Blog Post of the Week! …on Courage from Watson Inc.

Dear minions:

This is day three of the Cat Picture Stays Up 7 Days protest.

Here’s exactly why nothing gets done at AverageJoe’s Money Blog world headquarters. Cooper, my writing partner, sits like this and stares at me. Creepy. What can he possibly be thinking?

It’s probably something like:

“Why does this idiot keep typing and giggling to himself?”

or

“Somebody’s gotta cut him off the coffee.”

Today, I’ve finally worked up the courage to kick Cooper off the keyboard (don’t worry: no animals were harmed or injured during the making of this blog post). That courage came from reading this week’s soon-to-be-esteemed Blog Post of the Week!.

I’m a complete sucker for inspirational posts, so it should be no surprise that I’m handing the pretend-hardware to Roshawn at the Watson Inc. blog. He’s written a great piece called Do You Have the Courage to Be Wealthy?

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll gain the courage to get up and accomplish something awesome.

The internets were ablaze this week with quality writing. On Monday and Tuesday, boys and girls, there were some rotten posts out there, but once Thursday hit, everyone turned on the heat with keyboards blazing.

Here are but a few of my favorites:

In Personal News:

I was sad to read on Monday from JD Roth at Get Rich Slowly that he’s going through a divorce. I’m sure it’s a painful time for him, but I was glad he shared it with his readers in this piece called A Place of My Own. It’s important for others who are going through similar circumstances to read how he’s going about looking for a new home, making office decisions, etc.

YourFinancesSimplified was featured on a radio interview about surviving at the poverty line. He’s so flippin’ famous now that I’m sure he won’t remember us little guys. Dave Ramsey is in big, big trouble…..

The Millionaire Nurse Blog announced Thursday that Dr. Dean has convinced the CEO of his household that growing mushrooms at home is a great idea. Now they’re laying out the plan….even if you don’t care about mushrooms, this is a good read for anyone who’s planning: whether you’re starting a business or organizing financial priorities.
 

Stocks, Insurance and Investing

BuckInspire walks us through his family’s health insurance nightmare. Are you deciding between an HMO, PPO or other? This is required reading, just to see how saving a few bucks can create headaches later (and I mean headaches….)

If you’re deciding whether to follow Suze Orman or Dave Ramsey (or another figurehead) read this great post from Money Mamba, called Why I Feel Bad For Suze Orman.

One Cent at a Time offers us some great tax tips to start 2012. It’s a thorough piece that you should read before laying out your tax strategy and this year’s tax preparation.
 

Budget – Home – Lifestyle

Derek from Life and My Finances was able to save his old laptop after a horrible virus attack. It’s a good story how he persevered. Congrats on avoiding a huge expense! Maybe he was the inspiration for the UltimateSmartMoney piece What To Do When Your Online Accounts Are Hacked….

Little House In the Valley decided to wait on buying a new home in the post I Know I Should But I’m Not. This is a tough decision to make, because it’s often the biggest expense someone will ever take on. Follow LHITV’s decision process in the post.

Money Beagle is sick. I mean in the head. He starts his post with “I love lists” and goes on to tell us about the cool task list he’s created to keep track of the 500 household chores he needs to accomplish this year. Yuck. If I made a list, it’d be “the 500 Flavors of Ice Cream I’m Going To Consume This Year.” Now that’s a hot-mama list. That said, I have to admit that it’s a neat system and sounds well-implemented.

My Broken Coin discusses the importance of expanding your budget to invest in yourself. You won’t regret it. In fact, because of this story, I’m investing in a new sweater-vest and mullet combo today! Chicks are gonna dig me. Winning!

At The Dog Ate My Wallet you’ll find your chance to Get a World Class Education For Free by entering MIT classroom discussions and video online. It’s a great opportunity and gaining tons of viewers.

Funny – Entertaining – Inspiring

Carrie at Careful Cents bestows upon us Weird and Gross Ways to Save Money. They’re…..disgusting…and like a train wreck in slow motion, I can’t stop reading. Her post rocks because I can’t find anything funnier to say about it than “click the damned link and read it!”

101Centavos from time-to-time has these cool little posts like this week’s Caffe’ Macchiato: Learning a Foreign Language…with Baby Steps. In it, he talks about trying new things, like learning to speak a new word every day. They’re fun reads that stick with you all day. Well worth the time.

…and more funny. I need to share Squirrelers post of hilarious stories about job interviews gone bad. However, they’re JUST WORDS!!!! (read the story…it’ll make sense.) For more fun, read the comments where Squirreler’s readers share some other not-so-great situations.

And finally, do you have kids and cell phone issues? I know I do. This is a fast-reading account from Mike and Molly’s House about their daughter Pistol and her entrepreneurial skills in upgrading her phone. Inspiring and entertaining aren’t good enough words to describe the drive and focus this kid possesses.

I’m Very Popular and a Great Driver

Bragging time.

We made it into a carnival this week: specifically the Yakezie Carnival hosted by Miss T and the Prarie Eco-Thrifter.

Erin at The Dog Ate My Wallet acknowledged just how soon-to-be-awesome our Blog Post of the Week! award was last week, when we handed it to Andrea at SoOverDebt.com. She’s right to imply that we’re geniuses. Yeah, she didn’t say it, but I can totally read between the lines.

A special thanks to both of my readers. The other person and Mom visited a TON this week, crashing our Alexa site ranking through the 300k wall (whew!). Now we’ve positioned our guns squarely on 200k….by bringing more deliciously good content next week AND less news about my cat (double feature):

Monday: Our Boner of the Week! features an UGLY story in this week’s paper you don’t want to miss. I rarely am angry about money (counterproductive). This story made me really, really angry.

Tuesday: Refinancing? Do your homework before deciding to sign paperwork. We’ll take you through a few steps you may not have thought of before.

Wednesday: Surprise….as always….I can’t give it all up now.

Friday: of course, we’ll be back here again, giving you our list of required reading.

Now, head to Roshawn’s site and read his Blog Post of the Week! It’s awesome.

Have a good weekend, minions.

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