Gather Little by Little

I awoke this morning, like every other morning at 5:30am. Quietly sneaked downstairs, made my coffee and cereal and opened my trusty Thinkpad to read email. I’ve stopped checking my RSS feed daily as I find the fluctuations frustrating. Upon opening Firefox, I was pleasantly surprised to see my Feedburner chicklet displaying exactly 1000 subscribers!! [[insert mental vision of Gibble doing the snoopy dance in his pajamas in the dark here…ok, maybe not…]].

Reaching 1000 subscribers was a milestone for me this year, and occurred quicker than I thought it would. In December, I blogged about my 2008 goals for Gather Little by Little and one of them was to reach 1500 subscribers. I honestly thought this one might be a stretch goal for me, but it would seem I may have set the goal a little low.

A sincere THANK YOU to all of my readers. I consider it an honor to have you reading my blog. When I started Gather Little by Little, I never thought I would have any readers beyond my wife and Dad. Now I have at least 1,000. Wow.

If you would like to help me reach the goal of 1,500 subscribers this year you can subscribe here via RSS or here via email. Not sure what RSS is, here’s a quick summary. I read all of the blogs on my Blog Roll using an RSS reader.

Announcements:

• CreditWithdrawal is doing a Quicken giveaway contest, so head over and win a free copy.
• Mrs. Micah: Finance and Life became the newest member of the M-Network this week. If you aren’t already a reader of Mrs. Micah, make sure you pay her a visit and subscribe. She’s a really fun person, and has more energy than all six of my kids combined! Welcome to the M-Network Mrs. Micah, very glad to have you!
• Speaking of Mrs. Micah’s energy, she announced something called the Finwikian. Finwikian is a wiki dedicated to all things personal finance. Make sure you check it out, it’s really a pretty slick idea.
• The M-Network wrapped up our series on Dave Ramsey’s Baby Steps. You can read the intro over at Cash Money Life who has links to all of the other articles in the series including mine.

The Gathering!

• How to Make a Budget That Works from Being Frugal – I am huge fan of budgeting as it’s a critical tool for managing your money instead of it managing you. This is the first article in a 3 part series on better budgeting.
• Chinese Money Habits – How My Culture Influences My Attitudes Toward Money from Wise Bread – I wish everyone had these habits. Love the part about frugal is a virtue.
• Salary Negotiation Tactics – Reader Question from Cash, Money, Life – Salary negotiations are always tough and no one way works, as your strategy should really be based on who you are negotiating with. Patrick provides some great advice through answering a question he received from a reader.
• Cheap Is Not Always A Good Thing from I’ve Paid For This Twice Already- I sure can relate to this post. I’ve been struggling with this purchasing equipment for my saltwater aquarium.  Some of the equipment is really expensive and the prices are all over.
• Go Cash Only for a Week from Prime Time Money – I think I’ll do this and post about how it works. I don’t think I’ll like it as I prefer the convenience of a debit card, but it will be a fun experiment.
• How to Hide Money from an Abusive Husband or Wife Part 1 — Banking from Mrs. Micah – Whenever I read about abusive spouses, I just get really angry. I cannot imagine anyone abusing their spouse, but I know it happens. Mrs. Micah provides some excellent information to help people out that are being abused. What a great way to make a difference in the lives of others.
• Looking to Attend College for Free? Try Harvard from The Dough Roller – With 6 kids? Absolutely!
• Learning the Right Lessons from Your Mistakes from The Simple Dollar – I can so relate to this. I’ve always said I learn far more from my mistakes than my successes.
• 40 Alternative Income Ideas and Resources from Moolanomy – When your expenses are more than you earn, you have a problem. There are two options: increase your income or reduce your expenses. Alternative income is a great way to increase your income. My wife and I do both. I’ve increased my income through blogging, my wife through her photography, and we constantly look for opportunities where we can reduce expenses.
• Consumer Reports List Of The 10 Best Cars For 2008 Has Arrived. from My Two Dollars – No surprises I included this one right? I love cars, and always look forward to reading Consumer Reports take on the best cars. I personally wouldn’t go with any these, but it’s a good list.
• working after retirement from Plonkee Money- First I LOVE the photograph, absolutely beautiful. Where I work, we have quit a few people that do this. I personally don’t plan to work after retirement. We plan to RV around America and head over seas.
• SingleGuyMoney Goes Shopping!! from Single Guy Money – Good news ladies, it wasn’t for an engagement ring!
• Wide Open Wallet: 50 Awesome Open Source Financial Tools – There are some pretty interesting tools listed here and many of them I hadn’t heard of before. Will definitely be checking some of these out!