Soon after I started Get Rich Slowly, a reporter from The Wall Street Journal called for an interview. I was a terrible subject. I was wary of him. I thought he was out to trip me up, to find some secret flaw. Looking back, all I did was make the poor guy’s job difficult.

I’m still not completely comfortable with interviews, but I’m getting better. I’ve even participated in four or five podcasts now, the latest of which went live this afternoon. Duff McDuffee spoke with me about personal finance for the Precision Change podcast. McDuffee asked some great questions — I did my best to offer some good answers!

(If you listen to this interview, you have to imagine me fending off the unwelcome advances of two cats, both of whom were vying for the prime spot in the center of my lap while I was trying to talk about money.)


The battle looked something like this, but I had a phone in my hand.

Here are a couple of other stories about personal finance that have caught my eye recently:

First, Ginger at Girls Just Wanna Have Funds has a nice piece offering 8 tips for the newly independent. She writes, “For those of you that are graduating high school, college or even graduate school, here are 8 frugal and cost cutting tips to take into consideration when spreading your wings.” She covers things like finding an apartment, paying bills, and the relationship between salary and cost of living. Good stuff.

No Credit Needed recently wrote about getting the entire family involved with managing finances. I’ve talked with many people who struggle to get their spouse or children on the same page with money. NCN explains how he and his family work together toward common goals. (He also talks about the joys of saving for a big purchase.)

Finally — and I know this is going to be very dry for some of you — the Ludwig von Mises Institute has excerpted a passage from economist Henry Hazlitt’s 1964 book, What You Should Know About Inflation. I have no background in economics, but still found this fascinating.