The Friday Feast ~ the 16th of October

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: Gen Y Finance Guy, LivingAFI, Just One More Year, Freedom40Plan, The Broke and Beautiful Life, Life and My Finances, Money After Graduation, Good Night Debt and Life Hack.

It seems like every week, I get more and more energized about personal finance.  Reading some of these incredible blogs is not only inspiring, but it makes the time that I put into maintaining my own blog totally worth it.  It's a lot of work, but I love it.  So do most of you, and it shows.

Speaking of blog maintenance, congratulations to Gen Y Finance Guy for hitting his blog's one year anniversary.  Sometimes this can seem like a labor of love, but the first anniversary always seems to put something extra in your step and some added motivation for more.  Congrats, Dominic!  For the record, this blog's one year anniversary is next month!

Another congratulations to LivingAFI, who wrote a piece about "That Guy" last week that reflected on a day in the life of an early retiree by people watching at a coffee shop for hours, wearing flip-flops, no computer and not a care in the world.  LivingAFI is that guy.

One article that hit close to home was an excellent piece penned by Just One More Year on the subject of...DOWNSIZING!  The wife and I will be getting rid of most of our shit next year as we prepare for life on the road.  But, you don't need to have plans to sell everything and buy an RV before giving downsizing a try.  As Bryan said, there are so many benefits to downsizing.

Also, I found a new blog - Freedom40Plan.  One of his posts struck a chord with me, the one about anticipating life changes and dealing with your overall satisfaction with your job. Like him, I have a general feeling of malaise over my job, but it's one of those things that I'm sticking with for the last remaining months of full time work.  He also talked about the possibility of having a kid...and what a coincidence, so did I! #DINKPower

And consider this, a guest post on The Broke and Beautiful Life about an opera-singing guy who's purposely looking at this whole financial independence and early retirement thing a bit backwards. "On the surface, pursuing a life in the arts is everything that’s wrong with my generation."

Or this, a bit of a controversial post from Life and My Finances about the 9 things the rich do that the poor do not. The comments section at the bottom of this post is particularly interesting. Note: this one is from earlier in the year.

What else is out there?  Money After Graduation wrote about the uselessness of education.  Kate from Good Night Debt asked about whether or not she should completely max out her 401k (for the record, I do!). Also, check out this interesting article from Life Hack about the habits successful people give up to increase their productivity.

Honorable mentions: What happens when your wife earns more than you?, How much can you save by creating simple rules?, and Ruby is off the rails!.

Coming up in the week ahead on ThinkSaveRetire: I am writing about how unimportant I have become at work, and why that has almost completely eliminated my level of stress and frustration in life.  Also, I talk about new car ownership and dissect just how financially devastating cars can be.

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