Gather Little by Little - Personal Finance with a Christian Perspective » Blogging http://www.gatherlittlebylittle.com Proverbs 13:11 - "...he who gathers money little by little makes it grow." Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:00:36 +0000 en hourly 1 A time for everything – A time to move on http://www.gatherlittlebylittle.com/2009/07/a-time-to-move-on/ http://www.gatherlittlebylittle.com/2009/07/a-time-to-move-on/#comments Fri, 17 Jul 2009 17:00:03 +0000 glblguy http://www.gatherlittlebylittle.com/?p=1745 sunset

Ecclesiastes 3 says:

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:

a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

I’ve been writing here on Gather Little by Little for over two years.  I’ve shared my personal journey with you, shared what I’ve learned about personal finance and I’ve written more than 700 articles on various personal finance topics…of course always with a Christian perspective.  Gather Little by Little provided me with knowledge and a creative outlet that I desperately needed at the time.  I truly never dreamed that Gather Little by Little would grow to be the site it has become.  I mean, 3100+ readers???  I remember when I was excited for having 5.  Gather Little by Little has taught me so much about my life, my finances, my faith and my family.  It has also opened many new opportunities for me.  Gather Little by Little has truly been a dream come true for me, as I always wanted to start my own business and help others through ministry.

Over the past few months, I’ve started other blogs and as you are all aware my Empty Cabin Media business as well.  At Empty Cabin Media, I help others build blogs and websites and assist them with making their business and web dreams come true.  During these past few months, I’ve slowly reached a point where I am not only struggling with what to write about here on GLBL, but also feel the new areas I want to pursue are being held back due to the time GLBL requires.  I’ve reached a point where GLBL is no longer the passion it once was, as I have other things I would like to pursue.  I feel the pull of and excitement of new things and of a new journey.

After weeks of agonizing, the time has now come for me to move on.  With a bizarre combination of both happiness and sadness, I’d like to announce that Gather Little by Little has been sold and effective this weekend will be in the capable hands of it’s new owners.  I won’t steal their thunder and will let them introduce themselves as well as share their future plans for Gather Little by Little.  I will say though that GLBL is being turned over to a great group of folks who I know will do an awesome job and make Gather Little by Little even better.  Stew will continue to write as well, which I am very happy about.  Oh, and I’ve pre-written about 2 weeks worth of articles for the new owners, so you’ll still be reading me for the next little bit!

Ironically enough, blogging about my personal finance journey has ended up becoming the end of the current chapter in my personal finance journey.  While I can’t disclose the sale price, the sale of Gather Little by Little will make me completely debt free with the exception of my two mortgages!!  I expected this particular chapter to take a few more years, but no more.  I am now significantly closer to being completely debt free.

I cannot even express in words how wonderful just writing that makes me feel.  While I know many of you are shocked, and maybe even upset with this announcement, I want you to be happy for me.  I have now reached one of the goals I’ve been encouraging you all to reach.  By doing so, I’ve not only become almost debt free, but proved to you that it is truly possibly with dedication and hard work.  I worked hard.  Each and every weekday morning for the past two years, I’ve risen at 5am.  I’d write an article, then do the numerous other duties required of running a blog: email, forum participation, marketing, advertisement management, accounting, etc.  Then head to my full-time job.  I would then return in the evening only to do many of the same things late in the evening as well.  Something I quickly learned about blogging is that it can be a great deal of work.  But, as all hard work does, it paid off.

I will miss GLBL though, very much.  More than anything, I’ll miss you.  I’ve befriended literally hundreds of people over the past 2 years.  The good news is you can always catch up with me at Empty Cabin Media where I’ll be posting about my new efforts on the Empty Cabin Media blog and continuing to grow that business.

So, this post ends the current chapter in my personal finance journey and I look forward to beginning the next.   I promise I’ll avoid credit cards, continue to budget, continue to save, and hopefully begin a new chapter where I can start investing and growing my wealth rather than making the credit card companies richer!

