Welcome to another week of the Women’s Personal Finance Wednesdays roundup. I started this series after months of debate because I wasn’t certain I wanted to up the ante and commit to publishing three posts a week. However, now that I’ve started sharing these posts, I’m so glad I started.

There are so many fabulous women writing about personal finance online, and yet there is still a perception that women aren’t good with money, don’t care about money, or don’t understand it on a granular level beyond perhaps knowing how to coupon and score a good shopping deal. These roundups are my way of doing a small part to change that perception. There are no shortage of women online doing their part to make it clear that they DO understand money, and these posts are meant to amplify that fact.

The hardest part of this post every week always is narrowing it down to my favorites, because there is just so much good content out there. If you’re ever interested in what else I’m reading, I share quite a few other posts on Twitter (and that’s also where I read most of the content to begin with these days).

Our Women’s Personal Finance Facebook group also has a sharing thread on Fridays, and that’s the place to read all the blog posts written by members over the previous week. If you’re looking for more articles written by women, that’s a great place to continue reading (plus we have plenty of great discussions on finances the rest of the week as well!).

If you don’t have the time or inclination to go searching down myriad posts, though, I will be continuing this series every week to showcase some of the best of the new content I read. If you ever read a post you thing I absolutely need to consider for this roundup, please let me know! I am always open to reading new blogs (and posts of blogs I do know, because I miss some).

Women’s Personal Finance Wednesdays – Week 16

1. Small Wins Matter: Take Them When You Can Our Table For Two

This is a recurring theme for me it seems, but I am really appreciating these posts about not-quite reaching goals you’ve set for yourself. It can be so frustrating to not hit a target once you’ve put it out there, but life changes and sometimes the direction you thought you had at the beginning gets nudged in a slightly different direction.

Instead of dwelling on coming up short, Moriah Joy focuses on the small wins that they DID accomplish in the meantime. A lot of why I write my Friday’s Frugal Five is to remind myself that the little wins really add up to the big ones, and that certainly will be the case here. I’m also just super impressed by the way she’s immediately hit her student loans hard before the grace period even ended.

And hey, 70% is still a passing grade.

2. The Frustration of Not Achieving My Financial Goals Michelle Is Money Hungry

What do you know, apparently Moriah Joy isn’t alone in not hitting her financial goals this year and neither am I. We are in good company, too, because Michelle is a pretty dang fabulous lady. I got the chance to meet her in person at Cents Positive back in November, and let me tell you, she’s even more awesome in real life.

But even totally awesome people sometimes don’t reach goals they’ve set for themselves, and that’s okay. A big, wonderful part of the personal finance community is that we’re the kind of people who set our sights on some really lofty accomplishments, and that means that sometimes they aren’t immediately attainable.

And sometimes the slog is long and hard and it can get flat out tiring in the process, be it debt payoff, financial independence, or something in between. And like she says in this post, this process is an ultramarathon for most of us, not a get rich scheme that happens overnight. And in order to complete that ultramarathon, you need to take care of yourself and just keep pushing.

3. Dear Debt, We’re Here Again Dear Debt

So I decided to go all out on the reflection posts this week, and this one certainly fits the bill. For those of you who don’t know Melanie, she’s the totally awesome lady behind the Lola Retreat, the first personal finance retreat just for women. I haven’t gotten to attend one yet, but after heading to Cents Positive, I totally want in.

Before that, she paid off $81,000 of debt and had plans of never going back there again. But thanks to the awesome opportunities she has with her business, she’s now facing down debt again, albeit what should be a very short period of time. Again, so many people would write off business debt as “good debt” in order to grow their business, but have such a fight to be debt free, I can see why she’s struggled here. Still, that uncomfortableness and understanding of her response to debt are exactly why she will be debt free again very soon.

I  hope you enjoy the posts this week as much as I did. I read a ton of content and it was hard to narrow down my favorites. I’m looking forward to sharing some new ones with you again next week!

As always, if you’re looking for a categorized list of self identified women writing and speaking about personal finance, here is my comprehensive guide to the Women of the Finance Independence Community.