Financially, this month is going quite well.  I’m staying under budget, and I should have plenty of money left over to register for the Chicago Marathon (assuming they fix their website glitch).  I also got a little financial bump from my state tax refund that I totally forgot about!  It’s only $78 but it feels like free money!

I hung out with bunches of interesting people this weekend, attended a hot cocoa tasting (Cayenne pepper in hot cocoa is a little extreme…), and hit up the batting cages with friends.  I’m still awful at baseball, but at least I can connect with the slow-pitch balls.  I also came up with a way to save wheel-barrows full of money at work this week, so things are peachy on all fronts.

So here are a few of my favorite posts from the week.

• Jefferson at See Debt Run wrote about how they’ve paid off about $19,000 in one year (!) by using the tortoise approach to paying down debt (slow and steady).  I love stories of financial turn-arounds with happy endings!
• At Budgets Are Sexy (a perennial favorite of mine), a guest poster named Zack from The True Generalist, asked why you even want to have money?  It’s a central question I see too many people go through life without asking.  It’s certainly worth the read.
• Her Every Cent Counts had a great piece about how Millenials are the most stressed generation.  Graduating just as the economy goes down the toilet and college prices spike upwards makes for a rough few years for Gen Y.
• I’ve always assumed that I’d average a 5% inflation adjusted return with my money in the stock market with a long time horizon.  This post by Money Under 30 about three actual 30 yr historical returns made me feel a lot better about this assumption!

And that’s it.  My roommate wants me to watch the Oscars with her tonight…  I’m not a huge fan of rich celebrities all getting together and talking about how great they are.  Why don’t we use all the money wasted on this crap and go fight malaria in Africa?  I’m just saying.  Anyway, I agreed to watch a little bit if we can switch over to the Black Hawks game every few minutes.