I also like your focus on not making finances the main point of life, another obsession. Your objective is similar to my own. Make money something that is controlled and contained, so ones brain is freed up for more important things.

Don’t stop writing and keep up the great work. Here’s one reader that won’t stop reading. At least until I make that million ;)

time to switch to getrichslowy.org :)

yes I know the feeling, I try not to forward every bit I read.

this and other blogs have had really help my wife and I change years of bad habits. Not there yet but well on our way.

You know the odd troll does liven up a blog.

Haha, I can’t believe that I was naive enough to think that you would need a supportive comment from me to cheer you up after that negative comment…well maybe I can fit one along with the 50 great ones here.

In any case, please keep up the great work. Like many of my fellow readers, your blog is one of the few that I seriously follow, simply because you do not try to portray yourself as a financial expert…you portray yourself as a man who one fell down and then had it in himself to pick yourself up, wipe off the dust, and rethink and reorganize your priorities; you also had it in yourself to teach us the lessons that you learned along the way. You are a personal finance model because we have taken the ideas that you have presented to heart. Keep telling your stories, reporting your observations, and teaching your lessons. I, among many, will keep on reading…

The biggest reason why bloggers do lists is because they’re often the best way for bloggers to get attention on social bookmarking sites like digg, reddit, etc. This is often the best way for blogs to get new readers on the site and reading the material you have.

You’ve never claimed to be an expert, but what you’re doing is clearly working for you. I like hearing the new things you’ve learned, and pick & choose what I think will work for us.

I think people are too eager to hand over their thinking duties to “experts”, on-line or otherwise, and you were getting sprayed with some resentment that you weren’t “qualified” to do his thinking for him.

Keep it up Trent!

Shanks, all bloggers seem to love lists even though readers hate them. Unfortunately it’s now a well established problogger-recommended “get links” blogging format.

First, I appreciate and admire you for being willing to be so transparent with the intimate details of your life for the benefit of the blog and your devoted readers.

I am acutely aware of the need for confidentiality in our current social and cultural context. So, the idea of changing some details to protect someone’s privacy is not optional, it is normally mandatory. You have done a great job of preserving the main point that you are trying to make by using someone else’s experience as an analogy. I do this all of the time as a Physician.

As far as “making it up as you go along,” isn’t this what we all do?! That is referred to as normal life behavior, and it is actually quite essential. I am always learning new things, and incorporating the new with my underlying principles and goals. You must remain plastic and adaptable in the complex world in which we live, or you will guarantee that you will fail.

Again, this is what I do constantly as a Physician. For example, in Medical School, all Doctors learn the basics of Pharmacology and Physiology (among many, many other things.) What is EXPECTED of you, is that you can take the underlying principles and adapt them to change, like with the development of new drugs. Not only that, but also when you are faced with a very complex Patient under unique circumstances, you have to be able to synthesize everything you have ever learned, change it to the unique set of variables that you are currently facing, weight the risks and benefits of a proposed course of care, and then ask yourself what you really want as far as the results go.

Sound familiar? Is this not a reflection of life in America today in general for most people? I am closer to 50 years old now than I am to 40 years old. I have noticed that over the years my wife and I have learned, re-learned, experienced successes and failures, and propsed dozens and dozens of different life-defining financial strategies. The only constant in all of our life together has been the ability to change our strategy depending on circumstances and learning new strategies. I have often noted that it has not been unusal for me to define a strategy for financial management only to change it in a matter of a relatively short period of time. We do this all the time. However, our real desires never change.

Rock on Trent. Please don’t change anything. If our lives were “cookbook,” then humans would only need one manual to live by — well, if we only looked at the Bible…another discussion!

“If you think that the human side of personal finance doesn’t have value, you’re probably better off just running different models in Excel and not reading The Simple Dollar at all.”