This is the eleventh edition of Subscriber Swap Saturday.
I highly encourage all of my readers to subscribe to Gather Little by Little for one week and see if you like what you find! Read more about Subscriber Swap Saturday at the link above. His questions for me are up at his blog as well.
Glblguy is the author of Gather Little By Little , a Christian personal finance blog focused on growing wealth using common sense biblical practices and based on the wisdom found in Proverbs 13:11 – “He who gathers money little by little makes it grow.” You can subscribe to his blog via RSS or email.
Question (No Debt Plan): Why did you pick the specific phrase Gather Little by Little?
Answer (Gather Little by Little): I had decided to start a personal finance blog a few nights earlier and couldn’t come up with a good name. I was reading the book of Proverbs one evening before going to bed and came across Proverbs 13:11 – “He who gathers money little by little makes it grow”. As I read it, the name “Gather Little by Little” jumped out. I honestly felt like God was telling me through his word what to name by blog. Decided I better listen 🙂 I wrote about his over on my about page in a little more detail.
Q: Obviously your faith is very important to you. Tell me how it guides your financial decisions.
A: My faith is very important to me and it guides pretty much everything I do, including my finances. It primarily guides me with both my attitude towards life and life in general, but also when making monetary decisions. My favorite book is Proverbs which contains a tremendous amount of wisdom about many things, but in particular money. Whenever my wife an I are faced with a financial decision or looking for guidance, we both pray asking for wisdom and consult Solomon’s book of proverbs to see what he says.
Q: How long have you been blogging and what is the most important blogging lesson you’ve learned?
A: I posted my very first article on Gather Little by Little on July 3rd. The article was the the first in a series I wrote about getting control of your finances. I had been writing on a personal blog before that and found myself writing more about personal finance and what I was learning.
Q: You recently moved to the mountains. Were you able to get rid of a lot of “stuff” when you moved, and have you been unable to keep your new home decluttered?
A: Yes, to my wife’s dismay, we got rid of a ton of stuff. I am not a stuff keeper, but my wife is. Fortunately when we moved I was able to convince her to part with lots of things. We still have more stuff than I would like, but marriage is about compromise right? hehe.
I’d say overall our house is pretty decluttered. With 6 kids keeping a decluttered and clean house is a constant challenge, but overall I think we are less cluttered than we were before. We also have a great deal more storage room in our new home, which helps a lot. Our prior house had very little storage, which made staying decluttered a challenge.
Q: How beautiful is the view you have? 🙂
A: I can’t describe it with any other word than awesome. I wake up every morning and can’t believe I am fortunate enough to see the beautiful mountain view each morning. If you’re curious and would like to see our house and view, I have lots of pictures over on my flickr page. I love taking pictures.
Q: On average how much time do you spend working on Gather Little by Little?
A: Way too much and not enough! On average, I would guess I spend about 2 hours per day. Each article takes about an hour, give or take. Then there is email to read and follow-up on, advertisers to manage, forums to update, and little tweaks here and there. Blogging takes far more than most people realize. Blogging involves a great deal more work than just writing articles. I think that’s why I like it so much, it involves: writing, marketing, sales, technical skills, programming, and graphics just to name a few.
Q: What budgeting technique do you use, and what techniques have you used in the past that just didn’t work out?
A: Well, I waffle between two and as a result I sometimes use two different techniques at a time. I started off using an excel budget spreadsheet which I shared with my readers sometime back. Thus far, it’s been downloaded almost 5000 times. I then started using You Need a Budget. I wrote a You Need a Budget review last year and really liked the software. There are a few things I don’t like about it, but overall it’s a great piece of software.
I’ve used both the spreadsheet and YNAB in parallel a few times, but lately I’ve just been using YNAB as it takes less time.
Q: What does your family think of your blogging activities?
A: That’s a really good question…let me ask…
My wife said: “It keeps him busy, which is both good and bad. But I’m very proud of him that he’s hung with it and that it has grown so big and read by so many people”. My kids said two things primarily: “It’s really cool” and “I hope he can quit his job and blog all the time.” My 5 year old said “What’s a blog?”. LOL, seems I need to educate him huh?
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Thanks for the interview, Glblguy!
Want to be interviewed for Subscriber Swap Saturday? I’ve got a bunch of openings. Just drop a comment or e-mail my way.
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