PennyFoolish

How long have you been blogging?

About two and a half years. I started about a year after I graduated college.

What got your started blogging?

I started reading financial articles on the web because at my first real job I had a 403(b) and I didn't know what the heck that was. So that was a lot of cnnmoney.com and fool.com, but then it bled into blogs. I started writing partially because I think out loud, so when I write a post that's often the first time that those thoughts have occurred to me, because they happen while I'm writing, and writing posts helps me talk to myself as well as others.

What is the focus of your blog, i.e. how does it set you apart from the other bloggers out there?

Hate to say it but the focus of my blog is me and my life.. I like to analyze the decisions and accidents in my life and see how they affect my overall finances.

What is it you hope a reader will come away with when they visit your blog?

That there's more than one way to look at things, and that you don't have to be a professional to teach yourself about finances. I went from knowing zip to being pretty knowledgeable.

Do you like to be edgy in your posts and try and stir up some controversy?

I don't actively try, but I suspect that I don't consider much as salacious as other bloggers would. But people are looking for that kind of content.. one of my most popular posts by searches was about how getting a tattoo would impact your financial life. There's enough controversy in the world without going about poking at it. I am socially very liberal so I don't mind much.

About the Author

What would you like our readers to know about you?

That you probably have children older than me. I am recently 25. Yesterday is always the best time to expose your kids to the financial world.

It's your blog and you've invested so much time into it. Is there a personal connection in your writing to your end users, or do you strictly write what interests you?

There are several people (probably more than several, if you count lurkers who never comment) who have been reading my blog since the beginning. So I do try to keep people updated on the rest of my life, not just my financial life, because I feel like I do have a connection to the community and have some friends that are interested in how I'm doing.

In other words, if you find that your readers enjoy specific topics, does that influence what you write about?

I think what interests people, and this is what I've told other bloggers who want to do better, is that the only really unique angle you have is to write about your own life. Every press release or new website will have a dozen bloggers jumping on it, but only you can write about the tradeoffs and decisions that you personally make. And that really resonates with people because most bloggers aren't rolling in dough, and we can relate to each other, and really hear something in each others' stories. People don't want to read a rewritten version of the article that was on CNN Money, but they do want to read what you think about it.

Do you trade the markets? If so, when did you start to trade?

No, I would be a horrible trader of any kind. My investments are mostly in target date funds, with some in international equities and small cap to make my mix more varied. I do have a good stomach for risk, though - with the market being down so far, I only thought about how much I could buy when they were on sale!

What do you see in store for the markets in 09?

I don't think things are going to improve immediately, and I don't really know that we'll ever be back to the way things were. But I consider that a good thing, because "the way things were" was that we as Americans spent a ton of money we didn't have on crap that was not important. You see this now that there are a lot of products that people put on the market in 2007 that would be ridiculed as a waste of money now. I even had some business ideas and product ideas that would have worked in 2007 but not now. (anyone for a nice Canadian Girlfriend package?) I see a cultural shift happening that we are not going to value these things as much. The stock market is going to recover, but I think we will see people being less willing to spend money on stupid stuff, and the companies that survive and prosper are going to be the ones that provide real value with their products, that people still consider worth it to spend their money on. Because now if you try to sell people a stupid product, people are going to think twice and three times before they give you their money. I think this is overall good. Cause I do love me some stupid crap, but God knows I don't need it.