I read many blog posts each day. They mostly focus on personal finance, but also on minimalism and travel . Here are some of my favorites that I read in August.
The irony of encouraging people to read more posts after writing about the need to engage with Real Life last week is not lost on me.
My visit home got me started, but this post from Becoming Minimalist really accelerated my thinking: Life Is Not a Spectator Sport.
This post from No Sidebar was actually full of helpful tips, despite the click bait headline: Help, My Partner’s Clutter is Driving Me Crazy!
Another post, somewhat related to the last one, talks about the mental strain of managing a household. From Fast Company, Research reveals the unequal cognitive effort of household chores is harming women’s mental health. I feel a little like a fraud bringing this up, since Mr. PiN officially runs most of the household; but I definitely notice things that he does not.
When to take social security is a question I have been thinking about for a while. What makes it tougher is that the usual scenarios are two earners of the same age, or else a high earner who is older than the low earning partner (younger stay-at-home wife, I presume). In the PiN household, the high earner is a bit younger than the low earner, so we never get an easy answer in the blogosphere. I therefore was very interested in this post from Can I Retire Yet: A Framework for Claiming Social Security. We have a few years yet to decide what to do for Mr. PiN, but it’s good to have resources to look through.
For years, personal finance articles have been referring to a study that most Americans couldn’t cover a $400 emergency expense. Apparently, this has been reported on in the Federal Reserve’s Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households since 2013.
Apparently in 2013, 48% of those surveyed said they could handle a $400 emergency fairly easily, 33% could figure something out (including pay day loans, borrowing from family, selling something), and 19% couldn’t manage it at all. For reference, $400 in 2013 is worth about $540 today.
This post from MSNBC reports on the 2023 data, with the title Most households can weather a $400 shock. Apparently only 8% would not be able to handle this at all, which I guess is progress. Of course, that $400 doesn’t go quite as far these days.
Do you have any favorite posts from August?