Friday Link Love - Surprise Earthquake Edition

I’m a Midwesterner - always have been. I’ve never lived outside of a 200-mile radius centered on St. Louis. Needless to say, the only thing I’ve ever known about earthquakes is the back-of-the-mind fear of the New Madrid fault (which I lived directly over for about 6 years). So waking up this morning at 4:37am came as a definite surprise.

At first, I thought my cat was at the foot of the bed having a scratching fit. She’s done it before - she gets an itch and ends up shaking the whole bed from her vigorous scratching. So I looked up to shoo her away but she wasn’t there. Then I noticed that the picture frames and our dresser mirror were lightly bouncing against the wall. I immediately alerted my wife to grab the baby and wait near the front door in case anything else happened. I rushed to get dressed and ran to join them.

We live above a series of old, poorly-maintained coal mines. There have been regular reports in this area of mine subsidence and houses suddenly falling 6 inches or even more. I was afraid that the mine under us was collapsing and we had just seconds to escape our home. As the rumbling came to an end and our house hadn’t sunk, I turned on the radio to see who else may have felt it. Within minutes, stations were breaking programming to let us know that there had been an earthquake. I guess you could say I was relieved to know that my house was safe.

I’ve heard reports it was felt as far as Chicago, Iowa, Missouri, Cincinnati, Louisville and other places. How many of you were awaken with a shake this morning, too? What an interesting way to cap my 12-day work week. Well, since this is Friday Link Love, I should probably worry less about today and see what the rest of the week brought us, huh?

• Free Money Finance brought to light an interesting newer way for single, young men to make a living.
• Gather Little by Little shared ways to avoid financial peer pressure.
• AllFinancialMatters asked the difficult question, “Is Inflation Worse Than We Think?“
• Consumerism Commentary studied the effect of unintended consequences to life’s decisions.
• No Credit Needed hosted a guest post highlighting the rules of spring training (your finances).
• Three different blogs brought new methods for building your emergency fund:
  • Blueprint for Financial Prosperity gave a way to ladder your emergency fund.
  • Get Rich Slowly encouraged you to learn to love your emergency fund.
  • Five Cent Nickel listed some basic starter information on building an emergency fund.
• I’ve Paid For This Twice Already continued her snowflaking teaching with 10 good ways to start snowflaking for yourself.
• Master Your Card published a primer on the debt snowball method.
• Mrs. Micah knows what she wants and she decided that now is not the right time for them to buy a house.
• The Simple Dollar highlighted 8 ways to reduce the energy costs from running a computer.

Happy Friday and enjoy your Spring weekend!