With that, I’ll say good bye.  Stay focused, stay committed and the current chapter in your financial journey will end as well.  Thank you for an absolutely wonderful two years.  You have all changed my life and made it so much better.  I cannot say thank you enough for that.  You have all been a true blessing in my life.

Now, why can’t you ever find a tissue when you need one…

Blog Traffic Exchange Related Posts ]]> http://www.gatherlittlebylittle.com/2009/07/a-time-to-move-on/feed/ 37 Online blog and business accounting http://www.gatherlittlebylittle.com/2009/05/blog-accounting/ http://www.gatherlittlebylittle.com/2009/05/blog-accounting/#comments Wed, 06 May 2009 11:26:46 +0000 glblguy http://www.gatherlittlebylittle.com/?p=1448 blog-accountingI’ve been on a quest for the past few months to to find a better way to manage my blog accounting for my blogs and business accounting for my Empty Cabin Media blog consulting business.  I’ve been using a mixture of spreadsheets which were marginal, but didn’t offer some of the automation I was looking for such as invoice creation, payment tracking, and integration with Paypal.

Thanks to an article in Daily Blog Tips I discovered Outright and subsequently Freshbooks.

Outright.com

Outright.com is simply: simple online bookkeeping software and offers the following capabilities:

  • Tracks sales and business expenses
  • Organizes business records for tax times
  • Assists with paying estimated taxes on time
  • Provides reporting for getting up to date information on how your business is doing.

When you login, the main homepage provides a summary of your financials, including the last 5 transactions and a simple but effective profit and loss statement for your business. It shows profit and losses for the current month, current quarter and current year.

Income tracking

The income tab is basically a general ledger that allows you to enter and track any income you’ve received from your customers or advertisers.  An additional benefit is that Outright also functions as a simple contact management package managing all of your customers and advertisers contact information.

Expense Tracking

The expenses tab does just what you would expect, allows you to enter and track your business expenses.  One of the slick features is that it integrates seamlessly with Shoeboxed.com.  If you aren’t familiar with Shoeboxed, it’s an online service that will scan your receipts and business cards and store them in your Shoeboxed account.  They use OCR technology to pull transaction information from your receipts along with categorizing them for you.  Due to the integration Outright provides, transaction information can automatically be imported from Shoeboxed as your receipts are scanned and entered as an expense into your Outright account.

Taxes

The taxes tab tracks taxes owed, including reminding you of when your federal estimated taxes are due and how much you’ve paid.  They are even working on a state taxes feature that will be available soon.  The tax tracking features are easy to use and simple, but very effective.

Freshbooks

Freshbooks is a time tracking and invoicing website that provides automated estimate, invoicing and payment tracking services.   Freshbooks has been a huge time saver for me with my Empty Cabin Media business and for invoicing advertisers on Gather Little by Little and my other blogs.  Not only has it saved time, but the professional look and feel of the site has given me a professional edge that I didn’t have before.

Freshbooks provides screens for setting up and managing your clients and their associated contact information.  Once you’ve created a client, you can then send an estimate, an invoice, or a recurring invoice to them.

I primarily using Freshbooks for providing client estimates and invoices for both my advertisers and clients.  There are a number of other features, including:

  • Expense tracking which can be associated with a projecdt or client and then billed to a client
  • Time tracking for tracking hours worked on a project or for a client.
  • Comprehensive reporting
  • Ability to manage staff and their permissions within Freshbooks
  • Integration with Basecamp an online project mangement package.

So far I’m really impressed.  The estimates and invoices now have a very professional look and contain my company logo.  I also like the ability Freshbooks provides to see whether or not my clients have viewed them and really appreciate the integrated payment tracking Freshbooks provides.

Outright and Freshbooks integration

One of the key features of these two products is their integration.  Outright can be configured to automatically import transactions from Freshbooks.  So when you invoice a client and the client pays, the transaction is automatically entered into your income tab within Outright.

I am a huge proponent of making things as automatic as possible.  This is especially true since I am by nature a procrastinator and always find an excuse to skip the bookkeeping and do something more fun!  Using Outright, Freshbooks, and Shoeboxed has really made me more organized and allowed me to have a complete and up to date financial picture of my business.  If you aren’t running your blog like a business, maybe it’s time to consider doing so.  All three products offer free trial offers.  I guarantee once you give them a try you won’t want to quit.

