Interview with Michael of the It’s Your Money Blog

This is the 8th in a series of interviews HelpYourMoney.com is doing of other personal finance bloggers.

An Interview with Michael of the It’s Your Money Blog:

1. First, can you please introduce yourself and tell us why your started your personal finance blog?

Hello! I’m Michael, the guy behind the “It’s Your Money!” website, as well as the attached and more-standard financial blog Money Musings. I’m 35 years old; I’ve been married to my wonderful Lisa for over 11 years now, and we have an almost-four-year-old daughter who’s an absolute ball o’ fire.

My day job finds me as the Warranty Administrator for a local auto group. It’s not an exciting job, for sure, unless you get excited by collecting warranty dollars from the likes of GM, Nissan, and Mazda.

As for the website and accompanying blog, I started it back in early 2002. That was about the time that Lisa and I found out we were going to be thirtysomething parents, and to be honest, the thought terrified me – on a number of levels. Not least of these was the financial level.

I looked at where we were financially, and I saw a whole lot of bad things. We had credit-card debt, student-loan debt, auto-loan debt – you name it. We were both working at the time, and even without kids, we’d managed to build up squat for savings. The prospect of adding a kid to our household was an ominous one for me. With our finances in such sad shape, and with the likelihood of us losing Lisa’s income for an undetermined period of time (we’d always hoped she could be a Stay At Home Mom once kids came into the picture), I decided I was going to do my best to right our ship. And I was going to do it in public. Thus, “It’s Your Money!” was born.

2. Do you feel you are on the right track to reaching your financial goals and what are they?

Honestly, I feel that for my age, I’m a huge underachiever. I got a late enrollment in the School of Smart Finances. I became really interested in money and investing in 1997, but only came to appreciate the counter-productiveness of debt in 2001 and 2002. As financial goals go, I don’t make my specific goals as public as other bloggers have done. Heck – to start with, my goals probably aren’t as specific as other bloggers’ goals are, anyway!

Given all that, would I say I’m I on the right track?

Yes, but there’s that innate part of me that always wants progress to come faster. I want to get $10k in my Emergency Fund; I have ~$6k now. I want to get back to being debt-free again; I have a $14k car note to pay off. And I want to be able to buy my next car with cash.

3. Do you work in the financial industry? If so, do you want to share where?

Ha! I wish . . . sort of. That industry is all about sales, and I am NOT a salesman.

4. If you had to recommend just one financial related book, what would it be?

Just one? Argh. I suppose I’d go with Joe Dominguez’ Your Money or Your Life. I read that book, and finally, I understood.

5. If you had to recommend just one financial related magazine, what would it be?

Probably Money magazine. It’s my favorite, and it’s gotten significantly better in the last year or so. Still, there are months when I can read through an entire issue and not find a whole lot that makes me say, “Wow – everyone should read this.”

6. If you had to recommend just one or two financial related websites (besides your own and that is not a blog), what would it be?

It sort of depends what you’d be recommending it for, I think. You’d recommend different sites to someone who’s struggling to overcome debt than you would to someone who’s tamed their finances and liquid savings and is now looking for a good education in investing. But if I had to pick two, I’d probably select Bankrate (such great articles on so many topics!) and MSN’s MoneyCentral. I’ve literally spent hours and hours at both places … unintentionally … and both have taught me a great deal about money.

7. What is one of the WORST financial related decisions you ever made?

I was so, so stupid with student loans and – to a lesser degree – credit cards. I learned an immense amount of stuff during my college years, but I also BOUGHT an immense amount of STUPID stuff. (There was that thing about stereo speakers, which my wife so lovingly presented to the ‘net world at large. What an idiot I was. So many times.)

I didn’t go nuts with credit cards, but I didn’t pay attention to my spending with them, either. As I found out, either way can get you in serious trouble. Which is yet another reason why plastic is so financially dangerous.

8. What is one of the BEST financial related decisions you ever made?

The day in February, 2002 when I Got Religion and determined to get us out of non-mortgage debt, and to use my website as a means of self-education and public accountability, everything changed. And shortly thereafter, on the day I began to use Quicken seriously, and to implement spending plans – to diligently track and budget our income and spending – everything changed again. It all got a whole lot easier. And more fun.

9. Do You Trade Individual Stocks and If so recommend your favorite 3 to 5 picks?

Not any longer. I had a blast trading stocks short-term back in the years from 1998 to 2002. I even ran an investment club for a while, which was great for my own education (and pretty good for me financially, too), but it got old when the other club members basically just started throwing in their money and letting me make all the trading decisions.

Trading just takes too much time and energy for me now. I enjoy following stocks and the market, and reading charts, but I just don’t have the time or inclination for that right now. It sounds rather sadistic, I suppose, but there haven’t been many things in my life as fun as was shorting tech stocks in late 2000 and 2001. Maybe again, somewhere down the road . . ..

10. If you could give our readers just one financial related tip, what would it be?

You must learn to respect your money and your time. At its most basic level, personal finance is about trading one for the other (time for money, or money for time). The trades you make are either good or bad – and if you make enough “bad” ones, you’ll find yourself unable to make up the lost ground. That is a horrible position to be in.

11. Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?

The most dangerous money myth I’ve seen, and also the most pervasive one, is that money problems can be solved with “more money” and/or “more time.” “Just give it time,” I hear coworkers tell each other as they relate their financial sob-stories, “and things will take care of themselves.”

I’m not a huge Dr. Phil fan, but when he says that “Money problems aren’t solved with money,” he is dead-on.

If you’re having difficulties with debt and spending in your life, you must change the way you look at so many things: debt, spending, money, life.

Just getting your hands on more money (as if that’s an easy thing to do!) will provide only temporary relief. Just letting time pass, and hoping your problems erase themselves somehow, is a recipe for disaster. You must spend less than you make, certainly, but you must also allocate your available funds for maximum effect. You must change your spending, revamp your beliefs, and upgrade your discipline. Where financial independence is concerned, there is no other way.

>> Visit Michael’s It’s Your Money Blog.