Favorite Posts, Mentions, and Top Comments Week of 19May2013

Happy Memorial Day from Boston!  Kyle and I are in town for a wedding of one of my good friends from high school.  I’m so excited to spend time with a bunch of my old crew friends – it’s been a while!  Yesterday we went on the Duck Tour and out to dinner with some of the other wedding guests.  I love when there are more events on a wedding weekend than just the wedding.

The rest of this week was pretty normal.  We went to a great game night last Sunday and just kept our noses to the grindstones throughout the week so that we could leave town guilt-free.  Our small group is transitioning to our “summer hours.”  Our church finished up its big spring series two weeks ago, so they’re no longer providing study material to use during our weekly meetings.  We’ll probably switch to doing Bible study every other week and social stuff (game nights or potlucks) on the other half.  Oh, and the pool at our townhouse complex finally opened!  I’m not sure how busy it gets because it closed for the non-summer the week we moved in last year.  I would like to use it from time to time.  The pool at our apartment complex was the happening place to be, but the demographics of this place is much different than that one.

Posts I Liked

KK from Student Debt Survivor describes how passionately she hated her debt.

Pauline from Reach Financial Independence and Joanna from Our Freaking Budget are both discussing emergency funds.  Joanna takes a Dave Ramsey approach to their EF and Pauline weighs who needs them and what circumstances dictate the balances should be higher or lower.

Michelle from Making Sense of Cents is considering leaving her full-time job in favor of her online work and Cat from Budget Blonde announces that she will be self-employed by the start of 2014!

Kathleen from The College Investor has some great advice for this year’s college graduates!

Jen from Money Life and More asks if you are telling financial lies.

Phoebe from All You Need Is Enough has great practical suggestions for packing food for a road trip (we used many of these when we packed our Chicago trip food).

My Financial Independence Journey explores seven incarnations of money.

And finally, if you missed it, on Friday I had a guest post on Money Life and More on the proper use of credit cards.

Mentions

Ross from Cash Rebel cited my Alexa ranking plot as the inspiration for his tracking – congrats on getting below 200,000!

Miss T from Prairie Eco Thrifter listed Debate over Outsourcing Cleaning in her Friday links.

Carnivals

Long-Distance Marriage: Money Management was featured in the Carnival of Money Pros.

Using Upromise to Pay Down Student Loans was featured in the Finance Carnival for Young Adults.

Debate over Outsourcing Cleaning was featured in the Yakezie Carnival.

Top Comment

I like that William Cowie from Bite the Bullet Investing has an ironclad rule on wedding attendance: “My wife and I have always followed a simple rule: we only attend local weddings. Our friends and family know that, and they’ve seen us never break the rule, so they’re not bent out of shape if we don’t attend.”  But I don’t know if I agree with his observations on the correlation of wedding cost with divorce.  “I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that the cost of a wedding and long term happiness of the marriage are inversely related. Most of our acquaintances who had relatively simple weddings are still married after 20 years. The most lavish (and memorable) weddings have almost all ended up on the rocks. (Our observation or experience may not be representative, of course…)”  What do you think?

Most Frequent Commenters

1. Pauline @ Reach Financial Independence
2. Ross @ Cash Rebel

Top Blogs Referring to EPF

1. Budgets Are Sexy
2. Making Sense of Cents
3. Our Freaking Budget