Frugal Underground

Featured frugal blog: Personal Money Tips

I am part of a group called LinkedIn Bloggers, which is, not surprisingly, made up of bloggers who are members of LinkedIn. It’s a great discussion group and I’ve made some good contacts and learned some very useful things through it.

One of the more recent developments within the group is a weekly “blog boost.” The idea is that each week, one members’ blog is randomly chosen, and other members are encouraged to write a post about it. There are several benefits: first, we get to know other members of the group better; second, we (and our readers) are exposed to a blog we might not otherwise find; and third, it increases the profile of the individual blogger and the whole group. I think it’s a great idea. However, this will only be my second time participating.

Why? Well, I believe very firmly in the idea of staying on-topic. I don’t have a lot of time to read blogs, so when I go to one that I know I want to spend time reading, I am disappointed if that time is essentially wasted on a topic that doesn’t interest me. I assume most people feel that way. As brilliant as I think the “blog boost” is, the real question (for me, as an individual blogger) is whether it serves the purpose of my blog and my readers. Most of the randomly selected blogs, thus far, have not had much relevance to my blog topics. Given that fact, I was pretty excited when, this week, the random blog is a personal finance blog.

Let me introduce you to “Personal Money Tips“. This was the first time I’ve come across this blog, but I won’t be surprised if I see it mentioned frequently in the next few months. Why? Well, it’s all about the content. This blog is focused on providing useful, and usable, information to the average person.

Personal finance blogs are an interesting combination of “personal” and “finance”, and each one finds a different balance between the two; some are mostly personal, with stories and “what I learned” lessons; some are mostly finance, with the focus on numbers, concepts, and news. Personal Money Tips falls right smack in the middle. The current “series” is devoted to defining financial terms that will be useful to average people. However, the author also talks about his personal perspective on choices such as tithing.

Interestingly, the author, James, is from Malaysia. He says, “I don’t claim to be an expert in money but am getting better and wiser along the way. As I’m always curious about how someone achieve something, I’m always on the look out on why some strategies work and why [they don't].” I think this natural curiosity is one of the blog’s biggest strengths; its weaknesses, in my opinion, are the sometimes-obtrusive ads and minor punctuation and grammar issues. However, I’ll gladly overlook those qualms in the interest of reading James’ useful articles.