Definitely check out paperback and dvd swap for added savings on books and dvds. You can trade books and dvd that you no longer need and request those items that you do need. The postage is always cheaper then renting or purchasing.

Always buy video games USED!!! Unless you absolutely know you are going to play them. I broke this rule (Nintendo Wii) and rarely play the game system.

http://www.paperbackswap.com/index.php
http://www.swapadvd.com/index.php?f=books

I can help you here: I use a freeware page editor called HTML-Kit. It is ultra customizable, and it has syntax highlighting, document templates, and lots of templates for tags. They also have a pay-for-it version, so be careful when you start downloading.

Now, to brush up on your skills, I would highly recommend Visual Quickstart’s (X)HTML and CSS by Elizabeth Castro. I love it! It taught me 70% of what I know about XHTML. As for CSS, that book doesn’t go into as much detail as I like, so I’ll recommend another: O’Reilley’s CSS Pocket Reference. It is an exhaustive (or dang close to it) reference for CSS. One thing I really like about it is that it not only gives the CSS code and how to use it, it even goes so far as to tell you which browsers support it.

Sorry to say, you may not find these at your library, but the next best thing is a discount bookstore like Half Price Books.

Hope you find this information useful.

2.) Keep your content on the front page. I don’t see the point of a “more inside” feature on a single-author blog. It’s one thing to click inside to view the comments, but I don’t like having to click through to finish reading the article.

3.) You update too frequently for my attention. As long as you keep those posts on the front page for a day or two, it doesn’t really make a difference; but the result is that your output usually exceeds the time I can spend reading. If you updated only once or twice a day, I’d probably read everything you wrote. When you update more often, I skip posts.

None of those are dealbreakers. Your website rocks, and I’ll keep reading whether you heed those comments or not. But you asked for feedback, so there you go. (And keep the ads, by the way. If I’m going to profit from your financial advice, I don’t see why you shouldn’t, too.)

Congratulations on three months’ success.

As a reader, I appreciate sites which have “recent comments” sections. That way even if there haven’t been any recent posts, I can easily see what’s been going on in the comments without hunting through the last 20 posts.

As for my suggestions:

Posting Strategy. I would suggest it be a mix of stuff you find on the web and original postings. It is not only undoubtedly taxing to constantly come up with original material, but fruitless as well. There are so many great resources on the web just waiting to be discovered…why not let your readers in on a few gems you find? As for the # of posts, I selfishly would love a lot, but at the very least, once a day would be great.

Layout — I looks great to me. The green background connotates money which connotates finance which…works. I don’t necessarily think you need to change it.

Integrating the entire website — I agree with you — go slowly. You don’t want to risk burn out or overtaxing yourself. With that in mind, I also suggest you open the blog up to user submissions (which you can approve or deny of course) That way, you are not entirely responsible for posting all the time and in truth, I bet there are readers of this site who have a few great sites to recommend. My current fav for instance? http://www.financialengines.com. It was a great help for me when trying to figure out if my investment strategy was sound and whether or not I was saving enough for retirement.

In any case, I hope this helps. Keep up the good work!

I think lots of posts is a good idea, from the blogger’s point of view, as long as they’re worth reading. Every post is another chance someone somewhere will find what they’re looking for.

One of the things I like is that there IS often something different even if I check a few times during the day. Blogs that aren’t updated a lot get stale. Also, you aren’t just focused on the “invest while you’re young” mantra, which really pisses off us old geezers.

As the site grows you might separate posts on being organized from those on finances, even though there is a lot of overlap.

I see updates through Bloglines, so frequency of posting isn’t a problem for me. I do like regular posts because they act as reminders to me about my own finances. The personal touch you have in your writing is good too. Maybe the Ask MeFi posts could be grouped together to be once a week/fortnight/whatever? similar to how they do it at Lifehacker.com

Wow. I don’t know where how found this site, but when I did, I figured it must be one more of those great sites I had just been missing out on. I feel better now knowing I haven’t missed too much yet!

Here’s my opinion on posting strategy:
I like sites that get updated daily-ish. That way, I can make them part of my routine and check them once a day and not worry about having missed something.

Sites that are updated more than that (such as Digg.com) really make me waste my time because whenever I get bored, I think “Maybe something new is at digg”. Not good for my productivity.