7 Links Project – Revisiting Some Memorable Posts

Recently, Squirrelers was nominated by Everyday Tips and Thoughts to take part in the “7 Links Project“.  This initiative involves highlighting 7 previous posts, based on 7 specific questions. These posts are generally intended to be a cross-section of key posts that are meaningful to the blog owner, in the context of the 7 questions.

With that in mind, I’ll address each of the 7 questions below. Hopefully, this will give a chance for you to discover (or revist)  and enjoy some of these Squirrelers posts, including those that are some older, “vintage” articles.

Your Most Beautiful Post

This was the first question, and quite an interesting one to ponder! After thinking about this, and going through prior posts, I rediscovered an old post I enjoyed writing. It was from late 2010, titled Lessons Learned from a 7-Year old and a 97-Year old.  This post included a story about how my then 7-year old daughter got a gift of money from her 97-year old great grandmother, yet felt guilty upon receiving it and felt that she should be sending money to help an old person instead. It was beautiful to me in that it reflected love that spanned generations within a family and was rooted in mutual generosity.

Your Most Popular Post

Many readers seem to enjoy the Squirreling Gone Wild series, which as of this writing has had 27 editions to date. There have been several in particular which seemed to resonate with readers, all based on the crazy and wacky ways that people try to save money in those stories.  Considering that I have to pick one, I’d go with Squirreling Gone Wild #16: The Crafty Waitress. This story was about how I encountered a waitress that tried to avoid giving me change in order to keep an inordinate percentage tip for herself. She was clever!

Your Most Controversial Post

There were a few others, but the one that comes to mind first is actually a post that was done fairly recently. It was about doctors and customer service. My take was that doctors are in effect service providers, and as such should provide a basic, reasonable level of customer service. Too many doctors dismiss patients quickly, don’t answer their questions, and do other things that most service providers wouldn’t get away with.  Clearly, some people agreed with me but some others definitely saw it another way, with the premise that it’s understandably different with doctors. There were good discussions back and forth.

Your Most Helpful Post

Hopefully there have been a number of posts that have helped readers think more about personal finance. That’s part of the reason I’m doing this, after all! I like to learn from experience and share those learnings with others. Along those lines, I’ll say that my post on 6 Key Personal Finance Lessons was one where I hoped to concisely share some lessons learned with everyone. Another helpful post, one that I think helps frame up how we look at expenses, was Time is Money – How Many Hours Did You Work to Buy That.

A Post Whose Success Surprised You

One post that surprised me in its response was the one I published on the importance of sleep for wealth creation.  I didn’t know whether anybody would view sleeping proper amounts of time to be linked to wealth generation as I did. Rather, I thought some people might be puzzled by the notion that burning the midnight oil can be harmful and just relaxing and getting a great night sleep instead is a better idea. Happily, and a bit surprisingly, this seemed to resonate quite well.

A Post You Feel Didn’t Get the Attention it Deserved

When my blog was launched back in March, 2010, the readership was very small. I mean, there was just a fraction of the readers that the blog has today.  A few very early posts went very quiet, despite being work that I was proud of at the time. That happens when nobody knows your blog even exists:)  One of those posts was about considering the cost of time when trying to be frugal.  It didn’t get much attention at that point in time, with the blog still new. Today, I’m sure a number of people would have an opinion on this topic:)

The Post That You Are the Most Proud Of

While most of my posts are about money stories, lessons, and tips – I enjoy analytical looks at different personal finance issues from time to time.  I’ve done several posts in which I’ve decided to find and dive into some data to come up with (hopefully) meaningful, thought-provoking insight.  One that jumps out is the post where I introduced my thoughts on a looming silver bubble. Within 2 weeks of that post, the price of silver dropped from over $47 USD per ounce to around $34 USD per ounce.  It’s gratifying to know that the asessment was right on, and hopefully the discussion got some readers to reconsider silver at that time, and either sell or avoid buying then.

In Conclusion

It was enjoyable to answer those questions about which 7 to include in this post.  I’ve published over 275 posts here to date, and a lot work went into them, so it was fun to go back and revisit many.  Hopefully a few of them will catch your eye, and you might get some interesting reading out of them!

Also, I’m supposed to nominate 5 other blogs to participate. Here are my 5:

Life and My Finances

My Personal Finance Journey

Mom’s Plans

Frugal Confessions

Buck Inspire