Blogger Showdown #1: J.D. Roth vs. Trent Hamm
Welcome to the 1st ever PF Blogger Showdown! Your support and excitement have been incredible the past few days since introducing the series, and my thanks goes out to each and every one of you :) We've got a great community here, and I appreciate everyone's passion in helping spread the good word!
Some of you have asked why I'm leading off with 2 of the biggest pf bloggers around (and why I'd pimp out such hugely successful blogs), and the answer to that is simple: Without J.D. and Trent I wouldn't be blogging right now. The Simple Dollar & Get Rich Slowly were among the first 3 pf blogs I came across (the 3rd being My Money Blog) and they continue to inspire both bloggers & readers alike. When you're rockin' 60,000+ subscribers and you take the time out to help a fan, it says a lot about your character. It also says to thank your lucky stars & run with it! With that said, let the games begin!
 J.D. Roth66,000 Readers Get Rich Slowly @jdroth |  Trent Hamm64,000 Readers The Simple Dollar @trenttsd |
| How long have you been blogging? | |
| Define "blogging". I've been writing on the web since 1994. I started my first web journal in 1997, and the first one that would recognizably be a blog in 1998. But we didn't call them blogs back then. We called them web journals. I started my first actual *blog* in 2001, and that was primary focus for six years. In April 2006, I started Get Rich Slowly as a side project, but by 2007 it had become my main site. So, how long have I been blogging? It depends on your definition! | I had a few non-serious personal blogs early in the decade. I had a fairly serious parenting blog that I started in late 2005 and abandoned in early 2006 because I became uncomfortable sharing so much information about my child. After that, I launched The Simple Dollar in late 2006. |
| What motivates you to continue? | |
| This is a great question right now, actually. Money used to motivate me, but now I'm making more than I need, so that's less of a factor. The fact that I'm helping others at Get Rich Slowly absolutely motivates me to continue that site, but to be honest, I've been feeling burned out. It's great to help people, but I also need to think about myself. I'm beginning to feel like I want to pursue other projects. I'm not sure what this means yet, but I may be taking a reduced role at GRS in the future. | I write every day, regardless of whether I'm blogging or not. I've been doing it since I was in eighth grade. So, if I stopped with The Simple Dollar, I'd just write something else. |
| Tell us the first 3 sites/blogs you check in the morning. | |
| The first three sites I check are USA Today (yes, really), Ask Metafilter, and my family's private discussion forum. | The Simple Dollar (to read fresh comments and such). Oh, you mean besides my own? And you're probably not interested in boring things either, like Gmail. My first three reads are probably Google News, Lifehacker, and Ask Metafilter. |
| Do you use a budget? (If so, what format?) | |
| I do not use a budget. I've tried, but it just doesn't work for me. The closest I come is for my personal spending. I withdraw $200 at the start of each month, and that's my play money. | I used a budget for quite a while, but I stopped using one a year or so ago. I realized that it had become a dead document - I wasn't actively using it any more. I do keep track of my spending using Excel and I'm planning on giving Quicken a fair shot when it's released for the Mac later this year. |
| Give us your favorite piece of advice in one sentence. | |
| "Do what works for you." There's no one right way to live life, and you should ignore anyone who tells you otherwise. | Spend less than you earn is the obvious one, so I'll go with something more fun: get busy living or get busy dying. |
| Is there any advice you hate hearing? | |
| I know that there is (because I get annoyed sometimes when I hear various "words of wisdom" dispensed), but I can't think of anything specific right now. | Lots of it. I hate absolute statements like "You have to own a home" or "You absolutely should rent and never own a home." Neither are true. There are almost no absolutes in personal finance, and I think that's why many people have difficulty with it. They either get stuck in analysis paralysis or they subscribe absolutely to rules that don't always work. |
| What's one of the dumbest financial mistakes you've ever made? | |
| Ah, there have been so many. One that I think of often, though, occurred during the summer of 1995. When my father died, I received $5,000 from his life insurance. At that time, I had just under $20,000 in credit card debt. If I had been smart, I would have used the settlement to reduce this debt obligation. Instead, I used the money to buy a new computer and a bunch of stuff to go along with it. So much stuff, in fact, that I had to use my credit cards to purchase some of it. Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb. | Pretty much everything I did in my adult life prior to 2006. I racked up mountains of debt. |
| Do you run any other blogs/sites? | |
