011 Interview with J. Money from Budgets are Sexy

I have been following J. Money for over 10 years now.  When I first became interested in blogging about personal finance, I went to see what other bloggers were doing, what kind of material they were writing, in short, I wanted to get an idea of what was going on out there. One of the first blogs I stumbled up was the blog of J. Money from Budgets are Sexy.

J. Money has great engagement with his community

At first, I didn’t see anything in particular that differentiated J. Money from all the other blogs out there. Sure, his tone was friendly, he gave the appearance of being approachable. Then I saw it! his great engagement with his followers. He goes back and forth in the comments with his readers. It seemed that for him, it was more than a blog, it was a community. Then I also noticed all the other efforts he has put towards creating all kinds of resources for people to get to know each other, resources such as The Million Dollar Club.

I wanted to put J. Money to the test and asked him a question related to one of his articles. And then guess what happened? He answered! Two years later I asked him another question. He answered! two weeks ago I asked him another question. He answered. Then I asked him to do an interview with me. And here we are.

Here is a summary of our conversation

• It was J. Money’s 10 year anniversary. Yeee…  Happy anniversary. One day I will be just like you.
• J. Money became interested in personal finance after he bought a house that he couldn’t afford. At the moment he started reading a personal finance blog to find out how he could get out of the hole.
• Talking about the blog, J. confesses that he never took writing classes nor personal finance classes. He has become a personal finance blogger by doing.
• For 5 years straight, J. Money blogged and published something every day of the week. He never missed a day. Since he became a father, now he blogs Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
• For those people out there who think that blogging is about writing for two hours in a coffee shop and then you get your millions of dollars, the reality of a blogger is very different. J. Money wakes up at 5:00 – 5:30 am to start his day.
• J. doesn’t focus his blog on SEO, or business strategies. He focuses more on having fun writing.
• We spoke about Seth Godin’s blogging strategies.
• We spoke about MyMoneyBlog as the website which inspired J. to start posting his net worth statements.
• In the beginning, one of the purposes of the blog Budgets are Sexy was to show the journey to becoming a millionaire. Now is more about the lifestyle, how to make the most out of your life.
• The first few net worth statements, 10 years ago was about $85K. His most recent net worth statement was $811K. We can say that J. Money is a 10 bagger. 🙂
• Over the years, the demographics of the readership has changed from people who were broke and trying to make their first dollar to people who are looking towards early retirement.
• We spoke about money coaching. I learned about money coaching from J. but now J. has stopped doing it because he became too emotionally involved.
• Article about J. Money letting go of Rock Star Finance.
• #1 tip to becoming more financially literate: start tracking your net worth.
• We discuss how to get out of debt.
• Tip #2: dump as much money as possible into retirement accounts, especially if you get a matching from your employer.
• Tip #3: Simply and automatize as much as possible. Make savings automatic and instead of having many investments, just narrow it to a few essential ones. He came to this realization while doing a podcast interview with Rob Berger from the podcast Dough Roller. J. Money has all his money invested in the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund Admiral Shares (VTSAX).
• J. Money doesn’t invest in bonds.
• Posts related to investing in bonds, Bonds Vs Stocks, When should you invest in bonds, My ideal portfolio
• In the debate of renting vs. Buying a hose, J. Money definitely prefers renting.
• We speak about the cost of a wedding. If J. could do it all over again, he would opt for a small frugal wedding. Related post about weddings.
• We explore the difficult financial decision of whether to buy the latest iPhone for $1,000 (This iPhone can text, Facebook, and YouTube) and a $100 Android phone that can do the same. It was a difficult decision, but we went with Android. J. went from paying $200/month phone service to $25/month service.
• Book recommendation: Essentialism by Greg McKeown.
• Follow J. Money at jmoney.biz

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