Spills Spotlight: Volume 7

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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!

Living the Dream After Turning $2.26 Into a Million

by Millennial Money via Think Save Retire

“Easy is the enemy. And so are apathy and convenience. So many people coast through life and wonder why they’re unhappy. Freedom doesn’t come from easy. It comes from struggle and growth. It comes by doing something that counts, something that’s meaningful.”

The Opposite of Easy

by She Picks Up Pennies

“Time helps us forget how hard things are. Just like we seldom stop to talk about the mess we are making as we create and make progress, we forget how long the journey was once it has passed. And how hard it was.”

Mindsets: Optimism vs. Complacency vs. Pessimism

by Morgan Housel at Collaborative Fund

“This is a real optimist. He’s an optimist because he knows all this stuff does not preclude eventual growth and improvement. The bad stuff is a necessary and normal path that things getting better over time rides on. Progress happens when people learn something new. And they learn the most, as a group, when stuff breaks. It’s essential.”

Learning to Be Funny

by Brendan at Semi-Rad

“I don’t think anyone is born funny, just like no one is born a climber. You can be born into a funny family, which some people might assume is genetic. I don’t believe that’s correct. I think you’re just surrounded by people who are trying to be funny, and you join in”

How My Financial Anxiety Turned Into Confidence

by The Luxe Strategist

“I might have suppressed my past financial anxiety, but it never went away. It stayed with me. And over time, it turned into something different.

Confidence.

Confidence that I could live on less than I think, and still be content.
Confidence that I can be wrong about money, but what matters is that I dust myself off and try again.
Confidence that the money system I planned out is working, because any plan is better than no plan.”

Don’t Let the Impossibility of Achieving Perfection Hold You Back 

by Our Next Life

“To reach big goals in any area of life – and to allow ourselves to dream big and set those goals in the first place – we must accept that perfection is not a real thing. If we can do that, and embrace imperfection, we can stop letting this mythical notion of perfection mess with us and interfere with our intentions.”

3.1 Lessons on the Way to 31

by Ryan Holiday at Thought Catalog

“When you are young and impatient, you want everything now. It can feel like life is punishing you by depriving you of opportunities, crushing you with those potentially transformative moments that don’t quite come to pass. This is in fact, not the case.

It always takes longer than you expect and this is a good thing because you’re growing and improving every day and thus are more prepared for whatever happens when it does happen.”

The Most Important Asset

by Of Dollars and Data

“You should also trade your money for anything that you would regret missing on your deathbed. If you can imagine yourself regretting skipping an event in your final days of life, then you should trade money for it today.”

No Mercy / No Malice: Fast & Slow

by Scott Galloway

“As I’ve gotten older, I’m able to separate the small things from the big things and not sweat the little stuff. The previous sentence is a lie. Similar to jet lag and hangovers, the impact of stress on me has worsened with age.”

Smarter, Not Harder: How to Succeed at Work

by Farnam Street

“As I looked around, I noticed that the most successful people I know have one thing in common: they are masters at eliminating the unnecessary from their lives. Incredibly successful people focus their time on just a few priorities and obsess over doing things right.”

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