Surprises, Next Steps, Word Silliness, And Flying Santas

A collection of blog posts and other articles from around the web that caught my fancy in the past month or so...

I never know what I’ll learn when I read some blogs. I started You Have The Frugal Right To Repair Your Sh*t…Or Do You? by Piggy at Bitches Get Riches, assuming I would hear about planned obsolescence (I did) and praising the new European Union law requiring all electronics to be compatible with the same charging cable (yay!). However, in the comments I heard about Repair Cafes for the first time (mind blown!). I want one of these in my town.

Joshua Brown at The Reformed Broker surprised the heck out of me with his post You weren’t supposed to see that. He reviews the economic trends of the past few years with a lot more social commentary than I was used to reading on his blog, though I wouldn’t have been too surprised to see it (probably with more profanity) on BGR.

A huge conflagration burns on the bank of a river, seen from a distance.

Around the time of the dot com bust, I remember hearing about people taking crazy investment risks, because they thought they needed very high investment returns (>10% annually) to meet their targets. This almost never went well. The key is, of course, not to put off investing until the last minute (or at least to leave enough time to let time and compound interest do their thing). I tried writing about this myself early in the blog, but Banker on Fire does this much more skillfully in his post Running Late.

Cory Fawcett, MD, got to work early on investing. However, it sounds like he had a little trouble realizing he could stop (thank goodness his spouse kept him informed!). That can be a problem for lots of people who turn to side gigs and alternate income sources to help build their funds for retirement. Even (especially) if they are successful, they sometimes have a hard time realizing they have achieved their goals. He rails about this in Out of the Job POT and Into the Side Gig FIRE.

I keep writing about wanting to cut back. However, I’m not sure about cutting back on my income. I enjoyed these two posts with ideas for (maybe) earning more. Budgets Are Sexy highlights Side Hustle # 85: Plant Propagation. I don’t know that I have the room, time, or talent for this, but I love the idea of literally growing your money. The other post appeals to my (naughty) stock-picker tendencies: 12 Diabetes Stocks for Diabetes Awareness Month from Retire by Dad (notably, a dad of a child with DM1). Because of reporting requirements at work, I won’t personally pick any of these stocks, but I find the collection quite interesting.

Life Outside the Maze posted a long piece that gave me plenty of food for thought. He is right: The Stage You Are At Makes All the Difference (when it comes to Financial Independence). I very much liked the way he spelled it all out.


I love me a bit of word tomfoolery. The Long Linguistic Journey to ‘Dagnabbit’ (from Atlas Obscura) tickled my fancy while teaching me a bit about language and taboos. I loved the part about naming a bear. In time for the holidays, The Guardian offered up this word smorgasbord on Flapdoodle, roorback, yulehole.

Last, a sweet story about the origins of the Flying Santa program, courtesy of Narratively.

Any favorites?