Writing Get Rich Slowly is a lot of fun. I used to worry that I’d run out of ideas, but that’s never going to be a problem. It’s true that there’s only a finite number of personal anecdotes I can share (those are my favorite articles to write), but between the stories sent in by readers and those I find on my own, I could sustain ten personal-finance blogs for decades. No joke.

For a long time, my favorite source of ideas was pfblogs.org, which “aggregates” articles from hundreds of personal-finance sites. As new articles are published, pfblogs.org posts titles and excerpts. This lets me find interesting material quickly.

Recently, however, I’ve also begun to use Tip’d. I’ve mentioned Tip’d briefly before, but never given it an in-depth look. Now that it’s been around for a few months, I’ve had a chance to use it, and feel comfortable sharing it as a worthwhile resource.

For the geeks out there, Tip’d operates like a “Digg for money”. One user will submit a story (an article from a blog or website), and other community members will vote the story up or down. The most popular stories are published to the front page. In other words, Tip’d acts as a sort of filter, allowing the most interesting financial stories to rise to the top.

The articles at Tip’d tend toward hard-core personal finance and economics. That is, they’re generally about exchange-traded funds and reverse mortgages and economic stimulus. (There are a lot of articles about economic stimulus.) This will appeal to some and not to others.

Fortunately, it’s possible to screen the stories you see:

  • Only interested in stories about business ownership? Follow the entrepreneurship category.
  • You’re unlikely to ever see much coverage of commodities at Get Rich Slowly. (I know nothing about them and have little interest in learning.) But at Tipd, there’s an entire section of commodities stories.
  • Many GRS readers have asked me to write more about the relationship between money and the environment. These folks should explore the green category at Tip’d.
  • And, of course, Tip’d has a section for plain old personal finance.

I’m glad to add Tip’d to my growing stable of inspirational sources, which also includes pfblogs.org, AskMetafilter, readers suggestions, personal-finance magazines, and books. (Not to mention Real Life!) I think that many of you will find it useful, too.

This article is about Odds and Ends, Tools  Thursday, 5th March 2009 (by J.D. Roth)