tip’d. Tip’d is like Digg, where news articles are submitted by anyone. For example, I saw an article on MSN Money Central about Henry Paulson, and I submitted this article even though I was not the author. Submitted articles that are enjoyed by others in the Tip’d community get promoted.

It’s easy to find articles you like with Tip’d. You can browse a number of categories, such as personal finance, economy, green, and real estate. These are the types of articles that wouldn’t always “succeed” on Digg, so creating a “social media” website specifically for personal finance is a good move.

The founders of Tip’d have extensive experience with social media and beneficent search-engine optimization. If any niche new website has the potential for success, it’s Tip’d.

Every article on Consumerism Commentary is followed by an option to “Add to Tip’d.” If you read something here that you like, click on this link to share the article with the Tip’d community.

Alltop

Alltop is an aggregator like pfblogs.org. With the Personal Finance page on Alltop, in one view you can see five latest articles from both mainstream finance news like The Motley Fool and Forbes as well as some of the top money-related blogs such as I Will Teach You to Be Rich, Get Rich Slowly, and Consumerism Commentary.

Google Blog Search’s business section contains the latest news from blogs as well as a search form to help you quickly find what you want from thousands of participating websites. Personal finance articles can be found in the business section. Google’s powerful search engine groups related stories across hundreds of blogs, giving you a quick idea of how many people are writing about any particular news item.

Technorati

Like Google Blog Search, Technorati offers a home page for business articles throughout the blogosphere, but with this portal, you can focus on finance articles more specifically. Technorati meshes in news from mainstream media with articles from the blogosphere. In terms of search capabilities, I prefer Google, but Technorati has unique features that let you measure the popularity of blogs and blog articles.

Have I neglected to include any other resources? Please free to let me know.

The author of the Debt Sucks blog explains his recent predicament with Comcast. When I received my first bill from Comcast many years ago, I faced the same situation. My first bill was much higher—almost twice as much—as the monthly rate I originally agreed to. Here’s what Debt Sucks has to say:

The other day, I received my first bill from Comcast, and immediately became infuriated when I opened it up. You would, too, if you were expecting a bill in the 30s or 40s and find it’s $83.31! I turn it over and there, at the top, is listed a previous balance of $57.46. How the heck can I have a previous balance!?... [The customer service representative] finally explained to me that I was being charged for two months of service—the one I already used, and the one following.

This policy—billing for future service each month, except for the first bill which includes a catch-up charge—is never explained when you initially sign up.

Frank Eliason, from the “Comcast Executive Offices,” frequently responds to postings on blogs and forums across the internet criticizing or thanking Comcast. He showed up at the Debt Sucks blog to leave a comment:

We are in the process of redesigning our statement to better explained the first month cost. We could have also done a better job of explaining this during our initial interaction.

Comcast has recently purchased my cable television and internet provider, Patriot Media. Recently, I received a letter to warn me that I should expect to see the branding switch over to Comcast soon. The letter also mentioned that billing dates will be adjusted. If they are adjusted into the future, then I would expect a larger bill that my monthly charge. If my billing date changes from the 13th to the 20th, my next bill would include service for March 13 through April 20 rather than March 13 through April 12.

This was not explained in the letter, it is the assumption I am making. I can also assume, if the cycle date is pushed later, that other people will see a higher bill this month or next month and they will not be happy.