My Top 5 Favorite Blogs

A friend of mine asked me recently to list out the blogs I read on a regular basis.  Since the advent of the modern "Web 2.0", blogging has been all the rage (pretty obvious since even I'm doing it), and there are an infinite number of topics covered out there.  The blogs I tend to read our finance based with a early retirement genre.  By no means would I say that everyone would find these interesting, but nonetheless, I am incredibly entertained with their concepts and information.  Without further delay, I give you my favorite blogs:

1.) Early Retirement Extreme - This is the blog that started me on my journey to be financially independent.  Written by Jacob Fisker, he explores much more then the name would suggest; diving into concepts such as economics, personal philosophy, and overall macro-economic theory.  He offers a stage by stage process to get you to retirement earlier than you ever thought possible, while also promoting the "Renaissance Man" ideals.  While not as active as he once was, he still writes a post or two, but has since passed the early retirement torch to "Mr. Money Mustache".

2.) Mr. Money Mustache - Coming on a little more flashy than ERE, Mr. Money Mustache has taken early retirement theory into the mainstream with his forums, twitter, reddit, and facebook profiles.  If Fisker was the profit for early retirement, MMM is the evangelist preaching the good news.  I often find his writing pretty fun to read, and it makes for some thought provoking conversation.  Whereas Fisker lived off of $7,500/year, MMM lives off of a more reasonable $20-$30k/year with him, his wife, and kids.  This adds for a much more practical set of retirement instructions, and lends him to be much more legitimate in my view.  He even has a name for his many readers, calling them "Mustachians" which offers a community like atmosphere.

3.) Bogleheads - More of a forum than a blog, Boglheads offers its readers the chance to communicate on all things (mostly financially related).  This forum taught me much about investing and the "Boglehead" philosophy on markets.  Check out their wiki page for a deeper dive into their investment ideals, and feel free to make a post or two.

4.) BraveNewLife - I find this blog quite interesting because the author has some non-traditional investing strategies along with his more traditional securities.  More specifically, the author uses about 1% of their portfolio to experiment with peer-to-peer investing in sites such as Lending Club and Prosper.  It adds for an interesting read when all the other financial blogs start sounding the same.

5.) My Money Blog - I've actually started to read this blog much more than the rest just for the frequency of updates the author makes (sometimes 3 or more a day).  The author is surprisingly open about his financial status and uses it as a tool to teach the rest of us.  With the goal of early retirement in mind, he has a very disciplined and conservative angle which serves as a testament to the rest of us.  Also, he often informs us of current deals and bargains, so it pays to check back at least once a day.

So there you have it, my top 5 blogs I read on a regular basis.  If you even read one of them with some sort of regularity, you will be educating yourself greatly.  Do yourself a favor, and make at least one of these a topic in the future, and hopefully you'll continue to read mine.

Wonderful Moment of the Day: Sweater weather is back!