Blog Traffic Exchange Related Posts ]]> http://www.gatherlittlebylittle.com/2009/05/blog-accounting/feed/ 6 Why I Blog http://www.gatherlittlebylittle.com/2007/10/why-i-blog/ http://www.gatherlittlebylittle.com/2007/10/why-i-blog/#comments Wed, 17 Oct 2007 12:18:52 +0000 glblguy http://www.gatherlittlebylittle.com/2007/10/17/why-i-blog/ Valley Mountain View

Inspired by a post from PaidTwice, I thought I might share my motivations for blogging. Most of this information is also available on my About page, but in a more abbreviated format.

In November of last year (2006), my family and I were impacted by a earth shattering personal circumstance. I was out of work for an extended period of time, we were faced with getting behind on our debt payments and beginning to wonder how we were going to put food on the table. We ended up selling a number of our personal possessions to a pawn shop just to make ends meet. It was the most scary time of our lives. Our faith was truly tested.

There is a great Third Day song named Mountain Of God that says:

Even though the journey’s long
And I know the road is hard
Well, the One who’s gone before me
He will help me carry on
After all that I’ve been through
Now I realize the truth
That I must go through the valley
To stand upon the mountain of God

These lyrics are oh so true. We were so far in the valley we couldn’t even see the mountain, but He helped us carry on. We’re still in the valley, but we can now see the mountain. God provided, and caused a number of miraculous things to occur. We realized very quickly that the way we had been managing our finances just wasn’t going to cut it. We came to realize how important we as a family were to each other, and we developed a much closer relationship to God.

I started reading any and every personal finance book I could get my hands on. I also went searching on the web and discovered blogs. I knew about blogs, but had just never really read any. While in Sam’s one day, I came across The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. I read the back cover, flipped through the book and purchased it. Little did I know the impact this book was going to have.

Around the same time, I found my first personal finance blog, The Simple Dollar. I loved Trent’s articles and the personal style he had. I felt I could truly relate. I then found Get Rich Slowly and learned so much through reading J.D.’s articles. At this point I was quit addicted to reading blogs and started adding more and more blogs to my Google Reader. Here’s the list of pf blogs I currently read.

Being a techy, I was also quite curious about the software these bloggers were using and about the whole blogging process itself. So I started a personal blog and started posting some articles on what I was learning around personal finance and how it was changing the way I managed my own finances.

I also spent a great deal of time reading meta-blogs (blogs about blogging) and primarily ProBlogger.net. I also wrote about cars, camping, etc. More than 75% of my articles were on personal finance though, something I loathed before now had suddenly become a true passion for me.

I ended up starting my own blog on personal finance. I had the perfect niche, personal finance with a Christian perspective. Although Christian PF had beat me to it. But I did it anyway. When all of this started, I decided to read the Bible from front to back. I read Proverbs 13:11 one evening and decided to pull the name, Gather Little By Little from this verse.

My primary intent for Gather Little By Little is to share my knowledge, learnings, good decisions, bad decisions, thoughts etc, with you the reader. My hope is to make a positive difference in your life in either your personal finances or even better in your relationship to God. My articles aren’t deep with financial theory, I don’t use complex math or P.H.D. level finance theories. My articles focus more on the personal aspects of finances: relationships, self discipline, determination, and struggle. I am pretty clear on what I want for Gather Little By Little. I am less sure on how successful it is going to be. But if it has a postive impact on just one person’s life, than it has served it’s purpose. I love writing, love learning, and love reading your comments, stories and perspectives. My efforts at writing the articles is only a small portion of GLBL, the rest is your comments and thoughts on what I write.

Share your thoughts on Gather Little By Little below. Be honest. I want this to be a blog for you the reader. So let me know what you like, what you dislike and what I can do better.

