Back on topic, what if the pay what you like restaurant had a menu which quoted the cost price of the meal? Then any profit is at the customer’s discretion.

I would pay 20% profit, I think, and go up or down depending on the quality of the overall experience.

Imagine a divided ‘pay tray’ where you put coins in for atmosphere, service and food etc!

Yes, you can give cash via paypal.
No, you cant see me weird items (or items of any kind)…if you are really hung up on the idea of giving me something non-cash give me a boardgame or make a charitable donation to my recommended charity.

Thanks

I guess having a job is not so evil after all. If Trent had all the money he needed/wanted this post would have never came about.

You’ve spent the past several months basically berating your readers, and now you are asking for a handout? Nice try.

I thought you were alreayd living the lifestyle of your dreams?

I honestly believe that most of what is said on this blog is completely a lie and a farce combined with hypocrisy.

You shouldn’t buy new expensive cars (even though Trent does).

You should do what you love and not waste your life on a traditional career (just count on others to fall for tricks).

Rude.

“Another reason for low donations, and probably a big exodus of readers if you DID start charging, is that finance blogs are EVERYWHERE ”

A) he knows what he is doing B) blogs of this quality are by no means EVERYWHERE

“I pretty much refuse to use any website that charges so if Trent starts charging a fee, even $1 to view his site, I’ll just find another website to view.”

Amazing. Not even a dollar? Why bother to read something that is worthless? Key point here: there is no other TSD to go to, hence why it is successful.

“Lately the content has been pretty confusing anyways, turn off your cable but join a video game network.”

Confusing because you agree with one bit of advice but not the other?

“Personally I find the writing on this site to be weird and somewhat bland with an overuse of certain words.”

Weird (dictionary def): Of a strikingly odd or unusual character; strange.

Bland (dict.) : Having little or no distinctive flavor

Interesting mix of characteristics there.

Overuse of certain words? Let me guess…dollar…hour…savings…shares…review.

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I am amazed by how many simply rude people there are. I have never even commented before though I read the articles and the comments daily.

No wonder Trent does not participate in the comments…

I understand this comment has a high chance of being deleted rather than posted but even if it is please PLEASE Trent realise that some of us are quietly grateful for ALL that you post, we may not think you are right 100% of the time but we certainly know you work hard, you do your best to give us great content and 99.9% of the time we learn something from your articles.

That is all

I love the idea of paying the creator directly. I would rather pay for music once I know I like song and I believe most the price will go to the artist. I was more apt to ‘pirate’ software and music before when I felt the corporations got most the proceeds. Now that it is easy for the creator to go direct, we should as consumers start to micro-donate to these sources.

I’ve recently started envelope budgeting and have noticed that if I have some money in an ‘entertainment’ envelope I’ll be much more likely to happily send a few bucks to authors that have really helped because in my mind that is play money. Your regular book reviews are a pretty valuable service that has helped me spend book dollars smarter AND prevent some of that. Since we are fairly like-minded, I trust your reviews and appreciate the time savings.

I do intend to donate freely as my situation improves, in part to what I’ve learned from you, and also to a few other writers. Would be nice to have that as a toolbar button with a pulldown to donate in ‘one-click’… I could envision budgeting like $10/month for that and give in increments of $0.25. Then come back and give more if one REALLY impacts my life in a positive way. Sorry bout the long post, I like this idea very much! Thanks for bringing it up Trent!

Please add the button.

I enjoy this blog although, since I am geriatric and retired, I’m in a very different life-stage from Trent; What I like are his thoughtfulness, integrity and values. The grammatical and idiomatic differences between my geographical region and his don’t worry me. (again, for those who care, I’m an urban Northeasterer)

That was my initial thought as well, but my husband seems to think that people will give more. He’s read several studies which say that such methods do work. Plus I think that there is an aspect of social pressure that will probably lead people to just pay the normal price for a Panera sandwich (here’s it’s known as the St. Louis Bread Co.) or even more, since it goes to charity. Of course there will be people who go there just to pay less for their meal, but they chose a location that is in a wealthy area with lots of business traffic. I think the assumption was that such a location would raise more money.

I try to get this into my thought process whenever deciding on just about anything.

That is, the question, Can I do all of it, or some of it, myself?

I’m interested to see how this restaurant works through their experiment. Would be even better to see if some people paid more to make up for a perceived lack of paying by others!

Seems that a lot of the posters above me chose to take a different message than I did.
For those of you that think this story is about the possibility of charging for content here, or trolling for donations. Read it again.