By Kevin M

For only the third time (am I lazy or what???) in the brief history of OutOfYourRut, herewith is yet another attempt to capture some of the most inspiring posts from the personal finance blogosphere.

Canadian Finance Blog staff writer Alan Schram tackles credit card rewards programs in Reward Points, Loyalty Cards, and Lies. Though I’m not a big fan of rewards programs, Alan does an intelligent job of looking at them from both sides.

Age discrimination—is it real, or just something some to lean on to justify dissatisfaction with our position in the corporate pecking order? Sam at Financial Samurai does his usual expert job of thoroughly dissecting the issue in Over The Hill At 40 – Age Discrimination In The Workplace. You may have seen similar discussions of age discrimination elsewhere, but until it’s been covered on Financial Samurai, you haven’t read the whole story.

Over at Kickoffdebt, Joe opens a can of worms on an aspect of the recent healthcare legislation that could become a ticking time bomb no matter how the plan is implemented. In Medical Identity Theft Rising Joe calls attention to the significant potential that healthcare reform has to increase the amount of personal information that will be developed and disseminated in the name of efficiency.

OK Len Penzo fans, Len drills down deep to find the best options in the increasingly complex travel labyrinth in Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline and Others: What’s the Best Travel Search Engine? There are so many options that we’re blinded, but Len cuts through the crap and provides some direction—which is why we like to go to his site in times of confusion. This is well worth a read.

I confess that Jason at Redeeming Riches is probably my favorite PF blogger, but if you haven’t checked out What Is Your Credit Card Payoff? now is an outstanding time to do so. Jason introduces a web tool that will enable you to calculate how long it will take you to payoff your credit cards under different payment scenarios. If we can get past the idea of credit cards as “revolving” arrangements and fix them into loans with definite terms and durations, they become more manageable and we can get rid of them that much quicker.

Lakita at Personal Finance Journey steps into an ongoing debate among Christians with Should I Tithe Off my Income Tax Return? Though the post centers on the specific question of whether we should tithe a portion of our income tax refunds, it wanders into the broader question of should we tithe based on gross income or net income? The comments that follow make for a lively analysis.

After months of providing brilliant commentary on Twitter and on various blogs Chris Moore has finally opened his own blog for business. Check out Fickle Finance and read some of his posts. In How to Obtain Your Credit Report Chris gives a detailed, step by step how to that leaves us all without excuse. We should be checking our credit reports at least annually if for no other reason than to stay on top of erroneous information that DOES find it’s way to our reports from time to time.

Matt at Debt Free Adventure takes on one of my favorite topics in Job Loss – Save Money or Get Out of Debt?. Despite all the talk of economic recovery, the unemployment rate continues to hover near 10% and no one is certain where it will go. Even if you haven’t lost your job in the recession, this discussion is very relevant in preparation for a what-if scenario. There isn’t much time to think when the job ax falls, so having some loose strategy–preferably already in process–will help take some of the sting out of the loss.

One of the things I really like about Clare at Money Energy is the way she looks at big picture issues—ones that often seem beyond comprehension—covers them in an easy to understand fashion, then brings it all down to a plan for personal action. If you’re not a regular visitor of this site you should be! She takes on an issue that’s been in the news much of late, but curiously one we seem to prefer to avoid. The US Will Never Again Run A Balanced Budget makes an ominous but hardly incredible assumption, then tells us what we can do about it closer to home. Now that’s positive thinking at it’s finest!

Finally, in the MUST READ category we go to Online Investing AI, where Matt brings us Keeping The Joneses Down: How Envy Can Hurt the Economy and Your Financial Picture. We don’t often realize how much the desire to have what others have affects economics, politics, tax policy and especially our own finances, but the effect is real. We can so easily get caught up in possession arms races to have the biggest, the best or the most—and that can drag our finances down as quickly as any career disaster or investment miscalculation.

There’s so much outstanding content in the personal finance genre that there isn’t time or space to cover it all. But for this week, here’s a small sample of it from my little corner of the world wide web. Thanks for reading!