Blog Traffic Exchange Related Posts ]]> http://www.gatherlittlebylittle.com/2007/10/why-i-blog/feed/ 13 A Peek Under The Hood http://www.gatherlittlebylittle.com/2007/09/a-peek-under-the-hood/ http://www.gatherlittlebylittle.com/2007/09/a-peek-under-the-hood/#comments Fri, 28 Sep 2007 18:28:06 +0000 glblguy http://www.gatherlittlebylittle.com/2007/09/28/a-peek-under-the-hood/ Hemi Engine

I thought it might be interesting for some of you to get a “peek under the hood” (plonkee, that’s a bonnet for you) at Gather Little By Little. So without further adieu…

Hosting and blog platform

Gather Little By Little (or GLBL from here on out) is hosted by DreamHost. GLBL is the first site I’ve hosted with DreamHost they have been great so far. Their control panel interface is easy and simple to use. They offer “one-click” installs of some of the most popular web software packages and unlimited email addresses and domains. One of the things I really like is the longer you are with them, the more disk space you get…all for the same price!

One of their “one-click” installs is Wordpress, the blogging software used by GLBL. Wordpress is the defacto standard software for blogs and the best part, it’s FREE! It offers a tremendous amount of features and an easy to use interface. Want to customize your site? No problem, Wordpress makes it easy. There are literally thousands of plug-ins and themes available for download and most if not all of them are free! Plugins are “pluggable” controls of features you can easily add to Wordpress to add all sorts of features.

GLBL Plugins

You can find a list of plugins I use on my top notch plugins I use article.

Theme

I use a heavily modified version of the minus 19-09 theme. Modifications I’ve made include:

  • Removal of the large footer
  • Replaced the header
  • Added a main navigation menu
  • Modified width of the sidebar
  • Modified to use a larger font
  • Custom Logo

I really like the colors and layout.

Statistics and Tracking

I have tried various different statistics packages for tracking site usage and volumes. At this point I have settled on using the following:

SiteMeter - I use this to provide viewable real-time statistics for visitors to the site, including potential advertisers. You can view my stats by clicking on the SiteMeter icon in the footer of every page.
Google Analytics – This is the main statistics package I use. Analytics provides an enormous amount of data, with easy to use graphs.
Feed Burner Feed Stats - Subscriber count and feed stats. I also run their web-site stats which provides similar data to SiteMeter and Google Analytics, but with different views.
HitTail – For tracking search hits and long tail keyword recommendations. Hittail also displays nicely formatted site hits in real time which is really nice. I keep this open and running at work sometimes so I can keep an eye on where my traffic is coming from.

Posting Schedule

When I first started the blog I really didn’t have a posting schedule my readers could expect. Over the past few months, I have fallen into the following schedule:

Monday - Monday Saving Monday Tip
Tuesday - General PF Posting
Wednesday - General PF Posting
Thursday - General PF Posting
Friday - Friday Gatherings, where I highlight my favorite M-Network and other pf blogger postings for the week
Tuesday - Thursday topics vary highly depending on what is on my mind or maybe even on what other bloggers are saying. I try to include articles on debt, savings, budgeting. Many with references to biblical scripture.

My schedule

I’m an early bird. I get up around 5:30am, eat breakfast, shower and then write articles until around 8:00am. During the evenings and during my lunch break at work, I spend time reading my favorite blogs. I also spend my evenings commenting on blogs I enjoy reading, and networking on MyBlogLog, Blogcatalog and StumbleUpon. I participate in a number of forums including forums on blogging, personal finance, and Christianity.

In the past few weeks, I’ve written a number of my articles while at my oldest son’s football practices. I’m the only one on the field typing away on a laptop, but hey I have to optimize my time. Most of this article was written on the field.

I don’t generally post on the weekends as I try to spend weekends with my family. If I do get time on the weekends I spend that time enhancing my blog by adding plug-ins and tweaking it by moving things around, changing fonts or just cleaning things up. I spent this past weekend cleaning up my sidebar and cleaning up some clutter.

I usually spend roughly 2-3 hours a day on my blog. Sometimes much more, seldom less.

