Hey guys!
A bit late posting these from the month, but they’re reallyyyyyy good this round and excited to get ’em out to ya. Probably better than anything I wrote myself lately! Haha…
Here they are – enjoy!
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Story Time by Side Hustle Scrubs — “As a father of 3 and a money nerd, I spend a lot of time thinking about how I’m going to teach my kids about personal finance. I want to give them an education that no one gave me. I also realize that small children will be bored out of their mind with traditional finance books. What if we could hire a beloved children’s author to tailor financial lessons to our kids’ interests?”
Things I Will Never Do To Become a Millionaire by On My Way to Happiness — “Money is a tool to enhance our lives, buy things and experiences to help us thrive. It is not meant to destroy relationships, make us unhealthy, or make us unhappy.”
The Math That Explains Why Net Worth Goes Crazy After the First $100k via Four Pillar Freedom — “This illustrates just how insanely powerful compound interest is once you have a few hundred thousand dollars saved up. As Charlie Munger said, getting the first $100k is a b*tch, but once you cross that threshold, your savings begin to do the heavy lifting for you.”
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What I Learned After Two Years of Biking to Work by Raising Savers — “Two years ago we moved 4.6 miles from my work and I committed to year-round bike commuting and to being a one-car family. In doing so, we cut our expenses significantly….That said, it did take a bit of time to adjust to riding daily. What have I learned in the past two years of bike commuting?”
From Addiction to Financial Independence by Ms Fiology — “Playing with fire has a way of catching up with a person. In my 30’s I found myself deep in the trenches of addiction/alcoholism and not many people knew it… I came to a breaking point where I knew I was losing my mind. I was faced with some serious choices and to be honest they were all bleak except the path of least resistance. That path ultimately resulted in surrender, admitting defeat and asking for help.”
How We Became Minimalists by Tastefully Minimalist — “So to start: we had several vehicles (I won’t give an exact number, but in addition to cars and trucks, we even owned multiple riding lawn mowers as well); a large 3 bedroom house (for two people) a 2 car garage.. with a loft.. filled with boxes upon boxes of storage and spare furniture. We even had a lake house and a couple boats! To move on to just myself: I had several boxes of shoes that I never wore, stacks of purses that I never used, clothes hanging in my closet with tags still attached. All while having the feeling that I needed this or that because I ‘never had anything to wear’… It was a bit out of hand to say the least.”
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The Church of FIRE via Cheesy Finance— “As I recently became a Minister in the Church of FIRE, I like to give you my blessing to become one too. Please download the following PDF and just write your name on it. Hang it above you bed and pray that your investments will continue to increase in value!”
Banksy Posts Video of £1m Painting Shredding Stunt at Sotheby’s via BBC –“A few years ago, I secretly built a shredder into a painting.” The video then shows someone in a hoodie installing the device, before another caption, saying: “In case it was ever put up for auction.”
Make Better Decisions Using Zero Based Thinking by Charles Ngo — “Don’t be tied down to decisions you made before. Life changes. You become smarter. You gain more wisdom. And sometimes that wisdom will tell you that you made a mistake. We can’t change the past, but we can make better decisions for our future.”
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Honorable Mentions:
- HoneyTrek.com — “The world’s longest honeymoon”
- @ArrestYourDebt — New blogger been really enjoying following on Twitter
- Stress Free Christmas Challenge — A private Facebook group that helps you acheive a *ahem* stress free Christmas 🎄
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**Podcast of The Month**
I learned of this one from Cait Flanders and it’s brilliant!!! And I don’t even listen to podcasts! It also helps that each show is only like 20 minutes long so you can easily digest it, haha… You can check it out here on their website – everythingisalive.com – and then below is a clip from Cait’s latest newsletter that featured it and convinced me to take a listen… The lamppost one was my favorite fyi.
Lessons From a Can of Cola (and Other Things I’ve Enjoyed Consuming) by Cait Flanders — “I was recently introduced to the new podcast Everything Is Alive. Each episode is an interview with an inanimate object. Things you would find around your house or in your neighbourhood. A bar of soap, an elevator, a lamppost. Through a series of thoughtful questions, it shares its life story, and I have never listened to anything like it. It’s a fantastic podcast for hopeful minimalists, because it makes you think about how you would treat your belongings if they were alive.”
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**App of The Month**
WeCroak — “Find happiness by contemplating your mortality with the WeCroak app. Each day, we’ll send you five invitations at randomized times to stop and think about death. It’s based on a Bhutanese folk saying that to be a happy person one must contemplate death five times daily. ”
I’ll leave it at that ;)
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** Video of The Month **
The web, past and future via YouTube –“ForEveryone.net connects the future of the web with the little-known story of its birth. In 1989, 33-year-old computer programmer Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web and his visionary decision to make it a free and accessible resource sparked a global revolution in communication. Tim has called to protect privacy and free speech, extend connectivity to populations without access and maintain “one web” for all.”
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Happy weekend, everyone!
XOXO,
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Awesome nuggets here J, got some reading to do I see!
Thanks man! So much good stuff out there :)
Thanks for the shoutout, J! Great list of articles! :)
Your link was the first I clicked on — for reassurance, if nothing else. We’re sitting just over the $300k mark in invested assets; as much as I appreciate online compound interest calculators, it’s even nicer to read words and view charts showing exactly what’s in store over the next five to twenty years!
I so love these Dr Seuss books. I’m so with you and the Side Hustle Scrubs, these would be top sellers!
Perfect for Xmas presents too ;)
Excellent picks. We are moving to a new country (US) in 7 weeks and I need all the info I can get on how to manage our money there and not make some big mistakes. We cannot afford to get in debt and I’d like to pursue a more minimalist lifestyle anyone, seeing that from all we gathered here we can’t take with us most of the stuff, since it won’t fit in our 3 suitcases :D
Ooooh exciting!!! Welcome to my home!!! Definitely good to be leery here as we sure do like to hand out credit to people in hopes of snagging them into never-ending debt cycles! But with that minimalist brain of yours you will be just fine, I’m sure :)
Thanks for the reading list!! I love the bike to work lessons! Great article with numbers validating his change to biking!
Glad you liked!! It almost got me to take out my own bike from my basement for a hot minute, haha… Just way too cold for my taste right now :)
I love the one from Four Pillar Freedom – I’ve heard reference to compounding getting easier more effective as you accumulate funding but never seem a charted breakdown like this. Honestly it gave me a boost of inspiration. It won’t change my behaviors – I’m pretty much at max saving already – but definitely made me feel better about where I am at and the direction I am heading!
Good!!! Always helps to have affirmations of stuff :) Especially visual ones!
Firstly, thank you for the mention. I am honored.
Secondly, thanks for the good Saturday morning reading list. I enjoyed all of these articles in a different way. The video was my favorite. Fascinating! “We are the threads holding the world together. We build it now so that those who come later will be able to create things that we cannot ourselves imagine.” – Tim Berners-Lee
I’m so glad you enjoyed them :) Been stewing on that video all month myself as well… Such a world-changing invention that web!!
The link to modified children’s books is hysterical. I make up stories for my kids about money all the time. I inundated my poor four year old with stories of mortgages and credit cards. At seven he is constantly talking about running lemonade stands to earn money and counting the cash in his piggy bank. He’s too young to know if it will stick, but I do hope all of my make-believe money talk with help.
Haha… Mom of the year, right there ;)