Gather Little by Little

Kevin over at No Debt Plan has come up with a great idea called Subscriber Swap Saturday and I’m honored to be participating with him today. Subscriber swap is a great way to introduce you (my readers) to other blogs I read.

No Debt Plan is about getting and staying out of debt with a plan. Kevin, the author, is passionate about budgeting, saving for the future, and using goals to reach financial freedom. You can subscribe to his blog by RSS or email.

This interview is part Subscriber Swap Saturday. The basic idea is to get the subscribers of one blog to subscribe to the other blog for at least a week, just to try it out. After a week if you don’t find that blogger’s content enticing, drop it. The hope is that over time you will find several writers that you weren’t familiar with who provide meaningful content to you. You can read more about Subscriber Swap Saturday at his get out of debt blog, and you can read his interview with me here.

Here’s the interview I did with him

Glblguy: How did you get started blogging and why did you choose personal finance?
Kevin: Like most people I didn’t set out originally to blog. I read a bunch of blogs and became very interested in the technology, how it worked, things like that. I had a “blog” back in the day that I manually updated with HTML. Very tedious. As my interest grew I started a personal blog and found myself writing about personal finance. I figured it was worth a shot to start a new blog focused only on that topic.

Glblguy: Did you decide to begin blogging due to your love of personal finance or primarily as an opportunity to make money?
Kevin: Definitely my love of personal finance, but I would by lying if I didn’t think that the thought of earning money online came into it a little bit.

Glblguy: Describe No Debt Plan for me in 15 words or less.
Kevin: A personal finance blog designed to help readers get and stay out of debt.

Glblguy:What other sites or blogs do you run?
Kevin: This is the only blog I write for currently. My wife and I have a personal blog, but we tend to keep that to ourselves and family members. Although I suppose it would be easy to discover.

Glblguy:Do you blog full-time? If not, what’s your full-time job?
Kevin: I would love to blog full-time, but I don’t. I work as a recruiter in the Information Technology Staffing field. I spend all day talking people about jobs.

Glblguy:If you don’t mind sharing, how much do you make blogging?
Kevin: I’ve had a great month and I’m on track to make $150 or so from various sources. I also have some advertising that is paid in lump sums which I suppose should be split up amongst several months, but I don’t bother to track that. I’m very pleased with my progress thus far as I know many bloggers don’t make anything close to that.

Glblguy: What do you think is the least valuable piece of personal finance advice you’ve ever received or heard of? Why?
Kevin: Great question. This is going to come off as controversial to some people. Let me start by saying that I like Dave Ramsey’s plan. It’s simple and it works for people. But I really disagree with his advice to avoid credit cards at all costs. Credit cards are a tool. Tools are put to use my people. Credit cards don’t slide themselves when you buy stuff. I’ve earned $400+ in cash back the last two years because of credit cards while not paying a dime in interest. There has been a long discussion on this on my blog.

Glblguy: Outside of blogging on No Debt Plan, what do you enjoy doing?
Kevin: I’m a big PC gamer. Recently I’ve been playing Left 4 Dead, but I also recently reinstalled Starcraft. Yes, the game from 1998. Still classic and can’t wait for Starcraft 2 to come out. Closet nerd coming out here. :)

Glblguy: What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?
Kevin: I would have to say purchasing a vintage car on eBay Motors. In 2007 I decided I wanted to get the first generation 3 series from BMW (late 70s to early 80s). My wife actually encouraged me to do this because I never do anything crazy — I’m mostly conservative. I bought the car sight unseen via auction. It was in Nashville, about 3 hours north of Birmingham. We drove up a few weekends later and then drove home. It’s totally awesome and I’m waiting until I finish my MBA program to really focus my attention to working on it.

I first met Kevin very shortly after starting Gather Little by Little. He was running another personal finance blog at the time. Kevin is a great guy and runs a really great blog that I think you’ll really enjoy reading. So make sure you don’t forget to subscribe to his blog. Remember, you can subscribe to his blog by RSS or email.