Quick Hits of the Week

• As a man who is now fascinated by personal finances, I’m always interested in hearing stories about herculean home cost-cutting. I thought my wife was doing a great job by keeping our grocery budget under $500 a month (including toiletries), but then I read Lydia Beiler’s savings tips that keeps her families groceries under $200 a month. Holy crap. I still think we do a great job, but obviously there’s room for improvement.

• Joseph Sangl recently asked his readers what they would teach their children about money in 10 minutes or less. He had a huge response, and here he posts ten of his favorites. I’ll confess that one of those ten came from me. Can you guess which one?

• Man, this was a rough post to read, but what a reminder. We’re responsible for raising and guiding our children, but they’re just on loan to us. They can be gone in a flash, and there could be nothing we can do to stop it. What will we teach them? I want my children to grow up to be adventurers on this rock hurtling through space, and not to live in fear of it. What about your kids?

• It appears that Hostess is going to go bankrupt, and there doesn’t seem to be any stopping it. Funny how I remember it being an industry leader in my childhood. Those cheesy one page ads in the back of my comic books just got a lot more dated. So, given my post earlier this week, what caused this giant to fall? Scott Shackford offers up five four plausible answers, and one entertaining bit of lunacy. I think it was mainly number three, myself, but numbers one and two are making strong cases for themselves these days.

• Finally, I don’t know how to say this, other than to just say it: Insulting a man’s testicular fortitude in Italy is a criminal offense. Really.

Is there something valuable or important or cool or funny or weird or awesome out there I missed this week? I can’t hit it all, but you should let me know about it by dropping me a line or sharing it in the comments below! I’d appreciate the heads up.