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Welcome to this month’s Spills Spotlight! This series consists of a roundup of my favorite personal finance blog posts from around the web, publishing on the last day of each month. If you missed last month’s Spotlight, you can check it out here.
Throughout the month I read a couple hundred blog posts and include my favorites here. Spills Spotlight is an opportunity for me to share my favorite posts with my readers, and showcase the work of my fellow bloggers within the personal finance blogging community. I hope you enjoy this series, and feel free to comment with suggestions on which posts should be included in upcoming months!
Overcoming Your Demons
by Morgan Housel at Collaborative Fund
This post is an incredible account of how Morgan Housel has battled through his chronic stuttering throughout his life. It’s a MUST read, I’ve been thinking about it all month.
“Stutterers have no spokesperson, no awareness month. It’s so unknown and secretive that it’s nearly acceptable to heckle it in public in ways that would be unthinkable for other disabilities. People comfortably discriminate against what they’re unfamiliar with, and stuttering is unfamiliar to most people. In 33 years I’ve never met another chronic stutterer.”
How to Increase Your Net Worth by $700,000 in 7 Years
by Andy Hill at Marriage, Kids, and Money
“We walked upstairs and started to write down all of our numbers on a big white board. By separating our assets and our liabilities into two big columns, we started to discover that we weren’t rich. We were kinda broke. Although we were making a solid income together, our liabilities were much higher than our assets. This epiphany moment was just the jolt of reality we needed to start making progress on our finances.”
The 10 Pillars of FI
by Choose FI
“Financial independence isn’t about deprivation, it’s about cutting back on needless expenses that cost you too much and don’t add value to your life, it’s about trying to reclaim most valuable thing in your life which is your time. Here are the 10 pillars of FI that can help lead you to financial freedom.”
The Optionality Trap
by Neil Soni
“The optionality trap is something that ensnares us, not through outside forces, but through our own risk aversion and indecisiveness. My opinion is that the optionality trap originates from an aversion to being hurt emotionally. A desire to avoid emotional pain is of course, completely natural. But in this avoidance lies an emotional stuntedness that prevents us from ever trying anything worthwhile and learning through the process.”
Watching Your Dad Go Through Bankruptcy
“Mom: “Charlie, he can’t talk anymore…it’s hurting too much.”
Charlie: “Mom, tell Dad that I love him so much…he’s the Dad that played catch with me in the yard and showed me how to combine. His identity is in those things.
Watching my dad and mom go through bankruptcy had to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever seen them going through.”
The Best Financial Move I Ever Made is Something Everyone Can Do
“Ever since that fateful Williamsburg morning, my life motto has always been: never fail due to a lack of effort, because effort requires no skill. As I finish up this answer, I realize the best financial move I ever made was actually choosing the right life partner. She’s made all the difference in the world.”
You’ll Always Have Doubters
by Bobby at Millennial Money Man
“So if you have something that you want to do – go do it, and be aware that people will try to tell you it won’t work. Maybe you’re like me and can use it as fuel, and maybe you’re someone that can ignore it and make your own path while everyone drives straight on the highway. But you CAN’T let the doubters discourage you. You can’t let negative thoughts creep into your mind that tell you that what you want isn’t possible or that it won’t work.”
Financial Independence is Simple and Necessary
by Matt at Optimize Your Life
“In the personal finance space, we tend to treat the concept of financial independence as a more advanced money topic. We view it as something to move on to after you’ve mastered the basics. I don’t think this is the right approach.”
Don’t Get Discouraged by Slow Initial Progress
“I’d been paying off debt and saving for years to get to a barely positive net worth, and to save less than one year’s worth of living expenses in my retirement account. And it felt for years like I was barely making any progress. But then, not all that long after this snapshot from the wayback machine, I hit the tipping point when saving faster became easier, and when compounding started to work in my favor — in our favor at that point — and just like that, the progress began to feel palpable.”
Happiness is An Attitude
“Therefore, happiness is a choice to feel the emotions that result from an event, to fully grieve, but also, to recognize our ability to accept what life offers us rather than remain focused on what is taken from us. Happiness is an attitude.”