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 29

1. From Putting 33¢ Pasta on Credit to $100k in Savings Poorer Than You

I shared when Stephonee hit that elusive $100,000 net worth milestone a while back, and I was so excited to read the “how” of it. While it seems like there are stories every time you turn around these days about how people made some really amazing things happen with their savings, those stories are often lacking the nitty gritty of how it actually happened.

And so many of those stories are about high income earners. While I absolutely will not knock someone for bringing in a high salary, reading about how someone just made “a few smarter choices” and suddenly started saving fifty thousand dollars a year or more can be pretty disheartening to those of us who couldn’t possibly save that much.

This first $100,000 took her a lot of years to achieve, and this gargantuan 4,000 word post dives into the journey in detail. Especially if you’re early on your debt payoff or savings journey, I find this post to be extremely encouraging and inspirational because it shows the power of compounding and of continuously finding ways to put money away even when there isn’t a lot to be had.

**ps. Stephonee is also the mastermind behind Money Middletons, a curation site focused on content for low and middle income earners. If this post resonated with you, I’d highly suggest checking them out as well.

2. How Much Being Unemployed Actually Cost Us My Life, I Guess…

Unemployment is a scary thing, and something that can sometimes feel easier to deal with by sticking your head in the sand and just getting on by until you finally get out of it. Obviously, unemployment means using what emergency funds you have and cutting back your budget when you realize you don’t have another choice.

But this post goes beyond simply talking about Amanda’s experience with a period of time without an income, but goes to explain how easy it is to fall deeply in debt. Especially when you expect a period of time to be temporary, expenses may not be fully cut to the bone. And then debt can so easily snowball out of control.

Until I’d experienced the awful feeling of realizing we needed to drain our emergency fund thanks to a couple of back to back months with unexpectedly high expenses, I had a hard time understanding just how easy it can be to dig a deep hole that isn’t so easy to dig back out of.

3. 7 Useless Things We Wasted Money On I Like To Dabble

I’ve personally dealt with three of these seven (I bet you can guess which three), and one is a constant struggle for me even now. And something I haven’t shared here before, but number six is one that my husband used to spend a ridiculous amount of money on as well.

Looking back, there has been a LOT of the little stuff that’s added up to a serious amount of money throughout our lives, and with very little – or nothing – to show for it. I’m very much a proponent for spending on what you value, even if other people may think it’s a waste of money, but spending mindlessly is an entirely different thing, especially when that money waste comes down to procrastination or laziness. Spend money on more than the basics, but spend it on things of real value.

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.