A Bunch of Great $$$ Resources ✨ (Fire Meetups, Curation Sites, #VanLife, More)

Morning!

Been helping a few readers find some things around the community and thought I’d share them with you too in case they help 🙂

One was looking for ways to connect with other like-minded people in the space, another was wondering if any other sites out there stream RSS feeds like we did back in the Rockstar Finance days, and then another’s about to head out on a massive road trip so I shot her a bunch of great articles around #VanLife to help inspire her.

I also needed some help myself for good bookkeeping services out there as mine is shutting down, so I’ll list the recs people shot over to me as well here at the end…

While I’m at it, I’ll also point out that I’ve added a bunch of resources around this blog too in the top menu bar, so be sure to click around there every now and then as I’m constantly adding and re-organizing things from the past 14+ years 👍

Here are shortcuts to some of them if you’re reading this in email or RSS yourself:

• My favorite blogs, books, apps!
• A bunch of great (free) budgeting spreadsheets
• Podcast appearances (including all 26 episodes of my own M.O.N.E.Y. show!)
• List of all the series we’ve had over the years (net worth, side hustle series, would you rathers, confessionals!)
• Reviews of a lot of books, apps, etc. (Digit, YNAB, Vanguard, Personal Capital, Honey…)
• Merch page
• “Hire Me” page
• How to subscribe to the blog (email, RSS, etc)

Alright, now onto some helpful links for whoever else might need them!

A bunch of great meet up communities

For those looking to connect both online, and off, to other like-minded people in our space:

• Camp FI — in-person retreats that “fosters genuine relationships across the FI community that encourage us to live financially independent and happy lives.”
• FIREList: Meetups — a list of FIRE meetups from California to Colorado to Massachusetts and in between
• Choose FI Community — host to both online and in-person local FIRE meetups
• Mr. Money Mustache Forums / Meetups — host to both online and in-person local “Mustachian” meetups

Inspiring articles around travel and #VanLife

Here was the note from my friend that spurred this: “I’m planning an epic road trip before I turn 35 and my husband turns 40. Thinking about renting a campervan and just driving around from national park to national park. Hopefully, I’ll have the courage to document this adventure and turn it into mini family vlog. I feel like it’s better to start recording our lives instead of just through photography.”

I agree!! Never know what opportunities can come from documenting things – I surely didn’t know it would go on to become a new career for me! 🙂 I sent her a bunch of links round this (travel, not documenting), in hopes it would inspire her. That first one is pretty epic and a great overall blog too:

Sites that have streaming RSS feeds

A blogger friend was reminiscing about our old “Feeds” page we had at Rockstar Finance back in the day, where alllllll new blog posts that were published around the community would show up in *real time* and “stream” down a main page so you can see all new stuff as it comes out, and he was saying he wished something like that still existed.

I poked around a little bit and was quite surprised to see that it still does! Here’s a bunch of sites doing this around our space if you found this feature helpful too:

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Also something fun to report here: I’ll be joining the team of curators over at Apex Money starting next week helping them find and share more great articles in the space 🙂

It’s in conjunction with the Plutus Foundation – our community org. – and the hope is to promote more bloggers’ content alongside the great main street articles that Apex tends to share. Should be a fun new way to spread eyeballs around more on the good stuff out there! Keep your eyes open for it!

www.ApexMoney.com

Lastly, here’s a bunch of recommended accounting software from business owners in our community:

I ‘d been using – and very much enjoying! – a company called Outright that got bought out by Go Daddy a few years ago, but sadly they announced they’re shutting it down this month so it’s time to look for something new. I hit up all my social channels for some good recs, and below were the main ones that came up in order of how many people recommended them.

• Wave — “Simple bookkeeping and payment solutions for small business owners” (FREE to use their accounting/invoicing system – Costs $$$ if you accept payments or do payroll through them. This was by far the most raved about companies from my friends, and also looks SUPER easy to use – just like Outright was.)
• QuickBooks — “Tools to help your business thrive: auto-track income and expenses, pay employees and contractors, always know where you stand.” ($12.50-$90/mo. Much more robust than Wave and others out there it looks like, but also maybe overkill if you just need something simple?)
• Xero — “Online accounting software for your business that connects you to your bank, accountant, bookkeeper, and other business apps.” (30 day free trial, then $12-$65/mo. I’ve heard good things about them over the years and believe they’re another more *robust* one)
• Freshbooks — “A preferred invoicing and accounting software for over 30 million users, small business owners, and accountants worldwide.” (30 day free trial, then $4.50-15+/mo. This one looks like a beefed up Wave off first look, and I’ve also heard about them more than any others up there over the years so that probably says something!)

I’m going to start testing with Wave first because everything I need is FREE there (!) and so many people raved about them, and then if that doesn’t work out I’ll move to Freshbooks and then after that just go old school again if needed and track everything in a spreadsheet… Something I did for the first half of my blogging career and does work, but I may have gotten too spoiled by automation and pretty reporting now to go back 😂

At any rate, if you’re looking for a better solution for your biz or anything else up there, I hope you find it! And thanks to everyone for hooking me up!

See ya back here on Monday,

PS: If you’re a fan of something we missed here, let me know and I’ll add it to the list!

PPS: How are these Monday and Thursday postings feeling to you guys? It’s really weird only doing two a week and feels like the opposite of hustling, haha, but it’s also keeping me nice and calm and letting me breath throughout the week so it does seem to be working at least on this end 🙂 I’ll keep monitoring it and see if we need to adjust, but just wanted to check in with y’all too and gauge thoughts. Thanks!

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