I smashed my writer’s block to smithereens yesterday after a really good night’s sleep. It felt so good to feel the words flowing like water again… I feel much more peaceful when I can just let the words escape me. On to the personal finance postings.

Free Money: Got 10 Crisp Dollar Bills In My Mailbox I did the whole Arbitron ratings thing about a year ago with similar amounts of free cash in the mail. Around here, NPR got a lot of nice markups, though I don’t know whether it helped them nationwide. My wife and I both have our car radios defaulted to the local NPR station. (@ money, matter, and more musings)

Why You Should Get A Target Retirement Fund Target retirement funds have been an ongoing discussion on several blogs for the last month or so; here’s another excellent contribution to the conversation (@ binary dollar)

So You’ve Saved Money For Your Child’s College Education In A 529 And They Get A Full Scholarship. Now What? For me, I leave it in their name to help defray any graduate school costs. Once they’re out of school, the account will just turn into a brokerage account in their name. This was something I worried about until I had a chat with a Vanguard person a few months ago on the phone. (@ generation x finance)

Also, you may want to check out the 69th Carnival of Debt Reduction and the 84th Carnival of Personal Finance.