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Last week I was glad Mr. Groovy took up the cause to write a Thanksgiving post. I wasn’t in a gratitude state-of-mind. Maybe I was still lolling in loserdom from my latest post about TEDx Talks. To make myself feel better, I put out a call to our follow bloggers for links to their Thanksgiving posts to assist Mr. Groovy. “We’ll include links to their gratitude posts and spread more positive vibes,” I rationalized. But when Mr. Groovy asked me to do a rough edit of his post on Tuesday, I realized he wasn’t writing about Thanksgiving at all! Crap! I dropped the ball on Thanksgiving!
I don’t know exactly how I got the idea Mr. Groovy was writing about Thanksgiving. I suppose I heard what I wanted to hear during a conversation. After all, we’re together almost 24/7 and at times we tune each other out. Meanwhile, links to well-crafted and thoughtful Thanksgiving posts from my fellow bloggers began arriving. I was not about to squander the opportunity.
So now that the holiday has come and gone, the bloat has come and gone, Black Friday has come and gone, and the haze in my head is dissipating, I want to share how the personal finance blogosphere spread Thanksgiving holiday cheer.
Physician on Fire expressed his thankfulness by giving himself a gift that keeps on giving. He opened a Donor Advised Fund (DAF) with Vanguard to the tune of $100,256.43. Now he has funds at the ready to donate to any 501(c)(3) charitable organizations of his choice, as outlined in his investor policy statement. And he’s able to extend this level of generosity without sacrificing his family’s future. Bravo PoF! I’m following along your journey.
Also feeling charitable, Michael over at Financially Alert challenged his readers to convert a comment into a gift. As a bonus, Michael will select a charitable organization mentioned in the comments to receive $100. Watch for the drawing on December 5th. And Bill from Family Finance Favs described how he discusses charitable giving with his children. He injects a bit of data about their average allocations to nudge them along. But I love that he lets them decide what portion of their birthday money, holiday money, etc. goes to charity.
Next up are two posts about subjects many of us fretted over this Thanksgiving—talking about money at the Thanksgiving dinner table, and the even more dreaded subject—politics! Ms. Our Next Life penned a guest post on Think Save Retire about breaking the social taboo of discussing money with family. She offered tips for making conversation without hurting feelings and without being judgmental. And Linda at Brooklyn Bread focused on ways to avoid confrontations about politics with family members. She recommended focusing on issues, not personalities. And yes, she mentioned lots of alcohol if all else fails.
Liz from Chief Mom Officer put up a colorful infographic with fun Thanksgiving financial facts. I learned Mr. Groovy and I are among the 4.6 million Americans who travel more than 50 miles for turkey! And Tawcan offered 10 steps for avoiding Black Friday madness. My favorite is #4—throw your car keys in a bowl of water and stick the bowl in the freezer. Then, unplug your internet connection. Talk about deprivation!
Many personal finance bloggers wrote about gratitude for Thanksgiving. Erith at Cracking Retirement made a short and simple list of things she’s grateful for. I hope to find a hobby as equally fulfilling as metal work is for Erith. By the way, her post was inspired by Cait Flanders, who shared 50 things to be grateful for. Cait’s post is based on entries from her gratitude journal. One of the most simple, basic things Cait is grateful for is an endless supply of clean drinking water. I was curious to find a statistic on that and through an effortless Google search, I found that 650 million people worldwide do not have access to clean water. Can any of us imagine living like that day in and day out?
In his post Thanksgiving: More Than Money, Mr. Apathy Ends offered up a sweet list of things he’s grateful for this past year. It’s heartwarming to see his mention of a visit he had with his sister which made him feel like a college kid again. And on the subject of family, Ellie over at The Chedda discussed her financial un-independence. She disclosed that Mr. Chedda’s parents gifted him $14,000 a year for six years and that both sets of their parents paid off their college educations and wedding tab. Still, Ellie’s not ashamed of her lucky breaks. She made the most of the gifts she was given and didn’t squander her opportunities. I agree with her sentiment. How many lottery winners ended up with botched lives after they received big windfalls?
