First of all, I’d like to wish a Happy Easter to everyone out there who happens to celebrate it.

Second, given the large number of people out there that are competing in March Madness basketball pools, I thought I’d share something that I heard on the radio the other day. Apparently, ESPN received 3.65 million entries in their online pool. Of these, nobody got all 32 first round games correct. Of course, given that there are nearly 4.3 billion unique combinations of results, this isn’t terribly surprising. But if you had a bad first round, don’t fret… You’re not alone.

And now for some articles that caught my eye over the past week…

» Your Take: Pay for Academic Performance for Children
This is an interesting discussion about whether or not you should pay kids for their grades. I’m still undecided on this one. The only pay I ever got for my grades as a kid was when I took my report card to the local arcade and got free tokens in return for every A or B (I forget the exact exchange rate). Anyway, our kids aren’t really old enough for this (yet) and we haven’t really thought about it yet.

» How to Start an Investment Club
While investment clubs were all the rage in the late 1990s, I haven’t hear much about them since the dot com bust. Nonetheless, this is a nice rundown of how to start you own club from someone who’s done it before.

» How To Hire An Illegal Immigrant
JLP dissects an interesting “How To” for homeowners that are interested in hiring illegal immigrants.

» 5 Ways to Teach Young Children About Money, Counting, and Making Change
NCN talks about five different ways to teach little kids about how money works. Interesting (at least to me) aside… Our six year old’s kindergarten class is learning about money right now, and we were amused to learn that kids in his class are clamoring to be paired up with him whenever they do breakout groups because he does all the money counting for them.

» Two Good Ways to Respond to Poor Decisions and Sunk Costs
Next time you make a bad financial decision, read this article before throwing good money after bad.

» How to Improve Your Credit Score
Interested in bumping up your credit score? Read this for some tips. Sadly, there’s no silver bullet.