Easy Like Sunday Morning Weekly Recap and Roundup – # 6 – January 22nd, 2012

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Click here to enter my free $196 giveaway for a chance to win 5% of My Personal Finance Journey blog income and give another 5% to a charity of your choosing! Deadline to enter is January 31st, 2012.

Each week, the purpose of the Easy Like Sunday Morning Weekly Recap and Roundup series is the same – for me to be able to connect with you, the readers, on a more personal (non personal finance informational transmission only) level, encourage community, and also to give back to the other bloggers around the blogosphere who have mentioned My Personal Finance Journey throughout the past week.

As far as the theme goes, the title of the roundup gives it away. The roundup theme is named after the Lionel Richie song, Easy Like Sunday Morning (which I play once a week while putting this together), to remind us of the importance of slowing down at least once a week to take appreciation for that which transpired over the past few days.

So, without further ado, let’s get started with this week’s roundup!

Weekly Updates from Jacob’s Personal Finance Journey and Life 

• As far as my life in general, since Christmas, I have been trying to power through the month of January – working in the lab on my Alzheimer’s disease drug development project and also trying to continue training for the full trail marathon I’m planning to do in March of this year.
• One thing that I am looking forward to is when the days get longer with Daylight Savings Time finishing. Since I bike ride to and from the lab where I work during the day and don’t get off work until 5 pm or later, it seems that I am ALWAYS riding home in the dark! It’s not too bad since I can ride on sidewalks the whole way, but it does take about 50% longer since I have to hop curves and stop more often than when it is light and I can be on the road.
• Also – this weekend, my family, girlfriend, and my sister’s boyfriend have embarked on a ski trip to Breckenridge, Colorado for one week. Luckily, it appears that the snow in the Rocky Mountains has FINALLY started to pick back up. It’s been about 2 years since we last went skiing “out West.” Shown below is a picture of my sister and I from our last trip to Breckenridge in December 2009 about to brave the blizzard and do some “easy” slopes. Enjoy! 
• As far as my personal finances go, the end of 2011 and beginning of 2012 was a busy time with some deep thinking about what I wanted to accomplish financially during the coming year. You can see my resulting financials goals for 2012 by clicking here. 
• In addition, the other big development during the Christmas to New Years time period was that I sent in my estimated tax payments for 2011 that I hadn’t paid yet for the entire year (oops!). Lesson learned though – I’ll be sure to be better about this in 2012.

Guest Posts from Personal Finance Bloggers on My Personal Finance Journey

Over the past couple weeks, there were three guest post here at My Personal Finance Journey.


-Jason from Frugal Dad posted about The Effects of Reality TV Shows on Reality.
-Wayne from Young Family Finance posted about Back to the Basics: Control Your Spending.
-Rob Bennett from A Rich Life posted about Valuation Informed Index Investing. 

If you would like to guest post on my site, please click here to read more details about how to kick off the guest posting process. I’d love to hear from you!

Blasts From the Past

For the first 6 months after I started this blog, I pretty much “blogged in a cave.” What I mean by this is that I cranked out over 200 very good blog articles in this time period, but since I didn’t know any better, I didn’t reach out to other bloggers, get involved with the online community through commenting on other sites, or do any kind of site promotion at all. As you can imagine, some of the articles written during this time period didn’t get the attention that I think they deserved corresponding to the content contained.

The Blast from the Past section will feature one old My Personal Finance Journey article each week that I feel is high quality, but was published prior to my blog having any sort of real readership. This week’s article is listed below:

Best Options for the Cash Portion of Your Retirement Account – This post discusses what an investor is to do with cash that he or she wants to keep in his or her retirement account, given the dismally low interest rates currently being offered. Unfortunately, the verdict is that if you want extreme liquidity in your retirement account, you’re not going to earn much in the way of interest. However, thinking back on this subject/post with what I know now, you might also think about trying a short term bond index fund for a stable investment similar to cash.

If you know of someone in the PF blogging world that is really doing amazing things, feel free to send me an email for consideration in future roundups.

Giveaways

Blog Carnivals Featuring My Personal Finance Journey Articles

Top 10 Referring Sites to My Personal Finance Journey This Past Week

However, I have several other domain names purchased, and I am currently learning WordPress Self-Hosted to get these sites live as soon as time allows! I’ll be sure to keep you all updated on progress.

Well, that wraps up this week! If you have any suggestions or recommendations for things you’d like to see in this weekly roundup, just let me know by sending me an email!

As always, thanks to all the readers for creating such a great community here at My Personal Finance Journey. Your interaction is what keeps me going on this blog!

Until next time – Jacob


How about you all? How is your January going for you?!