I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. I am exhausted, but in a really good way. I had a fantastic Christmas with family, and the day ended with another drive to see Christmas lights. We drove through both of the neighborhoods we lived in before we bought the house we live in now. I always get a little sad when I see the old houses, because it reminds me of when the kids were little and life was so carefree. Life is still wonderful now, just in a different way.
Anyway, now that you are recovering from eating and celebrating, grab some coffee and enjoy some great posts from the last week or so.
101 Centavos tells a great story of riding in the truck with his kids and a friend, and the kids all actually enjoyed a podcast involving history. It just goes to show that you can’t make decisions for other people because you just never know what they may like!
Aloysa’s Kitchen Sink is liberated! She is no longer constrained by goals and is allowing herself to ‘have a break’. It goes along with my thoughts for the week about myself and my own goals. For 2011, I am going to try and have some goals, and actually write them down and review them periodically throughout the year. Previously, I would just say “I am going to do this, blah blah”. Then it is February, and I have pretty much just gone back to the same old-same old without even noticing.
Biz of Life discusses why every checkout line except the one you pick seems to move faster. I must be affected by the same curse as The Grouch because I am drawn to the checkout lines that always need a price check. The Kroger by my house has solved this problem as they just don’t have cashiers working half the time. (When you go at night.) I think I will be making a full transition to Meijer soon…
Budgeting in the Fun Stuff shares her goals for 2011 and results for 2010. I love these posts since they get my mind working.
Buy Like Buffet wrote a very informative post about why your blog may not be making money. If you blog and haven’t read it yet, make sure you stop on by!
Faithful With A Few writes a post explaining how employers can show employees they are appreciated without impacting the ‘bottom line’. (Or minimally.)
Financial Samurai shares his ‘year in review’. His predictions were pretty spot on, and the goals were hit and miss (so he didn’t earn a million bucks this year…). It made me realize I may benefit from writing down my goals for each year, and I am going to start with 2011.
First Gen American asks if Americans have found the perfect balance of spending and saving. After thinking about it, I realized that ‘hoarding money’ really isn’t super fun. I spent a bit more this Christmas than usual, and enjoyed it . Part of it is that I am working now, so I feel a little ‘freer’ with money, but I also have a little hope for the economy.
Grumpy Rumblings of the Untenured share how they met their significant other. (This ties back to comments left by Nicole and Maggie in a previous post.)
Invest It Wisely offers some fantastic advice regarding how much of your income should be allocated to your mortgage payment. (Hint, ignore what the mortgage broker says…)
Len Penzo’s daughter writes a wonderful guest post about Christmas. Writing is obviously in the genes.
MoneyCone tells us how to get a free subscription to Forbes magazine! (I signed up!)
Out of Debt Again shares not only some great gift ideas for those with arthritic hands, but also some resources for dealing with arthritis. (Warning, the changes suggested may not be easy, but isn’t it worth it to give it a try to have less pain? )
Retire By 40 goes through his credit card statement for November. I give him credit because I don’t think I am ready to expose my spending to the world! (Panera anyone??) Also, I won a contest sponsored by Retire By 40! Thank You RB40!
Saving Money Today just launched a new website called How To Make A Website 101. I wish this site was available when I started this blog!
Squirrelers provided some great tips for saving money at the airport. I will definitely review these before I fly again – I have not flown in years!
The Saved Quarter shares her budget for 2011. It is amazing how little her family is able to get by on. Good job Quarter!
Wealth Artisan was unfortunate enough to be driving behind a dump truck, which kicked out a rock. Artisan’s windshield ended up cracked, so he had to decide how to go about repairing the damage. This post is also a friendly reminder to stay far away from such trucks! (He was a safe distance behind, but sometimes that isn’t even enough.)
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We had an incredibly relaxing afternoon. It was nice not to have to go anywhere.
Thanks for linking to us!
Today we clean.
It was great here! It snowed, but not like Europe! Went out for a walk with my toddler listening to his baby talk!
Otherwise, mostly a relaxing weekend.
Thanks for the link Kris, you are an angel!
The one thing we have in common during the holidays may be brniging the family together. I realize it may not be possible for everybody, but that is what the holidays mean to me.
We’re making gumbo and hanging with the in-laws today – the guys are watching football. 🙂 Thanks as always for including me!
Today we did a bit of boxing day shopping and picked up some stuff for the condo, but didn’t spend a lot of money in all. I read many of these same posts… looks like we’ve been following the same blogs lately. These are pretty good reads; thanks for including me on the list!
Thanks for the mention.
Hey Kris,
I’m glad that you had a great Christmas. I definitely understand what you mean about driving by an old house you used to live in. That happend to me for a while, until a CVS bought all of the property and mowed it down. Now I stand in the Band-Aid aisle and tell people about how it used to be my bedroom, LOL! I’m just kidding of course.
Thank you very much for the link, and I hope you have a very happy and safe New Year. I hope all of our neighbors to the North had a great Boxing Day as well!
Thanks,
Timothy
Our Sunday was the most relaxing day ever. We didn’t do anything, stayed home, got some snow, then some fog, read, ate and went to visit some friends. Was great.
Thank you so much for including me!
I’m writing this while there is more than 30 inches of snow outside right now! But we still had a great time, with each other and in church!
Thanks for including my link!
Hello Kris, thanks for the linkage. Happy New Year!
I hope you can enjoy this link and happy new year! It’s been great reading your articles.
I must say that when I first went to the Swagbucks website, I was a little confused and somewhat skeptical. It mentioned things like being a “premier rewards site” and a leading online search engine. But if they were a search engine, then how does one generate the rewards from? And why have I never heard of them? Well, it turns out that Swagbucks is indeed pretty legit.
It’s amazingly simple. You just sign up and you can either go to their website each time you want to gain points for surfing the web, or you can just download the Swagbucks toolbar and do your searches from there.
Then each time you do a search using the Swagbucks search engine, you gain Swag Bucks which are good towards a wide variety of prizes, including everything from GPS systems to memorabilia to gift cards to actual cash via PayPal.
During the writing of this review, I installed the Swagbucks toolbar on my computer at home. At the completion of this review, I had already gained 410 Swag Bucks! Now, I’ve only got 40 to go before I can get a $5 Amazon gift card!
Use this referal link to get a bonus of swagbucks for signing up!
http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/tannguyen1
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