Something amazing has happened in the past eighteen months. While I've been learning about personal finance — and sharing my knowledge with you — Get Rich Slowly has grown from a small site with a couple hundred readers into a real-life business. GRS currently has 35,000 subscribers and generates $5,000 in monthly revenue. It also takes most of my time. This is a blessing and a curse.

The Blessing

As my income from this site has grown, I've been able to achieve my financial goals more quickly. In two weeks, I'll be debt-free except for the mortgage. I have an emergency fund. I'm maxing out my Roth IRA every year. Get Rich Slowly has also put me in touch with a lot of great people: readers, colleagues, and media contacts. Most of all, I've learned tons about personal finance. I'm still a novice when it comes to investing and retirement planning, but I'm a novice who knows how to find the information he needs, and who is willing to share it with others.

The Curse

As wonderful as this site has been to me, it's not without its drawbacks. Chief among these is that it takes time. Kris and I used to do more things together. I used to have spare time to read books and to play games and to hang out with my friends. Though I still do these things whenever possible, more of my time is devoted to providing quality content. Writing Get Rich Slowly is literally like having a second full-time job.

A GRS reader dropped a line last weekend. "I want to invite you to the Diehard Organizational Meeting on Wednesday," he said. "I'm new to the group but obviously we're all believers of value of index funds and John Bogle's investment philosophy."

"Hope to see you there," I replied.

I'm still new to investing, but my reading continues to point in the direction of index funds. (An index fund is a mutual fund designed to track a particular stock market index. FSMKX, for example, attempts to mimic the performance of the S&P 500 index.) Index funds were popularized by John Bogle, the founder and retired CEO of The Vanguard Group. Followers of Bogle's investment philosophy call themselves Bogleheads or Diehards.

I believe that each of us possesses a money blueprint, a mental map that defines our behaviors and attitudes toward money. Our basic blueprints come from our parents. They're altered through our interactions with friends and co-workers. And, of course, our own experiences lead us to modify and add to our money blueprints.

A couple of months ago, I had lunch with my friend Michael. We talked a bit about my money blueprint, then we talked a bit about his. Because our backgrounds are similar, our money blueprints are similar.

"You know what would be interesting," Michael suggested. "You should write your financial autobiography."

Ramit Sethi, author of I Will Teach You to Be Rich, recently shared his thoughts on a New York Times profile of Russ Whitney, a real estate mogul who charges thousands of dollars to learn the secrets of his success. (Whitney helped inspire Casey Serin's foreclosure odyssey. John T. Reed has extensive information on Whitney, not all of it negative.)

Ramit's post prompted me to read the original New York Times article. I began the piece planning to offer my own criticisms of Whitney and his get rich quick schemes. But two-thirds through the article, I realized there were actually two stories here: one about Whitney's brash hucksterism, and another about the people — like Casey Serin — who are so desperate to get rich now that they lose touch with reality.

Midway through the article we meet Tracie Taylor, who is leading Millionaire U, a three-day real estate training course for "advanced" students. Most of the students don't actually know much about real estate, so Taylor is giving them the basics. She's also touting goals, positive thinking, and visualization (all excellent tools when used correctly).

What happens when a half dozen money nerds spend 48 hours together in Clearwater, Florida? Do they romp on the beach? Swim in the ocean? Cook dinner together? Drink copious quantities of alcohol? Stay up until three in the morning, laughing and telling stories? Yes. Yes, they do all of these things.

But they also spend a lot of time talking about money. A lot of time talking about money. (That's what makes them money nerds!)

For the past few days, I've been hanging out with some of my favorite fellow money nerds, including Mr. Money Mustache, Paula Pant (from Afford Anything), Joel (from FI 180), Marla (featured on this Mad Fientist podcast), Ben (who wrote this MMM article about how he gets his cars for free), and the effervescent Heather, who has no blog connections at all — but might someday. Continue reading...

There was a time not so very long ago that I didn't pay much attention to where my money went. I always paid more than the minimum on my credit card, but I still wasn't making significant progress in debt reduction.

For many people, it simply isn't enough to have a tactical plan to pay off debt. We know we should spend less than we earn, but as Drazen Prelec noted in the quote above, people have complex attitudes toward money. When emotion and logic are at odds, emotion usually wins.

In retrospect, there are five phases I went through to change my relationship with money. Note that my process wasn't this linear. In fact it was quite messy, sometimes moving two steps forward and one step back. Continue reading...

While sorting through reader e-mail yesterday morning, I began to detect a subtle recurring theme. People were writing because they had a goal in mind, but their present circumstances seemed to be far from their intended destination. These two points were so far apart, in fact, that my correspondents were afraid to begin moving. Because the distance seemed overwhelming, they were paralyzed.

The importance of action

I used to feel this way, too. I would look at the enormity of my debt — $20,000! $30,000! — and I would stop before I could even begin. This was, of course, completely self-defeating. The most important thing you can do to achieve your financial goals (or any goal, for that matter) is to take action. It matters little which action you take so long as you begin moving in the right direction. You might, for example:

• Start a Roth IRA.
• Open a high-yield savings account.
• Cancel your cable television.
• Read a book about the stock market.
• Learn to bake bread.

Don't be paralyzed because you don't know the best path to take. Pick one good path and follow it. Whatever your financial goal, that first small step is the most important. It leads from inaction to action. It leads to the future.

I asked, as I sometimes do, what personal finance question my friends and Twitter followers had for me. It was a slow day on the internet and the responses flooded in.

My friend Neil asked, "what do you think about real estate?" A broad question, indeed, and I got him to clarify. "You know... should I buy a house? Why not just rent?"

Why not indeed.

Over the years, I've done some foolish things with my finances. I've squandered money on comic books. I've speculated on risky stocks, hoping to make a quick fortune. I've paid a gazillion dollars — or something close to it — in credit-card interest and bank fees. I spent large windfalls on the latest technological gadgets.

No, I'm by no means perfect with money.

One trap I've managed to avoid, though, is the lottery. Playing the lottery has never tempted me. Maybe it's because I know the odds are always overwhelmingly stacked against the player — I know I can't win the lottery, so why bother?

Yesterday we had a great discussion about some of the financial choices I'm facing, but today it's time to look at a decision a GRS reader is trying to make. Catherine wrote to ask if it makes sense to sell her home so that she can become debt-free and have the freedom to pursue a simpler life:

I'm in my mid-forties, self-employed in a high-cost city where I live in a one-bedroom condo that I bought ten years ago. I have about $220,000 in equity in the condo (and about $132,000 left on the mortgage).

My mortgage is very affordable because I refinanced into a 30-year loan last year. Still, housing costs eat up about $1500 a month (and would be $400 more if not for the refinance). If I rented, I'd probably spend about that much for an apartment. As part of my housing costs, I pay over $500 each month toward the homeowners association, and there are a number of expensive building renovations looming on the horizon.