At the Dec. 17 edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance, the Get Rich Slowly blogger had some fun this week with the “Naughty or Nice Edition.”

Yes, that is a Christmas theme you are detecting. Christmas carols, eggnog and even some Christmas cartoon fun have been mixed in with the weekly compilation of money management and life lessons from dozens of bloggers across the country. There are lots of financial topics this week, so click over and enjoy the discussion.

Here are my picks from today’s carnival list:

• Banker Girl has Reading (and Understanding) “The Fine Print.” She explains how and why she is confident in pinning down the mouse print on her banking contracts.
• Alpha Consumer has Save More Money-Unless You’re Retired. Yes, there is a generational gap in how people view money management, and it has a lot to do with life experiences. My grandmother and her sister, whose family went through difficult times during the Great Depression, maintained frugal lifestyles even though their retirement years were financially respectable. I suspect a lot of adults who are struggling financially in southeast Michigan these days also will be quite miserly with their retirement incomes two or three decades in the future.
• Millionaire Money Habits has Credit Crunch Woes: Getting a Loan Just Got Tougher. There’s a chart with this article as he explains why a credit score that was “good enough” previously won’t get you the best rates today.
• Free From Broke has Where Did That Coupon Go? with ideas on how to keep track of those coupon offers. I’ve posted a lot about coupon techniques recently, and collected some of those threads into a new focus page: Grocery shopping on a budget – tips and tricks. Following up on Free from Broke’s discussion, my non-grocery coupons such as Jo-Ann Fabric or JCPenney go into a manila envelope that I check through before doing shopping errands, and I de-clutter that packet about every two weeks.
• My Dollar Plan posts about her experience with Volunteer Income Tax Assistance, along with a national hotline phone number on where to locate such programs. I do know there are efforts starting in Monroe to reach out to low-income taxpayers and help them get through the process during tax season. Details will be printed in The Monroe Evening News and on this blog as soon as they get announced. There’s also been local publicity about a service that will be available to active duty military families in the Toledo and Monroe areas.
• And … Monroe on a budget is included in the carnival with The Other Out-of-Pocket Medical Expenses. Yes, that post was inspired during my recent sick day with whatever bug was going around Monroe that week. There are other expenses for a routine illness or injury that get overlooked, that is, until you’ve got to deal with it.