| Hahahahahahaha. Yes. Too many. I have my Animal Intelligence site, my site about vintage popular culture, my site about comic books, etc. Most of my readers are aware of my fitness site and my personal site, but there are many others. To be honest, though, I'm about ready to perform a massive consolidation. When I'm done, there will be just 2-1/2 sites: Get Rich Slowly, my NEW personal site (which will incorporate all of my other sites), and Get Fit Slowly (which is the "half" in 2-1/2 -- I write it with a partner). | I run http://www.trenthamm.com/ which is basically where I post short essays that don't really fit on The Simple Dollar and don't work as a guest post anywhere that I can think of. |
| How often do you check your stats? | |
| Not as often as I used to. I used to be a stats junkie. I'd check Sitemeter several times an hour. I was addicted. But you know what? There's no reason to do that. Nothing is accomplished. I removed Sitemeter so I'd no longer be tempted, and now I only have Google Analytics to track things. Since there's a several-hour lag involved, there's no reason to be checking all the time. I just check once or twice a day now. (I want to get to be like Chris Guillebeau, though, who checks *once a month*!) | Once a day or so, mostly to see if I have any new significant traffic sources. Usually, if there is such a traffic source, there's an interesting discussion there. |
| Internet or Sex - if you had to choose? | |
| Sex! (Though both at once sounds interesting.) | Sex. |
| *BONUS* What's the weirdest thing about you? | |
| That's hard to say. To me, I'm not weird, right? I know the thing that makes my friends shake their heads though is that I smell books. When I pick up a book, I put my nose to it and riffle the pages to get a good whiff. I've done this since I was a boy, and it amuses my friends. I don't do it to amuse them, though -- I do it with ALL books and magazines, even when there's nobody around. | I'm deaf in one ear. If you're on the wrong side of me, there's a decent chance I won't hear you. |
 | |
| Who wins the first showdown? Submit your vote now and let us know! Base it on whatever you'd like: the better answers, the better blog, the most inspiring, the funnier, whatever. Either way, I've got mad love for them both and wish 'em nothing but continued success! Hope you all liked this, we'll do another match up soon - keep your eyes open... | |
Labels: blogger showdown
posted by J. Money at
7:24 AM
36 Comments:
Hey great showdown! Both of you guys are truly inspirational, it is awesome that we readers can get slightly more into your mindsets away from your blogs. Very interesting that you both list Ask Metafilter as top 3 sites you read and you both do not use a budget. It is so inspiring to see two guys whom have tamed the budget and the white bull. Thanks for the insight!
Love the format! The copy editor in me demands that you fix Trent's first name in the tag next to his headshot, though. =)
@Atlas@mymoneyshrugged - I thought it was pretty interesting too how they both check Ask Metafilter like that - I had never even heard of it ;)
@RainyDaySaver - Oops! good catch...boy, you'd think after reviewing it 5-6 times I would have seen that. glad you liked the format!
I'm sorry, Trent, but I had to vote for JD. He smells books. That's weird.
A question for both JD/Trent (if they read this). Why do you guys use AskMetafilter?
Great interviews! I really enjoyed them. I'd love to hear about the reasons for why the both use AskMetafilter too...
This was so fun to read! Thanks so much to JD and Trent for participating.
Eek! I didn't know there would be a poll, why did I agree to participate?!
I had a hard time picking but JD won me over with his answer to Internet or Sex.
hah.. everyone wants to know - what's the deal with AskMetafilter?
Smelling books is interesting - maybe the smell triggers good memories and releases feel good chemicals into your body? You're a book junkie JD!
Great job both of you, interesting to hear a bit more about you both outside of your own blogs. Great job J. Money.
Why do you guys use AskMetafilter?
Metafilter (the parent site) has been around for just over a decade. I had been lurking there since near the beginning, but I never joined because I didn't have anything to contribute. Then the Ask Metafilter section was added, and I found it compelling: Users could ask questions and other users would answer them. I signed up.
I like AskMetafilter because it's a great way to give and receive actual experiential advice. This isn't theoretical advice from so-called experts. It's advice from real people like you and me. The "Ask the Readers" columns I do at Get Rich Slowly are very much based on AskMetafilter.
That's a long way of saying, "I read AskMetafilter because I like it." :)
Great interviews. I love reading these things. I think everyone is surprised by AskMetaFilter. I have never heard of it before.
Why do you like it?
I guess I need to check out Ask Metafilter. Good interviews. Thanks!
This idea rocks, Jay! Great job. And how cool that JD and Trent particpated. You both are wonderful. I love all three of you guys and you're up there on the sites I visit first each day.
Great job to Trent, JD, and J for the showdown.
Oh my goodness. You've asked me to make an impossible choice. It's like choosing which one of your kids is your favorite. Can't be done!
I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out!
That was such a fun read! Thanks!
That was great! Thanks!!
At first I thought this was the showdown from a couple of years ago! Nice to read a more current version:) JD, I had no idea you had that many sites, that's crazy! I also smell books sometimes:) And the quote about "get busy living or get busy dying" really has a lot packed into it...
