The Federal Reserve announced what is being called QE3 – which means the third round of quantitative easing – in hopes of improving the American economy.

Quantitative easing is where the Fed wants to lower the cost of borrowing debt in some manner in order to push interest rates even lower than they are.

QE1 and QE2 helped push and keep mortgage rates at historic lows.  Now QE3 is going to kick in to the tune of $40 billion per month in purchased mortgage-backed securities.

There is a real risk of inflation and you are essentially increasing the money supply by that amount each month.

It will be interesting to see if the plan works — the stock market has liked it thus far, but will it work long term?

As the government and Federal Reserve try to amp up the economy, here are some articles to help you amp up your financial life:

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The 2nd annual personal finance bloggers conference, FinCon, is going on in Denver, Colorado.

All your favorite bloggers [GC edit: most, I couldn't make FINCON this year] are rubbing elbows, listening to panels, and learning more about how to make their blogs even more impactful for their readers.

I was able to attend FinCon last year and helped record some of the sessions.  I wasn’t able to attend this year, but was still inspired to learn that FinCon participants helped plant trees in a local park in Denver.

When’s the last time you went to a professional conference and did a service project?

Even though they’re all in Denver, here are some great articles from the personal finance community this week:

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