I was hoping to time this better with other bloggers in a more broad announcement, but it looks like the idea is already out of the bag (see (Leo from Zen Habits, who jumped the gun). That’s okay, it’s the idea here that matters. I hereby release all copyright on all written (non-comment) material on
Recently, a dustup occurred in the New York Times, where a regular writer on personal finance topics, MP Dunleavey, bought a home on the spur of the moment. The problem? Based on her earlier writings, that home purchase seemed to be far outside of what she and her husband could reasonably afford. Karen Datko at
Over the first full year of The Simple Dollar’s existence, I’ve written a pile of articles, some good, some bad. I went through each month and tried to pick out the five best from that month to produce something of an anthology of 2007. Here they are, the best articles of the year. January +
As many of you have probably noticed, this morning I removed the majority of advertising from The Simple Dollar. This was a tough decision that I’ve been thinking about for a long time and I’ve finally reached a point where it’s clear that it’s the right move for me and for all of my readers.
After communicating with many of my readers and doing some soul-searching, I’ve decided to somewhat slow down the posting frequency on The Simple Dollar, starting tomorrow. I know this announcement is going to please a lot of my readers who complained that I was moving too fast and that they couldn’t keep up with all
Right now, I’m sitting at a crossroads as to the future direction of my career and, by extension, my life. The Decision Throughout my life, I’ve harbored a dream of being a professional writer. I’ve always felt a great deal of power and of emotional release in the written word, dating back literally to my
Over the last month, I’ve been re-reading Your Money or Your Life slowly and carefully for the book club, and it definitely again shifted the way I think about a lot of things, as I wrote about in the conclusion. One thing it made me realize is that I already have all of the things
Now that the inaugural edition of The Simple Dollar book club is over, it’s time to sit back and look at what was good about it and what was bad about it. First, the good. I think overall it went well, and I know quite a few people out there did get into the book.
To celebrate the one year anniversary of the launching of The Simple Dollar, I went through the archives and picked out my twenty five favorite articles. These aren’t necessarily the best, but the ones I enjoyed writing the most because they challenged my own thinking and they also brought forth some excellent responses from readers
A couple days ago, a reader named Matt left the following comment on a post about debt freedom versus investing: I’m starting to think that Trent makes a lot of this up. The “my friend quit his actuarial job to become a forklift operator” strained credulity and now it seems as though he can’t keep
As I write this, I’m sitting in the hospital waiting for the arrival of my daughter. When you read this, she may have already arrived. My wife is in the early stages of labor and is resting, so I’m sitting here typing away, my mind full of all sorts of thoughts on the subject of
Over the last several months, The Simple Dollar has picked up a lot of readers, as you can all probably tell if you’ve been watching that subscriber number on the upper right corner of each page. Because of this, I thought it would be worthwhile to step back and give an overview of The Simple
A while back, I mentioned some half-formed ideas about a book based on The Simple Dollar and, as you can see from the comments there, many readers thought it wasn’t the best idea. So I shelved it I had a very serious nibble from a book publisher this past week who thought that my series,
Inevitably, as you read this site, you’re going to find something that you disagree with – I write on too many topics for all of my readers to agree with me on everything. I know in the past, I’ve had some bitter disagreements with readers on Rich Dad, Poor Dad, pets, housing requirements, and many
About once a week, I get an angry email from a reader who has stumbled upon The Simple Dollar and views it solely as a giant ode to materialism and capitalism. Usually, this reader has come in via a Google search and found an article where I discuss how to maximize the money one can
At various points, readers have seemed quite surprised to find out that I live in Iowa and that I can see cornfields in two directions from the back porch of the house I’m about to buy. By sheer numbers, many more people live in urban environments than live in an environment like this, and many
Quite often on The Simple Dollar, I’ll put up a description of a financial situation that one of my readers finds themselves in, or I’ll create a straw man to illustrate the point. I’ll give an age and a situation, and then apply an investment choice to that person to see what happens when I
Recently, I’ve seen a few emails from readers wanting to know if there was a way to browse through the extensive archives of the site without going page by page through the long archives. In short, there wasn’t. Until now. If you look over at the right hand menu on this site under the Archives
After reading the frank discussion yesterday about publishing a book based on this site, I have decided not to invest the effort in writing a book. That’s not to say the response yesterday was entirely negative – it wasn’t, and it’s clear to me that even those who were negative support this site a lot.