RichardWelcome to my my monthly round-up of the best personal finance I encountered over the previous month. And what a month it’s been!
I published my most popular post yet that led to a surprising jump in readers. While the number of visitors has tailed off somewhat since then, the article took me an age to write so it’s nice to see some results for all that effort.
For the first time ever in the short history of this blog I actually decided to write a few guest posts to further expose my message to new readers. Here they are, incase you missed them:
The Surprising Way That Being A Perfectionist Saves Me Money
4 Side Hustles Ive Actually Made Money With
The Six Biggest Lessons I Learned While Paying Off My Debt
A big thank you to Jon, Pauline and Kim for accepting my posts; I was truly honored to be featured on your sites.
If any fellow bloggers are reading this and are willing to accept a guest post please hit me up – I’d be thrilled to write for you.
It seems to have had some effect too. For the first time I started to look into where this site actually ranks in the search engines – and it seems that without any conscious effort we’re already in the top 40 for the phrase “frugality”. There are a quite a few other rankings we currently hold so it’ll be interesting to watch those over time. I’ll let you know what I find!
Lastly, some of you may have read about my dislike for my job. Oddly a few weeks ago my boss told me there may be a promotional vacancy opening up soon and that I’m top of the list right now. A promotion could mean a sizeable payraise, helping me “fast track” my plans for financial freedom so I’ll keep you posted if anything actually materializes there.
OK so that’s my update. Now time for the blog posts that really got my vote over the last month…
How Michelle Paid Off $40,000 In Student Loan Debt
I love to read success stories of paying become debt free. So this post from Disease Called Debt really got me going. It’s great to read about the strategies people use to get out of debt and the end result of all their effort.
20 Places to Find the Best Freebies
Who doesn’t like free stuff, especially if you’re trying to be more frugal? This handy little post is worth bookmarking so you can follow up on each of the opportunities and, as a result, save some serious dollar along the way.
How Spending $1 Today Can Cost You $10 Tomorrow
Now here’s an interesting one. A mental experiment, based on real economics, that illustrates why spending a dollar today could cost you a lot more than you actually think. For anyone wanting to spend less money this makes some seriously motivational reading.
Want to control your spending so you can get your finances under control. These two simple-yet-deadly-effective techniques are well worth adding to your armoury.
The Formula For Financial Freedom
We talk a lot about financial independence (FI) and financial freedom in the personal finance bloggosphere but a lot of the information you need to know is dotted around various blogs and forums. Fortunately, this little gem pulls together all the most important concepts you need to understand in one handy article.
The Minimum Payment Debt Struggle
Some years ago, when I was seriously in debt, I struggled to meet even the minimum payments on my various debts. It was a pretty stressful situation, though eventually of course I won the war. However if you find yourself in a similar situation right now and don’t know which way to turn, Hayley offers some seriously-smart advice you can apply straight away.
I tried #2 some years ago and it had a profound effect on my saving habits.
Freezing Fresh Produce: Tips for Freezing Fruits, Vegetables, & Herbs
Seeing as I’m so into growing my own produce (note to self: must blog more about this soon!) what surprised me when I started was that actually growing the food was, in many ways, the easy bit. Harder was making use of all that produce before it rots. Here, then, are some handy tips for storing your fruits and vegetables so you can enjoy them for longer.
Getting Rich In Manhattan On $65k/year
Ah, Mr Money Mustache – what a shining light you are! Here, MMM provides a handy run-down of how just one of his readers managed to gain financial freedom while living in one of the most expensive cities in the world.
What’s the difference between frugality and being poor? Quite a lot as Derek points out in this thought-provoking post.
How To Save For Retirement The Awesomely Strange Way
“My advice to everyone out there about saving for retirement? Endeavor to be strange. Seriously.” Great advice on planning for your retirement from the ever-fantastic Dee. Love it.
So how did your month go? What were your big wins – or notable new experiences? Please leave your thoughts in the comments area below…
Thanks for mentioning my posts Richard! I’ve read a couple of these other posts already and they are great! I really enjoyed Dee’s post in particular. I’m looking forward to reading the ones I haven’t read yet. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for the shout! Congrats on your new traffic bump 🙂
Lots of great stuff here that I haven’t read yet – thanks for sharing, Richard!
[…] Hat tip to Frugality Magazine for highlighting this article // Photo by Chris […]