Another week, another roundup of the most interesting articles I’ve read in the last seven days:

1. The 7 Deadly Sins of Personal Finance. A nice summary of all the mistakes you should avoid making, from The Globe and Mail’s John Heinzl. Click here to read.

 2. The Dow at 10,000. Don’t bother opening the champagne. When the Dow hits 10,000, as it is expected to at some point in the near future (it was at 9,554 this afternoon), there will be much celebrating. Passing this magic threshold is supposed to prove that the bull is back for good. (Ahh, recession. We hardly knew ye’.) This article, though, says a 10,000 Dow is no big deal.

3. How the recession has affected dating. Hey, let’s face it. Dating isn’t just time-consuming. It’s expensive. All that money on movies, dinner, etc. But here we find that couples are finding new ways to lower the cost of courting.

4. This is your brain on money. The big problem with personal finance advice is we assume that people are rational about money and financial decisions. That’s not true, of course. This article at Get Rich Slowly nicely explains the problem, and offers some nifty tips to getting around it.

5. Who wants to be a politician? In my past life as a newspaper reporter I covered local politics – city hall, police boards, school boards, etc. It was interesting stuff. One thing that always amazed me was how few people ran for the less coveted positions, like school board trustee. That’s why I especially liked this post from someone who recently decided to run and found himself instantly elected when no one else decided to oppose him. The money apparently isn’t half bad.