Gather Little by Little

Photo by: rachel_thecat

The past two weeks have been nuts for my family and I. We just can’t seem to shake being sick. When one of us gets better, seems someone else gets sick. My wife was up most of the night last night with a migraine headache due what we think may be a sinus infection. I was sick the previous week, and our kids have been sick off an on in between. Fortunately it seems the kids are past it, as they’ve been healthy overall for the past few days. I’m praying that once my wife gets past this one we’ll be past all of the sickness mess!

The good news is that it seems spring has finally arrived here in the south as today will be the 3rd or 4th consecutive 70 degree day. The trees are blooming, the grass is getting greener and everybody seems to be outside more. I love spring and frankly just glad to be done with the dreary cold weather.

Poll update – Partial articles on the homepage?

My recent sidebar poll asked you if you read these gathering posts. While I didn’t get the amount of votes I expected, I did get enough to tell me that most of you read them, so I’ll keep doing them!

Keeping up with my intent to make this a site for you, the readers, I have another poll up so you can provide your feedback. I currently have 3 full articles on my home page.� I am considering showing only the first part of each article on the homepage instead of the whole articles. This would allow you to see more articles on the main page, and scan through to decide which ones you would like read. The downside of course is that you would have to click through to read the full article.

Before I make that change though, I want to hear from you on how you feel about it. I’ll only make the change if you’re in favor of it overall. Here’s the poll, so cast your vote!

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My P2P Lending post this week

The P2P lending article I wrote late last week has generated a great deal of discussion and debate this week. Even one of the folks from LendingClub joined into the discussion. Pinyo from Moolanomy wrote an article providing his perspective, along with David from David Makes Cents. David found my article via StumbleUpon. Thanks to Ciaran who stumbled it!

Carnivals

Actually, it’s more like Carnival. I’ve been pretty slack about submitting to blog carnivals over the past few weeks. I plan to change that starting next week. I was included in the Carnival of Money Stories #50 this week, hosted by Quest For Four Pillars.

The Gathering

• Building a Square Foot Garden from Being Frugal – Great project! We made one last year and our kids had a blast building it, watching the vegetables grow, and eating them!
• Which Debt to Slay First? – Reader Question from Cash Money Life – Patrick answers a readers question about which debts to pay off first. His advice is dead on, as he recommends Dave Ramsey’s baby steps, a proven plan for taking care of your debt.
• Tracking Time with Firefox Extensions from The Dough Roller – I’m a huge Firefox user and proponent. DR shares a ton of Firefox extensions that help you track things like your time, packages, cell phone minutes and more. Cool stuff and I LOVE the Firefox car!
• Someone Had To Buy The House You Rent from Paid Twice – Paid Twice asks a question I’ve wondering myself and receives replies from readers offering some great answers and perspectives.
• Why You Should Keep and Organize Your Warranties from Mrs. Micah – Mrs. Micah shares a story from her old job that stresses the importance of keeping the warrenty information for things you buy. I agree and store all of mine in a file folder. Which reminds me, I probably need to clean it out…
• 10 Ways To Reduce Clutter And Clean Up Your Act from My Two Dollars – Great article. I hate clutter and can’t stand not being organized. To be honest, I’m probably a little OCD about it.
• basic guide to Stocks and Shares ISAs part 1: all about you from Plonkee Money – Plonkee provides a basic overview of stocks. Excellent review if you aren’t familiar or need a refresher.
• What I Hate About Wal-Mart from Single Guy Money – I completely agree and we share the same reasons for hating Wal-Mart.
• the whole life sabbatical from brip blap – Steve talks about walking away from all of life’s commitments and responsibilities. This is a very interesting and thoughtful series that helps you think through what’s important, what’s not and whether you could just walkaway.
• Free laptop nation – how free is it? From CleverDude – CleverDude investigates free laptop nation. I’ve seen the commercials, but figured it was just a scam. CleverDude shows it’s not, and that if you are very diligent and detailed it’s not a bad deal. He takes you through step by step on how to do it.
• 5 Things to NOT Buy for Your Kids from Mommy Gets Paid – This would be a good read for most people with kids. It amazes me the stuff people buy for their kids. The article also shares a few things that you may think you need with a new baby, but really don’t.