An emergency fund is an important, if not the most important, part of your general budget. Unexpected things happen in life, and odds are they cost money. If you don’t have an emergency fund to catch yourself when you fall, you can easily get caught in a endless cycle of credit card and payday loan debt. So how do you protect yourself against life’s unwelcome expenses? My friend, allow me to introduce you to the emergency fund.

My wife and I recently purchased a new car, and I wrote a blog entry on the whole buying experience. Among the comments was a great question from Allison. She thought that you should only pay 10% of the vehicle’s purchase price as a down payment.

While having a down payment on a car is a great idea, putting only 10% isn’t a good start. So just how much should you put down on a car you’re planning on financing?

Salary negotiations are often the most stressful part of the job application. After all, the salary you agree to when you start your new job will directly affect you throughout your career at your new company. Each time you get a raise, it will be based on your current earnings. The higher your salary, the greater your potential raises.

But how do you get the most money for the job? I recently started a new position a few months ago, and managed to add almost $10,000 to my salary just by negotiating for a few minutes. Here are five tips I discovered to help you lock in a great income.

I’m still so new to blogging, I figured I would try participating in a blog carnival. What’s a blog carnival? It’s a collection of links to blogs with a similar subject as your own. And it’s a great way to discover new blogs to read. Broke Grad Student hosted this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance, and I have to thank them for throwing in a link to this humble site.

Here are a few of my favorite stories in the blog carnival:

• My Two Dollars discusses alternative ways to bring additional income into your household.
• Simple Nickel wonders if a Costco membership is really worth the money.
• The Financial Blogger thinks I might be stuck in a trap of working harder. I think they may be right!

You can check out all the stories here.

We both graduated from college four years ago, and have been driving the same junker cars that we had in college. My wife was driving a ‘99 Mercury Grand Marquis (which she affectionately referred to as Agnes). Agnes, after 100,000 miles, was getting tired. More importantly, Agnes was getting expensive to maintain. So, after reviewing our finances, we decided it was time to go shopping for a car. But not just any car. We wanted to make one of the dumbest financial moves someone can make. We wanted a new car.

With another week in the can, it’s time to take a look at what other blogs have discovered to help save you money:

• Clever Dude figured out that using a handkerchief is cheaper than buying Kleenex. While it may save you a few dollars during cold and flu season, I’d rather use tissues than a snotrag.
• The Penny Saved shared eight things you don’t want to thrifty about (I nominate a ninth item: Kleenex).
• Get Rich Slowly asked its readers how they chose their VOIP service.
• Master Your Card put together a great two part series on how to improve your credit score.
• No Credit Needed realized that putting three kids through college probably isn’t going to be cheap.

I hope everyone has a great weekend!