Gather Little by Little

Photo by: brooklyn

13 years ago we decided to have our first child. He was the little boy we both wanted. A year and a half later, another little boy arrived and so the cycle began. We ended up with five wonderful little boys and while we love them dearly, there was something missing in our life…a little girl. We looked at a number of options, and after talking with our boys, we decided to adopt a little girl from Guatemala in 2006. She is almost 2 now, and has been a blessing beyond words in all of our lives. She is spoiled beyond spoiled, and not because of my wife and I, but because of our boys!

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Photo by: AZAdam

This is a guest article by PT who blogs at Prime Time Money – a place where those in their prime can come to discuss money and all things personal finance. Consider subscribing to Prime Time Money via RSS.

Biking to work, cutting your own hair, growing your own veggies, buying your clothes on EBay. While most of us don’t live this kind of lifestyle, some people do go to these extreme measures to maximize the amount of money they can put away into savings. CNN Money did a series of articles focusing on these people they deemed “Extreme Savers.”

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Last week I put up a new poll (over in the right sidebar) asking the question “What tool do you use for your budget?” I was really surprised by the results:

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1. Spreadsheets: 33%
2. Quicken: 13%
3. Sheet of Paper: 13%
4. I don’t budget: 12%
5. Other: 11%
6. Mint.com: 9%
7. You Need A Budget (how I voted): 5%
8. Mvelopes: 3%

Photo from: Morgue File

This is the first part of a multi-part series on How to get a great deal on a new car. Watch for future parts over the next two weeks!

Let me first make it very clear that in most cases I don’t advocate buying a new car, but am a strong advocate for buying a used car that is a few years old. This is primarily due to the high level of depreciation during the first 2-3 years. Based on the amount of search engine hits I get daily related to new cars, I would suspect many of you may be purchasing new cars anyway.

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Photo by: sandnes

Fellow M-Network member and friend David from My Two Dollars was kind enough to interview me last week, and he published the interview on his blog this morning. The questions he asked were great and really made me think a bit. So make sure you head over and read it. Hopefully you’ll learn a little something more about me!

He’s in the process of interviewing all of the M-Network members, so watch out for more interviews Wednesdays over the next few weeks. He’s already interviewed Patrick and Lynnae, so check those out too!

Photo by: Graham Racher

I’m just an average man with an average life
I work from nine to five, hey, I pay the price
All I want is to be left alone in my average home
But why do I always feel like I’m in the twilight zone

- From “Somebody’s Watching Me” by Rockwell

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Photo by: nickobec

My wife and I have started watching re-runs of crime shows. We particularly enjoy Cold Case, Law & Order, and Law & Order SVU (Special Victims Unit). Last night we were watching an episode of Law and Order: Criminal Intent and it contained a really great dialog that involved a question I hear frequently “How can you afford that?” I’m quoting from memory here, so the dialog and story line isn’t exact, but hopefully I’ll capture the essence.

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Wachovia bank recently announced a new program called Way2Save. If you watched the super bowl last night, you were bound to see a few ads for the program. The Wachovia Way2Save program works by automatically transferring $1 from your Wachovia checking account into a high interest (5.00% APY) Way2Save savings account for each dollar you spend when you:

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• Use your Wachovia bank check card to make purchases
• Pay a bill online, including through Wachovia Online Banking and BillPay
• Set up automatic debits

Photo by: Alexandrialeigh

Posting this a little late today, as I’ve spent the whole day with my wife and kids. Actually, I spent the whole weekend with them. We took a ride on our cities new light rail system yesterday and then played a game of Pictionary last night. This morning after church, we grabbed some lunch then went to my in-law’s house. We spent some time with them, and rode their four wheeler for a while. I  really hate having to return to work tomorrow. I would so like to be a pro blogger!

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Photo by: venkane

Reflecting back on January, it was an incredible month for Gather Little by Little in pretty much every way:.

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• Subscribers rose from 392 to 768
• Unique visits rose from 14,0001 in December to 26,906 in January
• Page views rose from 27,583 in December to 51,447 in January
• My number of comments more than doubled
• and last but one of things I am most proud of is having an article I wrote featured on Get Rich Slowly as  a guest post!