Happy Friday!

Here’s our weekly digest featuring all the articles I wrote on Budgets Are Sexy, along with other interesting items I came across this week.

It was a pretty good one until learning of the passing of Vanguard’s legendary founder, Jack Bogle :( What a gift he left all of us! And what a perfect time to reflect on our own legacies as we move into the weekend here too…

If you like today’s newsletter, please pass it forward to others you think could be helped by it! Thank you! 🙏🙏

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Posts I wrote this week:

MONDAY: The Best Banks and Financial Products of 2019 — A sample of the top categories from MyBankTracker.com’s yearly “Best of Banking Awards.”

TUESDAY: I want you to love your money like this guy! — How bad do you want financial freedom? Are you willing to fight for it like this guy who puts out 19-slide Powerpoint decks about his money? ;)

WEDNESDAY: Product of The Month: The Avid Investor Daily Planner! — A great journal for investors who want a better way to track their performance… Answer the question at the end of the post to be entered to win a free copy!

FRIDAY: My *Favorite* Blog Posts From 2018 — The last of the roundups for the year! Have any of your own favorites that stuck in your head or really helped you? Would love to know which!

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Items I found interesting around the web:

This Facebook group by Jay Geddie –> Black People Invest Too — “Black People is a group I started on FB last year to help educate black people on basic financial principles. I’ve run across so many people who either don’t save any thing, put it all in savings (vs investing), are bad investors (chasing the latest trend bc they heard it on tv, etc), or know nothing about investing/personal finance at all. I try to make this an open forum for people to ask questions about things they may have been curious about in the past as it pertains to money habits.”

The 15 charts in here –> How The World Got Better in 2018 (A lot went wrong, but it’s still the best year be a human being on Earth!)

This free little library –> Woman Turned 110-Year-Old Dead Tree Into A Free Little Library For The Neighborhood And It Looks Magical

And this powerful question to ask yourself at all times –> “Do I like who I am when I’m doing this?” via David Cain’s reflections on self-esteem.

Happy weekend,

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Hey guys,

Welcome to our inaugural newsletter of Finds!

If you’re out Black Friday shopping right now, I hope you’ll think of me when you come across these sweaters :) And if you have no idea what they’re about, GOOD! Do not click on this link and keep it that way!

But seriously, if you have to go out shopping today, make sure to print out this list of approved items so you don’t get too carried away… 50% off deals are nice, but 100% off deals are even better 👍

Here are my favorite finds from the week:

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50 Ways To Improve Your Finances By 1% via Choose FI — “#5. Pack a “go bag” to make spontaneous frugal adventures easy and leave it by the door or in the car.” // I just added one in my trunk last week! Comes particularly in handy when you need spare clothes or snacks for your kids too ;)

Buy Less Stuff. Buy More Assets. via Four Pillar Freedom — “When you spend one dollar on a material thing, that dollar is gone forever. But when you spend one dollar acquiring an asset, that asset becomes your employee that works relentlessly to earn money for you.”

Bill Gates Talks Toilets [2.17 min video] via Twitter — “There are few things I love talking about more than toilets.” – @BillGates

30 Tips I Use to Make Myself Happier, Right Now by Gretchen Rubin — “My book The Happiness Project came out almost ten years ago… One of the most important things I learned as part of doing that project, and an idea that I put into practice in my own life all the time, is that I can influence my happiness…Here are 30 things I do to make myself happier when I need an immediate boost”

“The Minimalist Home: A Room-by-Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life” — A new book coming out by Joshua Becker — ”It’s the method I created by accident 10 years ago, when my neighbor saw all the stuff I’d just dragged out of the garage into the driveway and pointed out that maybe, just maybe, my family didn’t need all of it.” // Its release is December 18th, but you can pre-order it now and get 32% off the list price as well as other promotional gifts. Looks good!

Happy holidays 🦃,

// Hat tip to Millennial Boss for those Baby Shark finds