Blog roundup week 1: Earn more, spend less edition

By Carrie

If you’re anything like me, you read several blog posts a week, perhaps any one of the major financial blogs, maybe some other life skills blogs, a cooking blog, and something just for fun. For several weeks now, I’ve been meaning to devote some of my prime blog real estate (note: sarcasm) to referring my readers (yes, that means you mom) to other worthwhile posts. This week, one common theme in the personal finance blogosphere seems to be at that fundamental level – either earn more or spend less. A few insightful tips and my favorite links this week follow:


Sometimes, to really make a financial impact you need to go beyond nickel and diming your monthly budget to death. For advice on impacting the big expenses, The Simple Dollar gives us sixteen hardcore tactics for minimizing your monthly bills.

Do you ever feel like you’re running in place, not really getting ahead? Rock Your Day challenges us to ask ourselves the tough question: Are we moving toward our goals or are we just spinning our wheels?

Unhappy with your job? You’re not alone! Gather Little by Little talks a little bit about his own dissatisfaction with the working world and summarizes a recent Salary.com survey about worker attitudes in this post.

BripBlap engages us with a story many of us can relate to – pouring endless hours into a job in hopes for a big payoff later. He recounts tales of life at a Big 4 accounting firm as the big present I gave my first employer.

When I met Mr. Cents, he was deep in financial debt and had to take drastic measures to dig himself out. Gen X Finance offers ten steps to take when you’re in financial trouble – a great reference tool to prepare for (or prevent) a financial meltdown.

In the theme of spending less than you earn, sometimes we need to look at our financial situation in reverse – by earning more than we spend. My favorite post this week over at Digerati Life has some brilliant ideas to increase your salary without increasing your work – a laudable goal we all aspire to.

One of my personal favorites this week is about slowing down the daily grind over at Ms. MoneyPenny. Sometimes, work gets the best of us and our best solution is to create personal margin and get some peace and quiet the American way.

Finally, JD over at Get Rich Slowly talks about something we rarely discuss in the personal finance world – how to deal with relationships when you’re doing well financially but your family is not. As a side note, JD vents about the lack of information out there available for people dealing with relationships and money. I think he’s on to something and I may start posting more about this. (After all, I am a trained psychologist.)