Article ideas

I get article ideas from all over:

Things I see, like the green Lexus I saw one day driving to work. All of these provide great inspiration, but most of my articles come to me when I am driving to and from work. I’ll often see something or think of something completely unrelated to personal finance. As I think on it, I begin to either think about it from a financial perspective or put a financial slant on it.

My article why personal finance is like driving a caris a prime example of this.

I frequently wonder what in the world I am going to post next week but it never seems to be a problem. My biggest problem is remembering all of the ideas I have. To help solve that problem, I purchased a Sony Digital Voice Recorder. It stays with me all the time.

When I get an idea, I jot it down along with a brief one or two sentence thought about the article and what I want to accomplish with it. This gets stored as a simple text file in my computer’s “To Be Posted WIP” folder (WIP = Work in Progress). When I get time to write, I go there first, open a to be completed article and begin writing.

My writing process

When writing articles, I usually go through a 4 stage process:

Initial draft – this is a first cut of the article with little focus on spelling, grammar, structure etc. The intent is to just let the writing flow and get the ideas on the computer before they leave me (which doesn’t seem to take long these days).
Clean-up – After the initial draft, I spend a great deal of time optimizing the wording, fixing grammar and spelling mistakes, and often moving sentences and paragraphs around. I also break the article into sections and frequently revise the title to more accurately portray what I’ve written. Recently I’ve really been focusing on post titles due to BlogRush.

Add to Wordpress – At this point, I copy and paste the article into wordpress. I then begin re-reading the article looking for possible internal link opportunities to my articles. I do this by using the Wordpress search feature, searching on specific keywords. I then create the links and add additional formating such as bolding, italics, spacing, etc.


Incorporate an image – Once the article is written and ready to publish, I then go on an image hunt. I use a number of sources for this. Recently I’ve been using a number of my wife’s pictures. I try to find images with bright colors and people. Something that will make you the reader say “wow” and remember the picture and hopefully the article.

At this point I publish it or queue it up to be published. Sometimes I’ll publish an article right away, other times I schedule it by adjusting the wordpress timestamp so it will publish automatically in the future.

Hardware/Software Used

I generally write my articles offline using a simple text editor. I use Notepad++, a powerful and easy to use text editor. I’ll later copy and paste the article into Wordpress for completion including final formatting.

I have a laptop that pretty much goes with me everywhere. I often find I get time to write when I don’t expect to. As a result I like to keep my laptop handy. I keep it in my Targus Backpack, along with whatever current book I’m reading and my swipe file.

Curious about something I haven’t answered? Feel free to post a comment and ask or just contact me directly. I’m pretty much an open book.

Blog Traffic Exchange Related Posts ]]> http://www.gatherlittlebylittle.com/2007/09/a-peek-under-the-hood/feed/ 9 What's In Your RSS Reader? http://www.gatherlittlebylittle.com/2007/09/whats-in-your-rss-reader/ http://www.gatherlittlebylittle.com/2007/09/whats-in-your-rss-reader/#comments Thu, 27 Sep 2007 17:00:07 +0000 glblguy http://www.gatherlittlebylittle.com/2007/09/27/whats-in-your-rss-reader/ Google Reader Screenshot

Over in the MBN forums, GettingGreen posted a thread asking all of the personal finance bloggers what pf blogs they read. I posted my list, but then I thought you might be interested as well. So, here’s the list of the persoanl finance blogs I currently have in my Google Reader. I’ll try to keep this updated as I change it.
If you aren’t familiar with RSS, please read my article What is RSS and How Do I Read It?.

If you aren’t currently subscribed to Gather Little By Little, I’d encourage you to subscribe so you don’t miss a single article!

