Blog Post of the Week! by Erin Shanendoah

Minions,

It’s so very good to be back.

But I’m pissed off.

This little 15 year old girl introduces a new website and Jon Hamm guest posts a video on it. Hello, Jon? Where were you when I called asking you to talk about doughnuts on our blog? Instead you’re telling teen girls that everybody farts?

I called Jessica Alba about posting a video here, too, and just got this nice letter from her lawyers. I haven’t opened it yet, but I’m sure it’s totally a “yes.” I’ll hit her up on twitter about 40,000 more times as soon as I finish this little post.

Expect a Jessica Alba post next week, friends. Jon, I’m over our friendship.

It makes my blood boil. Teen girl gets 25,000 hits a minute while my mom calls twice a week to ask what the name of my site is again.

Write it down, mom.

Let’s Award An Award To An Award Winner

To quote my mom, “enough tomfoolery, Joe”, it’s time to declare a Blog Post of the Week! winner, since we haven’t given this soon-to-be-esteemed award in two whole weeks. That’s almost a dog year.

Our big winner is Erin Shanendoah’s post Lessons From the Other Side of the Tracks. This story is EXACTLY what we stand for here at FFA: life is about whatever you make it, and money is just a vehicle along the way. This post seemingly has nothing to do with financial planning, yet it totally does.

To the extent that money can help you get outside of your comfort zone and meet interesting people who are different from you, this story is exactly about the end game of a comfortable financial life. If you can’t find interesting people in your back yard, go find them.

This story is a tribute to good friends and close relationships.

Erin, you know the drill: you may print out this page and post it on your refridgerator.

8 Other Blogs You Should Be Reading But Probably Forgot So I’ll Remind You

I’m a sucker for stories about plans that work, aren’t you? Bog of Debt reminds us of a milestone along the road to healthyville: the car breaks down and for the first time, holy happy $#%!, you’ve got cash to pay for it. Although she nearly laughs out loud at the lady who’s having trouble paying for repairs, we won’t hold the fact that she’s a horrible human being against her…much.

Chart wizard PK at DQYDJ lays the stat-backed smack down on disbelievers in the S&P 500 in his S&P 500 Return Calculator. Sometimes there are BIG posts, and other times there are little posts that prove a valuable point. File this one in drawer #2. You should read it and understand it before wading into discussions about the efficacy of investing in the S&P 500 or other indexes paying dividends.

I go back to Dr. Dean’s Millionaire Nurse blog looking for more stories about mushrooms (on next week’s podcast he updates us!), but again this week, Dean’s got cars on his mind. In his post on your car’s end of life, he examines the crossover point when buying a new car might be the right option. Hint: it isn’t the same day your friendly local car dealer thinks it should be.

Balance transfers are the duct tape of the financial world. When I started as a financial planner, I thought they were awesome. Now? As long as you cut up the old card, don’t use the new card, and keep paying down the balance, balance transfers can save you hundreds or thousands of dollars in interest. Finance Product Reviews gives us this week the three best cards for balance transfers, for people on the quest to lower interest rates on debt.

Remember that silly phrase “a penny for your thoughts?” Who the hell says that? Well, Paul at the Frugal Toad shows us that maybe it should be at least a quarter for your thoughts, because it costs too much to make pennies and nickels. I’ve read about how much pennies cost before, but the nickel stats on Paul’s infographic are surprising.

Roshawn Watson is back on our list. I’ve read countless treatise about how student loan debt is killing us. Sigh. When I turned to the piece I thought, “Oh, crap, Roshawn’s recycling the same stuff you see on everyone else’s site.” Not even close. Watson uses the one-two combination of statistics and well-reasoned arguments to make a great point: Going to College Could Completely Screw You.

Out of the bajillion Mother’s Day posts out there (and I’d love to link to all of them, because there were many clever ideas), I’ll be using Femme Frugality’s tips for daddies on the foot bath and strawberry french toast Sunday. Don’t forget your mom. She did you the biggest favor in the world all those years ago.

and finally…Did somebody say chickens? In a new-to-me blog this week, A WindyCityGal’s Weblog introduces….wait for it….a rooster into her hen house. No, that isn’t code for something else you might be thinking….she really has chicken (chicki?, chickens? chicks?) living in the city. I’ve felt like a chicken in the city before….I’ve also felt like the rooster in the video.

Some People Are Brilliant, Because They Recognized How Awesome I Really Am

The Blog Post of the Week! should have gone to Sicorra at Tackling Our Debt for featuring me in her series Let’s Talk Money. I tried to be on my best behavior during the interview, so she didn’t get to hear my views on the upcoming zombie apocalypse. Maybe next time, Sicorra.

Another person of genius is Zach from Retirement-Planning.net, who interviewed me on his site. Visit Zach’s site for detailed analyses of all different types of retirement plans and interviews with some people who are far more knowledgeable than me.

Random Thoughts to End the Week Without a Flourish

Thank you again to everyone who visited last week. It feels good to have a network of cyber-friends who’ll support you when things aren’t the way you’d like them to be.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned our new concept: the Diary. For those of you with too much time on your hands and wanting our thoughts on blogging, writing, family, research and random stuff that won’t fit here, you’ll see a new link to subscribe (hopefully by the end of the day today…Friday, May 11th). We’ll send out a note every week with the behind-the-scenes stuff going on here. We’re writing a love letter to all of our current subscribers, so if they don’t want any part of this, please unsubscribe or feel free to shoot me a note and I’ll take you off the list.

Our podcast returns on Monday after a week off. I can’t wait for this episode to air. Greg McFarlane of Control Your Cash fame joins us. He’s a polarizing figure in the blogging community, and has no bones about expressing his convictions. We taped last night and my first impressions of Greg were this: he’s hilarious and wicked intelligent. …and he isn’t in the blogging biz to be your buddy. He wants to tell his readers the way he sees it. Listen to the show and you’ll hear for yourself.

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