Well, the Gary Coleman thing made it to Reddit, which is nice, but it's playing havoc with things around here. If pages won't load for you, just refresh and they should be there after a click or two.

Meanwhile, here's a story I'd post to the blog if I had time:

Pizza Hut waitress receives $10,000 tip -- there are a number of little personal finance things in there, but mostly it's just a nice story.

Y'all have fun while I'm in London, Dublin, and New York. I probably won't be able to check in here very often, though I'll try to help JerichoHill keep the blog flowing smoothly. (Three weeks of guest posts are ready to go...)

Take care!

ill do mybest to not mess up!

Ah, I was wondering what the problems were with the blog yesterday.

Have a fun, safe trip!

The problems yesterday were unrelated to the change of power round

Trust me, theyre going to be worse

kidding...

Woot! Dad's away...lets PARTY!!!

Yeahhhhh First thing Im gonna do is approve all SPAM COMMENTS

But only if you can relate SPAM to personal finance

I can probably come up with some cheap meal ideas using spam!

I edited JD's first guest post from free-money finance a bit to draw out that it was a guest post since it got some folks really riled up. I dont know why, but you can read my small little edit and let me know if i missed something.

If you have feedback, leave it here

You did a good thing to clear that up. Initially I could only read the first part because it made my skin crawl and being preached at like that on what is supposed to be a personal finance blog made me want to vomit. I made myself go back and scan the whole thing and it just made me angrier. If I'd thought those were JD's words I most likely would have stopped reading his blog and probably stopped posting here. I have zero desire to be associated with a blog/forum where it is SOP to preach about religion like this. Honestly, I'm pretty disappointed that he even allowed that as a guest post. My guess is that he alienated more than a few readers today by letting that go up and I'd be shocked if he didn't get a few nasty e-mails that people weren't comfortable posting in comments. I'd also be interested to see if his subscription stats dipped. Stephen, you'd probably be doing him a favor to e-mail some of the earlier commentators to remind them that this was a guest post and doesn't necessarily reflect JDs views. Odds are they were so POd that they left and never came back to notice that it was a guest post.

If FMF want's to preach at his readers about his theories on religion and money that's fine but he should do it on his own blog where people expect and appreciate that. He should not use other blogs as a pulpit for his sermon. I've never noticed it on his posts before, probably because I usually just scan titles in my blog reader. But I unsubscribed from his feed today based on this post. IMO (and apparently many others), this topic has no place on a personal finance blog. I think it's arrogant, offensive and disrespectful. I'm disappointed and, frankly, disgusted that this post was made. I think JD is right to keep his religious beliefs off of his blog and hopefully he'll re-think letting stuff like this on in the future.

I think these posters said it well:

I think the edit was good (although to be fair I didn't see it before the changes). I seem to recall on a previous guest post on GRS some of the commentators didn't realise that it was a guest post so it probably won't hurt to stress that more strongly in future.

I seemed to take away a different message from most of the commentors - I had to reread the post to see what I'd missed and I was surprised at the level of hostility towards the post.

I knew what to expect from the guest post as I read FMF's blog anyway and I'm a non-believer interested in religion nearly as much as personal finance. I thought that it was well-written and made an effort (clearly not successful ) to be not offend people. Besides which, in the UK, as a whole we are incredibly apathetic about religion, it doesn't form part of the political or social landscape in any major way, so it doesn't press the same buttons for me I guess.

It seemed to me that most of the comments were simply knee jerk anti religion rather than actually reading the post.

I'm agnostic, but wasn't offended at all. First of all, I thought it was extremely clear that this was a guest post, and especially for subscribers, who knew guest posts were coming up for a while now.

Secondly, I thought the post did a decent job of saying "i'm Christian, i don't know much about other religions, but for those of you who say that religion has no impact on finance, here's what Christianity has to say."

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it didn't come off as preachy to me at all. I guess others saw it in a different light.

I hadn't read the post until just now. I also regularly read FMF's blog and considering the amount of religious rhetoric I get from my family, I have a pretty high tolerance for it. FMF's post only relies on Christian scripture, but he makes the argument that finance can be pro-religion without necessarily choosing one. I see his point, but I'll probably continue to manage my finances without conscious regard for any specific faith.

In other words, I shrug & move on.

I believe a whole lot of people over-reacted. Now, you and I and JD have the opinion that personal finance should be discussed without religious overtones. However, I think what JD was going for was a counter-viewpoint, and a dialogue and reasoned debate on that issue. Certainly that did not occur, and I was a little disappointed with the rush to judge and damn JD or FMF for this. I personally feel the reaction was way overblown and I watched to go from its intended topic (Does religion play an important role in personal finance?) to a debate between aethiests and christians (we'll forget that there are other religions...)

I listen to Dave Ramsey all the time. I've yet to chuck the radio out when he preaches. I just turn down the volume.


I will be adding a disclaimer to make this very point on any potentially controversial topics (mainly, if they are included in the 2008 election topics, Im putting a disclaimer up)

Here's the problem. FMF didn't ask the question "Does religion play a part". He stated as fact that it does. THAT is what offended me. When you state something as fact and use what many consider to be a work of fiction to back up your "fact" then you can't be surprised that people start attacking. FMF was stating his opinion as fact when his opinion has ZERO truth in my (and many others) world. He's allowed to have his opinion but he shouldn't be allowed to present his opinion is fact. Especially not on someone else's blog. Now, had he actually ASKED THE QUESTION then there might have been discussion rather than posts tearing apart and defending his "facts."

I'm also VERY less than impressed about the fact that FMF started a shit-storm on someone else's blog and hasn't been back to do any damage control or take responsibility for the post even though he said he'd be checking back in. I think that's a pretty shitty thing to do.

As far as Ramsey goes, I can't listen to him and to be honest, people who spout his schtick tend to drop a bit in my eyes. Same with the people who regurgitate Kiyosaki or any other guru, real or fake. I'm a fan of independent thought and I find that people who just spout other people's words tend to do so because they've memorized them because they think it's "right" and not because they've actually sat down to think about why they're true and how to take them into their own knowledge base and make them their own.

I'm not going to lose any sleep over it, or picket JD's house, but I really thought it was a poorly written post more than anything else (as I think I commented over there). The title alone was presumptive and asking for people to get their backs up. It could have been a really interesting article if he'd emailed a few Muslim/Jewish/Atheist/lapsed/whatever bloggers and friends to get their take on the subject, or written about values, but the whole tone was just off in my opinion, and the half-assed effort to include "other religions" didn't help. And I'm also sympathetic to those who don't want religious rhetoric invading their spaces - people get possessive of their favourite blogs, that's a good thing for the writers I would think.