About Me

What is this blog about? 

Your Money: The Missing ManualThis is a Personal Finance blog. I had the idea to start blogging years before the first post ever materialized. While surfing through the various types of blogs trying to find my niche I discovered writers like MyMoneyBlog, TheSimpleDollar, GetRichSlowly, and Bargaineering. Those were the blogs that I connected with and could understand. My sisters always made fun of me for being a scrooge because I would choose the frugal path and save my money. I always imagined that they meant the Scrooge McDuck from DuckTales who would swim in his money vault full of gold rather than the sad, old miser Mr. Scrooge from the Christmas Carol. There needs to be a balance between saving and spending to achieve happiness.

Carl Barks' Greatest Ducktales Stories, Volume 1 [CARL BARKS GREATEST DUCKTA-V01]From a young age I was aware money probably because my mother taught me and I was paid for my work on the farm. I was part of an investing club (paper money) when I was in sixth grade and opened my first mutual fund the following year. I like tracking my money and investments. While, I do not have a tragic story of tens of thousands of credit card debt, I did have plenty of student loans to repay. I have watched my ING Savings account grow to the magic number of $10,000 several times. It is exhilarating! A few times I made poor choices with the money and lost it. Other times I used it wisely to pay down school loans.
I graduated and bought my first home at the top of the housing bubble. Now I am contemplating using some of my precious savings to sell my house - at a loss, to get out of my mortgage because I do not want to walk away or do a short sale. 

In short, my education in personal finance started when I was young. However, I know that I have still much to learn. And I am still human and I have made some mistakes and less than stellar choices with my money. I am writing this blog about personal finance to share some of my own experience and impart some of the wisdom that I have gained. I hope you enjoy following along the trails that I either choose to follow or those that I blaze anew.



Why am I writing a blog?
How to Make Money with Your Blog: The Ultimate Reference Guide for Building, Optimizing, and Monetizing Your Blog (How to Make . . .)A lot of bloggers today have quit their job and have pursued blogging as a full time career choice. Other bloggers are weekend bloggers, working when they can to provide their readers and subscribers with new, fresh content. Most bloggers are doing it because they love to write and it is their passion. Their particular topic may not always be their dream style, but they are writing and daily coming closer to their goals. 

Writing because I have always wanted to and love to is not my number one goal. Why then did I choose to pursue this avenue? Was it the money? No, not in the sense that I think this blog will one day replace my primary source of income. I like being an engineer right now. Money would only be a bonus for me and not a primary motivator.

My motivation for writing a blog is primarily to improve my ability to communicate. I enjoy giving presentations and teaching. They are forms of communicating a point or a topic to people. The opportunities to give presentations to large groups of people are limited so I have been looking to other avenues in which I might grow as a communicator. I am hoping that by writing a blog to convey ideas and principles of personal finance that I will grow and learn more about how to communicate better. I also hope to gain and find more opportunities to give presentations and teach from this blogging endeavor.

The Quick and Easy Way to Effective SpeakingWhy presentations? Why public speaking? Most people are deathly afraid of public speaking. Toastmasters is a club or organization that exists solely to help give people opportunities to become better public speakers and to reduce their fear of standing in front of large groups of people. I feel confident in my ability as a public speaker although I have only attended a couple of Toastmasters meetings. I gained my confidence and my ability through raw experience and feedback. 

I had the opportunity while in college to give a large number of presentations based on class work, senior projects, and my Master's Thesis. I attended every student and professional conference that came my way. The student conferences were the most beneficial to me because the judges always provided helpful feedback. And when there was not formal feedback I would seek it via a more informal method or from a friend or even a fellow competitor.

I hope that this helps to explain why I am endeavoring to write this blog and I hope that you will leave some feedback either by way of the comments or by dropping me an email. Thanks.

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