The Friday Feast ~ the 29th of January

The personal finance community is filled with so many talented writers and inspiring families in search of something better out of life than the traditional society-approved plan of buying lots of stuff and retiring in your 60s if you're lucky.

Here is a look at the best of this week's personal finance blogs.

In this episode of Friday Feast: Budgets Are Sexy, Retire By 40, PT Money, Disease Called Debt, The Work At Home Wife, The Financial Diet, Just One More Year, Early Retirement Extreme and Money Mozart.

Happy Friday one and all! Here's to hoping that this week brought you closer to your goals of financial independence and early retirement (*clink*).

This week, I had the honor of speaking with Hahna Kane who is organizing the "Master Your Money Summit". I talked about our journey to early retirement and spilled the details about how we are trying to make this all happen. This video interview will air online in March.

Enough chatter - let's get right to the blogs!

First and foremost, big congratulations to J$ from Budgets Are Sexy for selling his house. As someone who is undergoing the initial steps to sell our property, I understand how important it is to get that mortgage monkey off your back!

So, how 'bout that market? Retire By 40 chats with the blogosphere about retiring in a bear market and offers up a few techniques to make the process a little easier to handle.

My favorite post of the week

My favorite post this week comes from PT Money, who wrote this week about the mythical benefits of buying a home instead of renting, and makes the case that renting could be a better financial decision.

"Homes are often the only real savings a family has because mortgages are forced discipline to save more. But what if the extra amount saved by renting each month (versus a mortgage) was invested?"

For the record, real estate hasn't panned out very well for me. Then again, it was never my intent to make money with real estate either, so I never tried. However, I am finding that unless we actively strive to turn a profit by flipping properties (or buying at exactly the right time), renting instead of buying may be a wiser financial choice.

More from the personal finance community

Coming in a close 2nd place to the PT Money article is one from Disease Called Debt, who wrote about how they went from saving virtually nothing to saving half of their income.

Do you dream of working from home? If so, check out this comprehensive list of companies that hire remote employees from The Work At Home Wife.

From The Financial Diet, here is an interesting look at how expensive living in Thailand truly is.

Honorable mentions: Just One More Year talks about the agony of Sunday night, Early Retirement Extreme discusses what early retirement means to an extrovert, and lastly, don't forget to check out my guest post about writing your own retirement letter on Money Mozart.

Photo of the week

I made this photograph last year of one beautiful sunset over Scottsdale, AZ standing in the backyard of my in-law's place.

Coming up in the week ahead on ThinkSaveRetire: On Monday I am publishing my interview with a couple who took a vacation last year to a very, very cold and unlikely place. And on Wednesday, we're discussing tiny homes and 10 reasons why less space actually makes me happier.

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