Matt at Optimize Your Life and Maggie at Northern Expenditure took a more philosophical approach toward gratitude. In The Ancient Art of Being Thankful for What We Have, Matt looked to the Stoics and negative visualization for inspiration. Imagine you’ve lost a material possession, or an ability such as your eyesight. After contemplating the loss and thinking how you’d feel or act, return to reality. Perhaps you might find you have a greater sense of appreciation for the fact that you still have those things. In Maggie’s Grateful Year-in-Review post, she explained how to perform a practical gratitude exercise. Compare your circumstances from last year to this year. Pick two things that are better this year and focus on the growth, not the negative.
In Gratitude Helps our Budget, Matt at Distilled Dollar discussed how gratitude makes us happy, and happiness curbs our urge to spend. He also pointed out that gratitude is free! In an earlier post about gratitude, Amanda at Centsibly Rich agreed that gratitude helps us spend less money. When we develop a habit of gratitude, our wants and desires change and we feel less of a need for immediate gratification.
Steven from My Family on a Budget also expressed how an attitude of gratitude can transform your finances and how feeling thankful rather than entitled gets you further in life. He said concentrating on others makes our own wants disappear. To that point, Gwen from Fiery Millennials gave an example of how she was affected by focusing on another person. In her post Giving Thanks 2016, she recalled a recent conversation with someone so down on his luck, he was living illegally in a storage unit. She realized that the amount of money he needed to pay first and last month’s rent for an apartment was about equal to the amount she often amasses on her credit card each month—and easily pays off! How’s that for a gratitude realization?
In his post Not Feeling Thankful This Thanksgiving?, Jon at Be Net Worthy recalled how he narrowly missed disaster years ago in a middle-of-the-night highway speeding incident. He also spoke with gratitude about how his parents escaped from tyranny to the United States, his marriage, and his children. Ty at Get Rich Quick’ish had a refreshing and original twist on gratitude in his post Learning How to be Thankful. He turned things we complain about into things we should feel gratitude for. As an example he mentioned grief—because to experience grief means we have known joy and happiness in our lives.
And finally, Penny from She Picks Up Pennies recalled that her first feature on RockStar Finance appeared last Thanksgiving day. She expressed gratitude for her virtual world of blogging buddies. She thanked her friends in cyberspace for sharing their time, talent, and understanding.
So there you have it. A little taste of what bloggers in the personal finance community are thankful for. And I wish to express my gratitude, as well. Thank you to our readers from Mr. Groovy and me for visiting Freedom Is Groovy—we really appreciate you! And a big thank you to our fellow bloggers who inspire us on a daily basis. We’re blessed to be part of a very special community where the level of generosity among its members is off the charts.
A special thanks to J. Money for unveiling the Forums at RockStar Finance. It’s been a magnet for regular folks interested in personal finance, as well as a growing group of bloggers. In the Bloggers Lounge we share tips, give advice, offer congratulations on milestones, and uplift our comrades when they need uplifting.
Another special thank you is due to Grant from Millennial Money who helped many of us from the Bloggers Lounge with our websites. Grant is an SEO expert and consultant who knows his stuff. Contact him on Twitter or though his website. Grant is also a millennial millionaire on a mission. Check out his 7 Millennial Money Mistakes.
If and when you need a pick-me-up I hope you’ll return to this post. Til then, I leave you with:
Thanksgiving was never meant to be shut up in a single day.
– Robert Caspar Lintner
Did you ever end up following in PoF’s footsteps with a donor advised fund?
We just went through the process and it seems like a pretty powerful tool, not just for the tax advantages–but for giving, too.![My Profile](https://freedomisgroovy.com/wp-content/plugins/commentluv/images/littleheartplus.png)
Chris@TTL recently posted…Reader’s Choice Donor-Advised Fund Launch and Blog Update
I’m a little glad that you dropped the ball – this is a great round-up. You two are such an allies for other bloggers in this community. Thank you for all of your continued support and encouragement <3
Awww, thanks Harmony. I hope you’ll find all the posts enjoyable. And thank you for your support as well. Hope to see you soon on another Skype session. We had technical difficulties during the last one.
There is lots to be thankful for. I think one of the struggles for me personally is gratitude. Sometimes it is real easy to not take the time to truly express thanfulness for gifts & blessings.
