The Friday Feast ~ the 20th of November

The personal finance community is filled with so many talented writers and truly inspiring people and families who want something much different in life than the traditional plan of buying lots of stuff and retiring in their 60s.  Here is a look at the best of this week's personal finance blogs.

In this episode of Friday Feast: Living A FI, Self Employed Movement, Healthy Wealthy Income, Roadmap 2 Retire, Student Loan Hero, My Rickety Road, The Resume Gap, How To Get Rich Slowly, Freedom From Money and The Yachtless.

Welcome to Friday and the 20th of November - one week before Thanksgiving. I am trying something new this week by highlighting my favorite post of the week after giving you a couple equally awesome posts to consider. Let me know what you think of this slightly changed format!

On Tuesday, Dr. Doom over at Living A FI brain-dumped a post about what early retirement has given him the time to do. It's not all vacation and happy stuff, but the time to help family and friends can't be taken for granted, either.

Marc over at Self Employed Movement penned an impassioned post about bullshit excuses that we tell ourselves that keep us working the same bullshit jobs. If you're heading towards a dead end, change course!

My favorite post of the week

My favorite post of the week comes from Healthy Wealthy Income, who reminds us that we are all smart enough to be rich. If you don't consider yourself rich, don't beat yourself up. Instead, re-focus and dedicate yourself to saving more, spending less and kicking ass in life.

Also, starting over in your financial life isn't the end of the world. In fact, starting over might give you the time needed to reflect and perfect your financial life from beginning to end. Track your expenses and then decrease them. Start investing - even the smallest amount is a step in the right direction. Stay dedicated and ensure your lifestyle doesn't screw over your future self.

More from the personal finance community

Should we quit focusing so much on our net worth? Roadmap 2 Retire thinks so. "If our wealth is tied to the markets, volatility will eventually bring us back to reality."

And here's another good question: Should you help your partner pay off student loans? Student Loan Hero discussed this topic and argued that helping your partner dissolve their student debts have both financial and emotional benefits.

To budget or not to budget, that seems to be the question that we talk a lot about in the personal finance community. My Rickety Road believes strongly in budgets, arguing that just like countries need budgets, so do we. Agree?

Honorable mentions: How To Get Rich Slowly wrote about how financial blogging changed her, Freedom From Money discussed alternatives to driving inefficient automobiles and The Yachtless asked what you would do if the laws of the space-time continuum of personal finance were temporarily suspended.

Coming up in the week ahead on ThinkSaveRetire: Next week Monday I will talk about a financially devastating lunch I had with a friend of mine last month...what he told me nearly made me cry. Also, in recognition of Thanksgiving, we're going to talk about what being thankful truly means when you already have so much in life.

Also, stay tuned in December when I chronicle a guy's epic 2,200 mile hike that completely changed his perspective on life, turning him and his wife into future early retirees!

Thanks for reading, and cheers to another financially productive week ahead!