“I do have strong opinions on certain personal finance topics, but I hope that it’s always clear that the underlying philosophy of this site is simple: Do what works for you. There are few “right” answers in personal finance. The best solutions are the ones that help you meet your goals.

You are not held accountable for the advice you give on this site and don’t make money off of that advice. You make money from advertisers, your job is to provide content that will attract readers to the site. I find it ironic that he points out this very fact in his home improvement article in discussing TV producers.

On the subject of home improvement. I do agree that remodeling a house solely for profit is hard to do, especially in this climate. However, depending on your location, these improvements increase your quality of life and can somewhat be recouped when selling your house.

In my case, my home’s value has held up better than my investments and the improvements to my quality of life far outweigh the benefits of money I could have made if I had put this money into savings.

Aside from that, you are the opposite of what Cramer was built up to be (notice I blame the network more than the man) – that is humble.
Forgot to mention good post! Can’t wait to reading the next one!

Aside from that, you are the opposite of what Cramer was built up to be (notice I blame the network more than the man) – that is humble.

Kudos to you for how you handled all this. And thanks for the intro to Bad Money Advice.

The tax rate error was a very easy one to make – most people don’t understand it until they make enough money to be affected by it. As for anyone else catching it – good luck. The error was almost irrelevant to the post so it was very hard to catch.

There are many reasons to remodel, not just to increase your home value. We are remodeling our master bath (new tile shower, radiant heated floors, updated plumbing, adding a tub and increasing the closet size) for a multitude of reasons.

1) Price: between Craigslist, the economy and leveraging my building skills, this will cost us about $4,500 and a few hundred of my hard earned hours.

2) Value 1: The old bathroom was dated, and we wanted a tub.

3) Value 2: We love the home and location, we don’t want to move.

4) Value 3: This will increase the value of the home substantially, although maybe not to keep up with the current slide in value.

5) Value 4: Remodeling is cheaper than skiing and we enjoy it.

To each their own!

The second JD realized a mistake was made, which was within an hour or two after the article was posted if I recall correctly, he both corrected it and apologized for it. I don’t think that is something that he needs called out on.

Mr. JD, you are a class act. You are one of the handful of bloggers who surprises me pretty frequently, and more importantly, who I really sense is trying to constantly challenge himself to do keep doing better and push harder. Keep up the good work.

I also must chime in and mention that I fully disclose in my “About” page that I’m not a financial professional. Here’s a copy of a particular portion. It hasn’t been edited in many months. Well before the article submitted to Get Rich Slowly.

“I am not, however, a financial professional. I’m just your average Joe who got deep into debt and wanted to change something about it. I’ve spent the last several months reading financial books, financial blogs, and getting advice from people who have shown the fruit of their labor. This blog is as much a journey for me as it is for each of you.

I hope you can learn some great ways to get out of debt and become wealthy through this blog, but since I’m not a professional, please don’t take any information here as professional advice. I cannot be held liable for any advice given on this site.”

Great way to take maybe a bit of a negative view and turn it into a positive.

Oh, please. Perhaps the assessment of the situation is right, but the hubris is mostly unbearable and a little unbelievable.

Sorry, but it sounds like you are just trying to side-step responsibility saying “I’m just a blogger!”

You’re not a “blogging professional”, you don’t write about how to build a better blog. You are a “financial professional”, you write about finances.

What others have said is true, “professional” means that you make money at what you are doing, and you clearly do. Cramer’s show has a disclaimer on it as well.

Whenever I get an e-mail from someone who has been to one of my seminars that is just trying to tear me down to make themselves feel more important I hit that magic delete key. It makes me feel better right away.

But what’s the point of the disclaimer, anyway? To discourage people from suing you after following your advice? I doubt anyone’s going to win a lawsuit against you because you recommended index funds and the entire market went down, disclaimer or not.

I think the great thing about the tax mistake in the guest post was by you explaining what marginal tax rates mean, I actually understood it. I never knew how I was taxed before (mainly because it was not interesting enough to me to look up.) So, in correcting a mistake I did not catch, you inadvertently taught me something I should know, which made me want to find out more. All big mistakes have a bigger lesson hidden inside.

Thanks for the great (and interesting) writing!

Maybe you should just write a hundred or so pages of dry jargony prose releasing you of any and all liability, or even responsibility for your content and then include it as your “disclaimer” that everyone must agree to before reading anything you have to say.

Or just keep on doing what you’re doing and let the nit pickers to themselves. I agree you need a disclaimer, but the actual words don’t matter so much because anyone cognizant enough to read it probably figured it out for him/herself.

@Tyler (#6) — as I mentioned in our Jim Cramer discussion yesterday, this is something I’m wrestling with. I know that I’ve in some way become a personal finance voice. Part of me is uncomfortable with that. I’m well aware of these lines that I’m grazing (or crossing).

I don’t consider myself a financial professional, though. Not at all. I consider myself a professional blogger, one who writes about money. I have no problems representing myself as a blogging professional. I’ve been doing online journals for 12 years now. But the financial stuff? I consider myself an interested amateur at best.