From News of the Weird:

A 40-year-old man in Cedarburg, Wis., was arrested on suspicion of DUI when police noticed the severed hose of a gas station pump sticking out of his car’s fuel door. (It belonged to a Kwik Trip station.)

Note to self: Make sure to remove the hose before pumping and running.

[Source: News of the Weird]

Well, the votes are in, and it looks like most readers retirement savings rate poll are doing a pretty good job of preparing for retirement. In fact, 73% of all respondents are saving 11% or more of their income for retirement, and there’s a handful of really hardcore savers out there, stashing away over 40% of their earnings. Click here to view the full results.

Here’s a quick look at what’s going on around the MoneyBlogNetwork and beyond… [more]

FiveCentNickel took part in three Carnivals this week. Here they are along with links to my posts that were included in each:

The Carnival of the Capitalists, which is up at About Entrepreneurs, included my post on piggyback mortgages.

The Carnival of Personal Finance, which is up at Million Dollar Goal (actually, it’s up at a backup site since Blogger locked down his main site), included “IRS Error in Your Favor.”

Finally, the Carnival of the Vanities, which is up at IMAO, included “How Much Does a Million Dollars Weigh? (Revisited).” Also included was “Little Brothers, Tampons, and Lollipops” from raising4boys.com.

Yesterday afternoon I set aside a bit of time to arrange for a homeowner’s insurance policy on our new house, as well as to transfer our other policies from from our current insurance agent to one on the other end of our move. We’ve used State Farm Insurance for years and, given that we’re actually moving back to an area in which we used to live, I thought I’d give our old State Farm agent a call. It’s not like we had a close relationship with the guy, but we’d never had any problems. While his office is actually a bit out of the way (eight or so miles from our new house, when it seems like there’s a State Farm agent on just about every corner), I figured that we might as well give him our business… [more]

I’ve written in the past about the (in)accuracy of EPA fuel efficiency estimates, and it now seems like the Europeans are jumping on board. According to an article from the Times Online, EU fuel consumption tests that were set up in 1980 don’t accurately reflect modern driving conditions. The end result is overly generous estimates that results in disappointed drives. As with EPA estimates, however, the EU estimates at least provide consumers with a common metric to compare across makes and models.

[Source: Times Online]

Awhile back, I investigated whether or not a million dollars really is a ton of money. As it turns out, the answer depends on whether or not you use the metric system. A million dollars in one dollar bills weighs in at a metric ton, or about 1.1 US tons. So then I got to thinking… What if you had a million dollars in pennies? How much would that weigh? To get to the bottom of this mystery, I once again weighed some money. This time it was ten pennies, which weighed in at 26.15 grams. Assuming that this is representative of the pennies that are out there in circulation, we can now do a bit of math… [more]

In view of the high gas prices, I thought I’d post this little tidbit:

Did you know that aggressive driving with jack rabbit starts and hard braking at traffic signals will save about 2 ½ minutes on a 60-mile trip? The same driving cuts fuel efficiency by 39 percent.

I have no idea what assumptions this is based on, but it’s food for thought.

[Source: Akron Beacon Journal]

A few weeks back, I ran a poll on retirement savings accounts which revealed that more than 9 out of 10 respondents are saving for retirement through either an employer-sponsored plan or an IRA of some sort (or both). This week I’m interested in learning even more about my readers’ retirement savings habits, which brings us to the question of the week… “What percentage of your annual income do you save for retirement?” For the purposes of this poll, feel free to include matching funds from your employer. For example, in my case, I get a dollar-for-dollar match of up to 5% of my annual salary (which I take full advantage of) and I’m also kicking in an additional 9% (we bump this up by 1% every year when I get a raise). So that means that we’re saving 14% + 5% match = 19%. With that said, let’s get to the poll… [more]

I’m pleased to report that our home inspection is now complete, and the inspector only found two tiny problems… First off, our garage door opener wasn’t properly adjusted, so it didn’t reverse properly upon contact with a blockage (or a kid — yikes!). Second, the drain plug in one of our sinks didn’t close properly. All in all, it took me about twenty minutes to fix both things, and the inspection contingency is now a thing of the past. We should be in the clear until closing as long as the buyers don’t do something stupid like try to back out of the deal.

For more information on moving, check out my Roadmap for a Successful Relocation.