Here’s the list:

M-Network Blogs:

Moolanomy
Plonkee Money
Financial Dominance
I’ve Paid Twice For This Already
Being Frugal
Christian Finance
DebtFREE-Revolution
Single Guy Money
The Dough Roller
Saving Explained

A Penny Closer
Advanced Personal Finance
AllFinancialMatters
Blogging Away Debt
brip brap
cheufong.com
Christian Finance Blog
Clever Dude Personal Finance & Money
Consumerism Commentary
Crazy Money
Debt Free Indeed
fivecentnickel.com
Free Money Finance
Get Rich Slowly
Hustler $$$ Blog
Journey To Financial Freedom
Lazy Man and Money
Money and Such
Money Smart Life
Money, Matter, and More Musings
No Credit Needed
One Million and Beyond
Personal Finance Blog by Money Ning
Punny Money
SavingWithMe.com
Sharing My Two Cents…
The Digerati Life
The In-Debt Net
The Simple Dollar
Watch My Money Maker
Working For Financial Freedom

What’s in your RSS reader? Do you use RSS? If not, why not?

Blog Traffic Exchange Related Posts ]]> http://www.gatherlittlebylittle.com/2007/09/whats-in-your-rss-reader/feed/ 16 The Top Notch Wordpress Plugins I Use http://www.gatherlittlebylittle.com/2007/09/the-top-notch-wordpress-plugins-i-use/ http://www.gatherlittlebylittle.com/2007/09/the-top-notch-wordpress-plugins-i-use/#comments Wed, 26 Sep 2007 17:00:49 +0000 glblguy http://www.gatherlittlebylittle.com/2007/09/26/the-top-notch-wordpress-plugins-i-use/ Plug

I frequently get asked about which Wordpress plugins I use or how I implement various features on my site, like my Featured, Archives, and Contact pages. So instead off replying in “one off” answers, I thought I would just post a listing of the various plugins I am currently using along with a brief comment about each. I say currently as I am constantly trying new plugins, and making changes. I will try to keep this list as current as possible.

Here’s the list:

  • Akismet – Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not.
  • All in One SEO Pack – Out-of-the-box SEO for your Wordpress blog.
  • Articles – Display posts in an ‘Articles’ list.
  • Bad Behavior – Deny automated spambots access to your PHP-based Web site.
  • Better Comments Manager – Better Comments manager allows you to view your comments post wise, it also allows you to reply to your comments from within admin panel without you having to visit the site to respond to comments
  • Dofollow – Disables the rel=nofollow attribute in comments.
  • Enforce www. Preference – Provides 301 redirects to queries with /index.php and enforces your use or non-use of www.
  • Executable PHP widget – Like the Text widget, but it will take PHP code as well. Up to 9 instances of this widget may exist.
  • FeedBurner FeedSmith – This plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber.
  • Google Sitemaps – This generator will create a Google compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog.
  • MyAvatars – This plugin allows you to add MyBlogLog.com avatars to Wordpress comments.
  • NET Bible – Finds Bible chapters and versus written in your post, and turns them into a links to Bible.org
  • Popularity Contest – This will enable ranking of your posts by popularity; using the behavior of your visitors to determine each post’s popularity. You set a value (or use the default value) for every post view, comment, etc. and the popularity of your posts is calculated based on those values.
  • Post Teaser – Post Teaser generates a preview or “teaser” of a post for the main, archive and category pages, with a link underneath to go to the full post page. It includes features to generate a word count, image count, and an estimated reading time.
  • Related Posts – Returns a list of the related entries based on active/passive keyword matches.
  • RSS Feed Signature – Add a customised signature or tag-line to your RSS feed(s).
  • SRG Clean Archives – This plugin is designed to display your archive listings in a clean, uniform, single-query fashion that’s Search Engine friendly on a dedicated page or in your sidebar.
  • Subscribe To Comments – Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry.
  • TailHitter – Adds the HitTail Code to every WordPress Post/Page
  • WordPress Database Backup – On-demand backup of your WordPress database.
  • wp-cache – Very fast cache module. It’s composed of several modules, this plugin can configure and manage the whole system.
  • WP-ContactForm: Akismet Edition – WP-ContactForm: Akismet Edition is a spam-resistant drop-in contact form.
Blog Traffic Exchange Related Posts ]]> http://www.gatherlittlebylittle.com/2007/09/the-top-notch-wordpress-plugins-i-use/feed/ 16