If there is anything in politics sillier than Congressional Job Approval polls, I've yet to find it - yet here I am writing about it. Ostensibly, these polls are set up to gauge the public's trust in Congress - to get an idea about the public mood regarding our elected leaders.

In reality, the entire setup of the poll is a sham. Here's the thing - unlike the President, the average voter cannot vote out the average Congressman (or woman). The truth is, Congress is set up in the way that it is strictly to avoid the public's mood from tearing the House and Senate apart.

Remember a few weeks back when we discussed stock market investing using the Kelly Criterion to determine asset allocations? Today we're going to go in a different direction and use Kelly for what it was intended - betting!

The Kelly Criterion is a formula you can use to determine the proper size of a bet when there are known odds and a definite payout. With a little hand waving and some basic math (as I proved a few weeks back), you can also use it to help guide your investment decisions - namely when determining the size of a position you should take. Let's hop into some calculators.

Happy summer folks! It's time to avoid basking in the harsh light of your computer monitor and absorb some vitamin D... at least part of the day! Thanks for spending your morning reading another edition of the Weekender!

Today, let's focus our attention outward, instead of on our 'personal' personal finance issues issues... let's talk about the finances of our friends and family! DQYDJ is normally a Personal Finance site but today our focus is on Extrapersonal Finance, namely, how you dole out advice to friends and acquaintances who make poor financial decisions.

Today, let's focus our attention outward, instead of on our personal issues... let's get Biblical and talk about the finances of our friends and family! DQYDJ is normally a Personal Finance site but today our focus is on Extrapersonal Finance, namely, how you dole out advice to friends and acquaintances who make poor financial decisions.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend, everyone! Remember what it's all about when you fire up your grills and open your pools today, tomorrow, and Monday.

One of the interesting things about writing on a Personal Finance site is that while you write for your readers and yourself, you are part of a broader community which informs your opinions and gives you reason to examine your own views on many topics. We at Don't Quit Your Day Job have now been around for (almost) three years, covered a large number of financial topics, introduced a number of personal financial strategies, and delved into too-great detail on subjects which had mildly interesting data.

We've got this running series on Don't Quit Your Day Job where we use the currently trading option prices (puts and calls) to divine where the market believes the S&P 500 is going over the next months. Normally, this is a problem we attack right after options expiration days (which happened to be on Friday), but as we had an issue with the script and prior commitments, you guys will have to accept our homework 2 days late.

Hello regular readers and folks new to the site, and welcome to the "I Read All The Submissions" edition of the TotallyMoney Carnival!

This is the first time I've ever hosted a blog carnival, pretty funny since we're going on 3 years now (just a few days time). I've gathered that it's proper to give yourself a brief shout-out, so if you like charts, graphs, numbers, and enlightened discussion? Subscribe to our RSS feed, like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter. Enough of that pandering; we've got a carnival to host!

We had 96 submissions, but I trimmed it down to 72 remove obviously commercial posts and paid guest posts. Sorry folks, I make the rules here.

I went through all of the articles and gave a brief summary about each one. To all of our participants: thanks for submitting. To the rest of you? Enjoy the carnival!

Weekly link roundup and site status report!

We here at Don't Quit Your Day Job are a cynical crew. We have a keen sense of the absurd - and the stench of inappropriate numbers is very clear in this article. You see, there is a position on Wall Street called a Financial Analyst - and those Analysts are trusted to do a very fundamental job: break the investment prospects in various companies down into one of 5 categories. There are positive categories (like buy or overweight), neutral categories (like market perform, market weight or... neutral) and negative categories (like sell and underweight). Different firms have different ratings, but all ratings fall into one of those three bins.