Here are some of the blog posts you’ll find on the July 14 Carnival of Personal Finance hosted by The Budgeting Babe and the July 15 Festival of Frugality hosted by On Financial Success.

Yes, I’m a little bit late this week with the carnival roundups. But I didn’t get a chance to read them until today, and I don’t want you to miss out on these financial tips.

Carnival of Personal Finance participants include:

• In Debt Because I Like Nice Things presents How do I sell my stuff? “Start small. Don’t wake up on Saturday morning and decide to clean out your entire house. You’ll get through a couple drawers and just give up. Do things room-by-room.” This is a great post about sorting out your stuff, and it’s the first post in a series.
• Dollar Frugal presents On Obsolescence: “My mom gave me a huge box of my sisters’ old Disney VHSes. All of the classics, and they still work, of course!” My husband found a car FM stereo adapter for his iPhone at half price this week. Why was it half price? Because that gadget isn’t compatible with the new 3G-ready version of iPhone. And since we spent enough money on his phone last year, we want to get as much use as we can from it. In recent days, he’s been having a lot of fun dowloading applications written for the new phone that will also work on his older phone.
• Student Scrooge presents Saving my grandmother’s miles: “These days, frequent flyer programs are their own little industry, and there are numerous ways to earn miles, any of which could extend the life of your miles.” Maybe you have no plans to fly right now, but it might be possible in the next year or two because of a reunion or wedding to attend. Keep track of your miles account, and make sure you know how the program works, so you can use the discounts when possible.

Festival of Frugality participants include:

• Debtopedia presents How to avoid debt with good budgeting: “If you don’t manage your money better, you’ll only end up in the same position all over again. I have known many who have dipped their toes in this well far too often, and it has been not only their financial ruin, but sometimes also at the cost of their families.” The first step in starting a budget is figuring out where the money is going in the first place.
• Cheap Healthy Good presents 20 cheap, healthy dishes made from 10 pantry staples: “Armed with a reasonable variety these ten basic ingredients, I can generally whip up a nice selection of main course, side dish, or snacky-time snack-type dealies.” And there’s links to frugal recipes! In the meantime, make sure you have a good beginners / basic cookbook that shows step by step how to make things like baked chicken, biscuits from scratch and other stuff that doesn’t come from a box.
• Frugal Homemaker Plus presents Why not? You can afford it! “We do have two incomes. But we can’t afford it. You never really know what is going on with other people’s money.” Quite a few years ago, when my husband was still working in the radio business, a friend couldn’t understand why he and I weren’t contributing more cash than we did to help out another friend in financial need. Finally, I pulled the first friend aside and explained how much money we actually made. He apologized – his assumption was that because national media personalities made a lot of money, the local equivalents did too. But local radio jobs were traditionally very low pay. There were some perks such as entertainment discounts and freebies with those jobs, but not a lot of cash.