I know what you mean, Josh. I think it’s human nature to harp on what goes wrong, or what’s irritating, instead of all that’s good and going right. I need to do much better myself. Thanks for commenting.
Great post, and nice shout out to all of our new friends on the Forum.
I’m thankful for my new friendship with The Groovies, and our occassional phone calls (hey, it’s about time we schedule another one, isn’t it?)
The Forum came to my rescue, Fritz! Awesome bunch.
Awww, I’m (we’re) thankful for your friendship too. And I’m glad to have briefly met Jackie. We’re up for a call whenever it’s good for you. Thanks for commenting.
Thanks for including me with all these great writers!
You’re welcome, AE. Great writers stick together. Thanks for participating.
A round up will do. I missed some of these so thanks for sharing. Hope you had a groovy Thanksgiving!
Thanks, Brian. I’m glad the links are all in one place for some serious binge reading. Our Thanksgiving was very groovy. I hope yours was too.
What a cool blog post! Thanks for pulling all of this rich content together. I can’t wait to read through it all when I get some down time.
Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving!
Thanks, HNRE. I hope you enjoy all the good reading material. And happy (belated) Thanksgiving to you, too!
Thanks for compiling all of these. Some great reading in here! And thanks for including me!
You’re quite welcome, Matt. Thanks for participating. Enjoy.
Thank you so much for including me Mrs. Groovy! Lots of great thoughts in all of these posts, I’m still working my way through. I really loved ONL’s post about talking about money on Think Save Retire…
You’re welcome, Linda. Thanks for sharing your post. Yes, ONL’s post was special. That’s another thing I like about this community – the commitment to writing for our own blogs is enough to keep us very busy. But we still manage to share good material with other bloggers for their sites.
Great roundup, Mrs. G. I love the final quotation about keeping Thanksgiving alive for more than just a day. Does that mean we get pie all year too?
I especially liked Ty’s post about being grateful for the good and the bad.
You get to eat pie WHENEVER you want. Just watch out for the “What-the-hell” effect. I’m glad you liked the final quote. We have so much to be grateful for, and not just on Thanksgiving.
That’s a great roundup…I’ll have to come back when I have more time to check them all out. I “dropped the ball” on Thanksgiving this year too (much to my wife’s chagrin), partly because my gratitude was being overshadowed by concerns that I could not put out of mind, so I put them into a post. But it’s time to take gratitude out of the shadows and let it shine.
“Take gratitude out of the shadows and let it shine.” Very poetic, Gary. Thanks. I hope writing the post was therapeutic for you.
I’ve been unable to spend much time reading and engaging recently so this is a perfect reading list! Thanks for the roundup (and for the inclusion!).
Happy holidays!
You’re welcome, Ty. Thanks for the great post. I’ll be thinking back to your take on gratitude which is kind of like using reverse psychology to trick your brain. And my brain definitely needs tricking every now and then.
Thanks for the call out Mrs. Groovy! Thanksgiving was great but it didn’t do my writing schedule any favors – lots of catching up to do!
We took our laptop to the Groovy in-laws and did a few outlines and comments, in between rounds of food. Glad to include you, Jon. Thanks for participating.
Thank you for this great post, Mrs. Groovy! Gratitude is a beautiful way to start the day, and I love that I’ll have some great reading material for the commute home. I also love the sense of community that this post creates with your appreciation of your fellow bloggers.
Thanks, from one Mrs. G to another! I’m so glad you can use your commute home to read these gratitude posts. There are amazing bloggers in our community and there’s always someone to learn from.
What a great roundup of amazing posts, Mrs. Groovy! I’m happy you decided to share and to carry the gratitude beyond Thanksgiving. And thanks for including my post – I am in great company here.
That’s how I feel too about being in great company, Amanda. Glad to include your post – thanks for your contribution.
Ack! I missed a few! Thanks for posting all of the links!
You’re quite welcome. So many great PF bloggers out there!
Sweet rundown of all the thanksgiving posts! So many gems!
Thanks, Ellie. Enjoy!
Thanks for compiling all these links Mrs. Groovy. Looks like I’ll have a bunch of reading to do to catch up!
There always seems to be reading to catch up on, FP. But I’m glad in this group the posts are all uplifting. Thanks for commenting.