Intereview With GetRichSlowly.org

Sherin (TMM): In the context, yes you have a lot about you in the blog itself, but, we really like to know little more personally about you than what have mentioned there. Also, could you share the major factors that influenced you to get into the personal finance blogging space?

J.D. (Get Rich Slowly): I’m pretty much just an average guy. I went to college to study psychology and English, but when I graduated, I went to work selling cardboard boxes for the family business. I also developed a debt problem. For over a decade, I struggled with debt. When I finally started to get my finances in order, I wrote about it on my personal blog, and that story proved to be very popular. On a whim, I started Get Rich Slowly. I actually thought mine would be the very first personal-finance blog. I was wrong!

Sherin (TMM): Anyone who visits “Get Rich Slowly” certainly turn as your fan with the quality of articles and influencing by your fantastic knowledge. I seem to struggle sometimes to come with different articles in my blog. How do you updating yourself to provide most relevant and updated information for readers through unique articles, time to time?

J.D. (Get Rich Slowly): While your words are kind, I don’t possess fantastic knowledge. What I have is curiosity, a love of writing, and a willingness to share what I learn with other people. I spend a *lot* of time reading and doing research. I spend nearly 60 hours every week on Get Rich Slowly, and much of that time is spent researching. I read a lot of things that aren’t relevant in order to arrive at the things that are.

Sherin (TMM): Can you share your most interested subject inside the personal finance and how your blog influenced to your own personal finance?

J.D. (Get Rich Slowly): I’m most fascinated by an area of personal finance known as “behavioral finance”. That’s the study of the intersection between psychology and money. Because I have a psychology degree, this probably shouldn’t be surprising. So much personal-finance advice is written as if we humans are robots, capable of making perfect decisions every time, or living in a perfect world. That’s not how things are. We’re emotional creatures, and our decisions are influenced by a whole host of variables. Behavioral finance explores this. As for how Get Rich Slowly has influenced my own finances: it’s had a huge impact. I’ve learned a lot, not just from my research, but also from the contributions of my readers. The blog has helped me to get out of debt, establish good habits, and begin to build wealth.

Sherin (TMM): Are you a full time blogger? Per day, how much time do you spend for blogging or its related activities?

J.D. (Get Rich Slowly): Yes, I am a full-time blogger. I spend about 10 hours a day on the blog during the week, and probably another 5 hours a day on the blog during the weekend. This is my calling, my vocation.

Sherin (TMM): Can you share with us any awards or special recognitions you have received?

J.D. (Get Rich Slowly): Get Rich Slowly has not won any awards that I know of, but you can see the press mentions. Two of which I’m most proud are being named the “most inspiring money blog” by Money Magazine in May 2008, and recently having The Wall Street Journal point at the high quality of the discussions at the site. I really do think Get Rich Slowly has some of the best readers on the internet, so it makes me proud to have other people notice it, too.

Sherin (TMM): Do you manage any other blog than ““Get Rich Slowly” and do you have published any books?

J.D. (Get Rich Slowly): I actually write several other blogs. I write a blog about fitness called Get Fit Slowly, a personal blog, a blog about animals called Animal Intelligence (that hasn’t been updated in a while!), and soon hope to start a blog called Vintage Pop, which will be about American popular culture before 1950. I have not published a book yet, though my writing appears in a couple by other authors. I hope to have a book deal soon.

Sherin (TMM): Can you share the links of some best articles in your blog for our readers? Other than “Get Rich Slowly” blog, is there any other place our readers able to read or hear your advices in a regular basis?

J.D. (Get Rich Slowly): Two popular articles from the Get Rich Slowly archives include How to get out of debt and the best online high-yield savings accounts. Two of my personal favorites have nothing to do with money: How to build confidence and destroy fear and Luck is no accident.

Sherin (TMM): Do you share some of your most interested and influenced website and books as a reference for TMM readers?

J.D. (Get Rich Slowly): I’ve actually written about my favorite books a couple of times. Here’s my first reading list and here is my second reading list. My favorite personal-finance blogs include The Simple Dollar, I Will Teach You to Be Rich, Five Cent Nickel, and Bargainnering.

Sherin (TMM): Do you have any advice for new bloggers from personal finance space? At present personal finance blogging space filled with tons of new bloggers. In my experience, most of them stop blogging after a short span of time due to two major reasons. First, they generally stop blogging by not getting enough readers as expected. Second, most of them want to generate revenue from the very first day and if the result is negative, they are losing their interest and stop blogging. In this context, could you share your major experiences as a startup personal finance blogger to know us how did you manage yourself to succeed by overcoming all the obstacles like establishing blog, creating your network, income generation etc…?

J.D. (Get Rich Slowly): If you’re starting a blog because you want a lot of readers or because you want to make money, you’re starting a blog for the wrong reasons. That’s not why I started Get Rich Slowly, and that’s not why most of the successful personal-finance bloggers started their sites. I had been blogging for five years before I started writing about money, and I had a very small audience and had never made a cent from my work. I didn’t expect either to develop from Get Rich Slowly. It was mere good fortune that made this turn into a full-time career. You have to write about money because you love the subject, because you have something you want to share with others. You can’t do it just to make money. You can’t do it just because you want a lot of readers. You have to have another goal. In my case, that goal was to learn enough about money to dig myself out of debt. I hoped to share what I learned along the way. That seemed to resonate with a lot of people.

Sherin (TMM): How can you rate yourself in the context of meeting your goals with “Get Rich Slowly” and what are your future plans or goals?

J.D. (Get Rich Slowly): I’ve far exceeded my original goals for Get Rich Slowly. To be honest, the site is in a state of flux. It’s evolving. I believe it’s very likely that there will be another writer at Get Rich Slowly by the end of the year, and that there will be more frequent guest articles. That’s disappointing for some people, but it’s also a necessity. My interests are shifting, and I’d like to focus on writing a book or two. To do this, I need to spend less time with the site. We’ll see. I’m still in the early stages of deciding what’s next.

TMM express our most sincere thanks for the time J.D from GetRichSlowly.org for the time he have spent for our readers.