Five Friday Favorites

I hope you enjoy this week’s Five Friday Favorites. Click here to see previous editions!

1. Favorite personal finance article/post. I firmly believe that the key to personal finance is aligning your spending and saving with your goals and values, and as it turns out Cait from Blonde on a Budget agrees! She has put together an excellent (and free!) worksheet to help you think through what exactly your goals and values are, and make sure that you are saving your money in support of those goals. She has laid the worksheet out in an extremely simple format, which makes it quick and easy to start saving for your goals!

2. Favorite non-personal finance article/post. Money from Budgets are Sexy spent a week living like Ben Franklin, which included rising at 5 am every day (ouch!). Turns out that his experiment was largely successful, and his favorite part was actually the early mornings. I myself have been contemplating starting an early morning routine to get in some stretching/exercise and maybe even some blogging before starting my day. J. Money’s success with his Ben Franklin experiment has made me think that I could do it, too!

3. Favorite thing I did this week. My favorite thing I did this week was visiting with my two little cousins, who are 2 and 4 years old, and taking them swimming at a local pool. Little kids are just endlessly entertained at the pool. Of course, they are also magically endlessly energetic! I don’t know how kids have so much energy, or how their parents keep up with them!

Summer fun at the pool with my little cousins!

4. Favorite recipe. I have been craving Italian food all week, but after having a bit too much fun on vacation earlier this summer I’m trying to watch my weight and avoid pasta. This recipe for pesto-parmesan baked tomatoes seems like a great way to get my Italian food fix without carbo-loading!

5. Favorite quote. I have been watching LOTS of Gilmore Girls re-runs on Netflix this week (trying to wrap up the series before BF gets home – he’s not the Gilmore Girls fanatic that I am). This quote is from an episode I watched recently and I love the sentiment. So much of the time we are just going through our lives without thinking or truly living. It is important to step outside of your comfort zone now and again to really experience new and exciting (and scary!) things. The picture is from when I went skydiving a few years ago. Now that was exciting and scary!!

What are some of your favorite things from this week?

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