Happy 4th of July! This is one of my favorite holidays - cookouts, fireworks, sales at all the department stores… Oh wait, I forgot I don’t shop anymore. Cookouts and fireworks are enough for me these days! We are traveling about an hour from home to watch fireworks on the Ohio River if it doesn’t rain.

I’ve enjoyed a wonderful weekend off, and I’ve been catching up on a lot of my favorite blogs. Specifically, I’d like to draw your attention to some amazing posts within the Yakezie Network. Yakezie is a community for personal finance bloggers who support and promote each other in order to help all our blogs become successful.

I joined Yakezie in March of this year with an Alexa ranking of over 10 million (not good), and today I’m almost to my goal of a ranking below 200,000! Once I get there, I can begin the process of moving from Challenger to Member, and it’s all made possible by people like you who visit my site and read my ramblings.

Anyway, on to the posts!

Niki at Debt Free by Thirty posted a fabulous guide to making menu plans awhile back. I definitely need to start doing this - I tend to come home exhausted, THEN think, “Oh, crap! I need to eat dinner!” Which results in way too much fast food and premade junk. She makes getting organized seem easy!

Marie at Family Money Values posted about Grandma’s Money Camp, where she taught her grandkids some awesome (and age appropriate) lessons about finances. This has inspired me to work harder on educating my son about money - he’ll be 13 next month and it’s high time he learned some things!

On a related note, SB at One Cent at a Time posted some tips for getting your kids started with personal finance. SB started saving as a 6th grader in India, and his piggy bank investment in Whirlpool grew from 800 rupees to 25,000. Not too shabby!

Mysti at Digging Out From Our Mess has been experiencing some major car woes, but she did manage to teach her husband how to negotiate repair costs instead of being a wet noodle. Now if we can just help her suppress the urge to strangle the people at the repair shop….

Paula at Afford Anything discusses how she lost $400 in one minute. It’s amazing how indecision can be just as harmful as impulse decision-making, and this is an excellent example!

Sarah at The 60k Project just joined the Yakezie Challenge. I’m so excited that she’s part of the group - her site offers a lot to the personal finance universe. 265 days into her goal of paying off $60k in one year, she’s only about $8,000 away from her goal!

So there you have it, folks - some entertaining and informative reading for your holiday. Did you post or read something awesome this week that I missed? Let me know!