Wow, this was fun. This is definitely a hard choice. I like Trent's comment on "advice you hate hearing". I get annoyed with the same.
But, J.D. strikes me with smelling books (cuz I do it too. Especially with old hardbound ooks. Love to smell...)
I am going to have to go with Trent from The Simple Dollar. His, "get busy living or get busy dying" hits a cord. :)
Gonna have to go with Trent. Solely based on JD slowly starting to remove himself from GRS. I know its whats best for him, but i can be selfish at times. Oh yeah and Trent's mention of "analysis paralysis" sealed the deal.
Great job by all parties.
Great segment you have going, really nice to learn more about the bloggers we read every day.
J. Money - lovin' this series. Both participants did a great job (I too picked J.D. only because of the smelling books thing - as a lover of vintage novels I could appreciate it, otherwise it would have been a tie.) Thanks to both for their thoughts and insight and to J. for putting it together for us!
I don't care for Trent at all and no longer read his blog. He was distinctly unfriendly and unwelcoming to me when, as a newcomer, i posted a reply that was at odds with his opinion on something.
If blogs aren't the place for a diverse range of opinions freely expressed, than i must have misunderstood the purpose of a blog.
Nicely done J! I think this can only get better and better, thanks for doing it!
I have the opposite impression. I stopped reading The Simple Dollar because Trent encourages too much dissent and his comments are filled with so much argument. There's far too much "at odds" and heated discussion there. I have no idea what Anonymous #1 is talking about with The Simple Dollar not encouraging dissenting opinions - that seems to be all that happens over there.
I'm surprised no one brought up PF grand daddies not using budgets.
Gentlemen, did you stop budgeting because you started making truck-loads of cash on your blogs? What specifically rendered them dead documents? The reason I ask is because I can see this same thing happening to me after awhile. Do you wish you still budgeted?
I also am surprised no one asked whether or not JD sniffs books during sex. :-|
I view a budget as being something like training wheels. They're great for teaching you how to manage your money, but you eventually reach a point where it's all either automated or an ingrained part of your behavior, at which point the time investment in a manual budget is misplaced.
I completely agree with Trent.
I've found budgets are useful when I am embarking upon new territory. So when I go on vacation, I'll set up a budget for the vacation. I'm getting married in a few weeks, and we set up a budget for the wedding. For my day to day finances, however, I've found that a budget just doesn't make sense.
I go with a "spending plan", where I keep track (sometimes in detail, sometimes just overview) of what I'm spending, and make sure that it is relatively on track.
Budgeting down to the letter does not seem to work for me. Mrs. Jabs & I laid all our income/expenses out in front of us & formulated a budget on paper, which we used in conjunction with Mint.com for a few months.
After about 2-3 months - while we looked over them briefly - we found little benefit in recording numbers directly since we just don't seem to need that level of detail.
My most important tools include a list of bills to pay each month, setting those up as automatic payment whenever possible, a focus on reuse, frugality, & spending as little as possible.
Mmmm....budget talk....
Great points all around guys.You stick with what works for YOU - however that may work out. If you get 'er done w/ 10% budgeting and 90% paying attention, great! Whatever it takes to stay on track and keep that spending under control....or not if you want to buy me a present ;)
It's reassuring to hear that you both have decided that budgeting isn't worth it. I keep kicking myself for not having a budget, and maybe I shouldn't quite so much.
I love to smell books too. There, I said it. ;)
It's not that I've decided budgeting isn't worth it. I think it *is* worth it for many folks, even those who have their act together. Instead, I think budgets are effective for some people and not for others. I've *never* been able to stick to a budget. Now is the closest I've come, actually. I used Elizabeth Warren's "balanced money formula", and I give myself $200 pocket money every month. These are just broad outlines, I know, but it's the strictest budget I've ever kept! :)
What a great start to your PF Bloggers Showdown Series! Though it is a close match between these two, if I really *had* to pick one I'd go with JD and GRS.
I'm also glad like others to hear that they both feel a budget isn't a 'must have' for working your personal finances. I think that too many people try to get all parts of their life to fit inside these little boxes, and get really frustrated if they can't make them fit. Nice to hear the big guys don't necessarily agree with that!
I have to go with JD as I have never really read any of Matts stuff because when I found his blog, I had already reached my information overload quota.
They both make some interesting points though, I dont budget like most do either. Every expense I have goes out automatically except for groceries and for that I budgeted 200$ and thats the extent of my budget.
What a great layout although I'm bummed that Trent is trailing - he was one of the reasons I started blogging!
They are both incredible people. When you can inspire literally *thousands* of people to get up and do something about their finances it really says a lot! Absolutely brilliant.
Great post and enjoyed reading the side by side comparison.
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