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 31

1. Finances After 40 #1: Life Settles Down After Divorce (Abigail’s Story) The 76k Project

When I first heard that the blogger behind The 76K Project was going to start a series specifically for women’s finances over forty, I was thrilled. Women in general can use more realistic, inspiring, hard, wonderful stories about other women who are paying attention to their money, and at every age.

Finances tend to change as our lives pass through different stages, and over forty is an age bracket that seems to be missing a lot of the time, be it in finances or just in life. I may be just entering my thirties, but I am very much looking forward to this series and looking for what I might expect in my next decade.

And when I saw that Abigail from I Pick Up Pennies was starting off the series, I couldn’t be happier. She is real and transparent about her life, and we can use more that kind of raw honesty in all parts of life. Then check out the second in this series from Kassandra Dasent, who was just featured here on my Wednesday roundup a few weeks ago.

2. Learning to Fight “Mom-Guilt” Mixed Up Money

As soon as I read the title of this post, I knew I had to read it. I am really quite good about feeling confident in my life and not guilty about the way I live it – except for mom guilt. I’m not sure why it is so different from everything else, but it absolutely is, and I don’t know that I have a friend who is a mother who doesn’t struggle with this to at least some degree.

Alyssa is a new mom with a ten month old baby who just recently went back to work after maternity leave, and she’s in the place of acutely living that transition from time home with her baby to settling back into her career. Reading her words put me straight back into those tangled feelings soon after my son was born, and I could have written this verbatim:

“As someone who started missing work about three months *cough* three hours *cough* after starting maternity leave, I’ve often felt like a bad person. Seeing other moms feel completely satisfied with being a mom and only being a mom is hard for me.”

My family’s childcare setup now looks quite different from Alyssa’s, but we certainly share that lingering, nagging guilt that seems to hang as an aura around all mothers. If nothing else, reading someone else’s words help remind me that we are all struggling with this, and we are good moms. But I’m not sure if that guilt will ever fully go away.

3. Meet the Urgency Fund: Your YOLO-Emergency Fund Frugality and Freedom

As someone who doesn’t exactly budget – and has never had success at a traditional budget – I’ve started to dabble with some sinking funds, namely for vet bills and future opportunities, but any kind of “fun” expenses have always landed in the day to day expenses realm. While this covers most of what we want to do, I’m intrigued with the idea of having money specifically set aside for the last minute fun stuff.

We may not be living a bare bones existence by any stretch, I can definitely see where we would maybe say yes to specific opportunities if we had money set aside for exactly that purpose. As someone who doesn’t want to wait forever to “live like no one else” while balancing long term savings and stability, a YOLO-emergency fund might be exactly perfect. Perhaps it’s time to open up a new Ally savings account just for this. 

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.