The Amateur Financier

As a personal finance blogger, it always make me happy to see other bloggers doing well.  Last week, Baker of Man vs. Debt fame did so, in a big way: he published an e-book,  Unautomate Your Finances, with the kind of sophisticated media blitz you usually only see with New York Times bestsellers.

More power to Baker, of course; it’s good to see anyone who’s worked so hard succeed at doing what they want.  It’s inspiring to see everything that Baker’s managed to do, and how much success he’s had.  Here’s hoping that I can find the same level of success with this blog, and that all my friends can as well.  On the subject of my friends, here’s some of the good articles they’ve put forth last week:

Good Yakezie Blog Entries

How Much of Your Mortgage Payment Goes Toward Loan Principle? – An interesting question, with interesting facts to back it up.

When Stock Prices Crash, Where Does the Money Go? – A great question with a simple answer: it disappears.

Combat the Closing Techniques-Fulfill Your Dreams Close – I really like this series, and the second method to fighting this technique sounds like fun, if you enjoy tormenting salespeople.

The Art of the Interview – Good interview techniques can be the key to getting the job you want, and here’s a list of some of the best.

Someone, Please Take My Money – Do national companies really have so little foresight to not keep seasonal items in stock until the season is completely over?

Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) are Awesome-7 Reasons – They do sound pretty awesome, indeed.

Invest Like Warren Buffet – Some strategies pulled from the comments of the ultimate investor himself.

Comparatively Speaking, One Million Dollars is Still a Lot of Money – It’s easy to forget in this time of billionaires and multi-billionaires, but for most people, one million is a pretty hefty sum.

How to P*ss Off Your Banker – Ways to annoy the bank teller next time you go in; hopefully, nobody actually tries to bring in $1000 in unwrapped coins…

Where Do You Draw Inspiration? – A good question, one that will influence how you approach personal finance (and indeed, life).

What It’s Like to Live in 1 of America’s 25 Richest Counties – It has its pros and cons, but if you don’t spend too much trying to ‘Keep Up with the Jones’, they’re apparently pretty good, overall.

5 Mind Hacks to Make Yourself Learn to Invest – An interesting list of tips if you want to learn more about money, but can’t seem to find the motivation.  (Here’s one of mine: start a blog about money; it worked for me!)

The “Other” Investments… – A cautionary tale about the risk of letting advisers or other money managers control your money when you don’t know what’s going on.

The Amateur Financier Milestones

My post on the Financial Lessons from Aesop’s Fables was in the Best of Money Carnival hosted by Cash Money Life, and was chosen as the best in the carnival!

My progress toward breaking 200,000 in the Alexa rankings continues unabated; I’m under 300,000 as of this writing, and should, with any luck, be able to reach my (first) goal of 200,000 well before the July 4th deadline.  The only real question is whether I can make 100,000 or even 50,000 by then.  (If not, I’m sure it won’t be long after that I get there.  Thanks for watching and all the support, everyone!

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