Interview with Frugal of the My 1st Million at 33 Blog

This is the 11th in a series of interviews HelpYourMoney.com is doing of other personal finance bloggers.

An Interview with Frugal of the My First Million at 33 Blog:

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

I am an engineer, and I live in California. My wife and I have two small children, aged 4 and 1. We live frugally well within our means.

One of the reasons to start blogging is obviously for the potential of making some money. I have big dreams for my blog like many PF bloggers out there. Of course, pretty soon the reality set in and it’s what other reasons that keep me going. One is that I can be a lot more accountable for my own financial and investing decisions. And I hope to share my investing tips and experiences to hopefully benefit smaller investors. And most important of all, I hope my blog can benefit my relatives and friends too.

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

Yes, I guess. I don’t review my long term goals very frequently because I believe that I have done everything that I can, and that’s what matters the most. My financial goals are to provide my children to go to college without them taking on any college loans, and retire at 60.

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

No. I’m in research & development or R&D.

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

For investing books, I do like “The Four Pillars of Investing” by William Bernstein a lot.

For personal finance books, I don’t really have any. I think personal finance is mostly about saving and investing, and some tax & real estate for sure. No one or no books can do the actual work of living frugally to save money for you. The other topics on investing, tax, and real estate are quite specific and deserve separate books for each topic.

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

I read BusinessWeek and Kiplinger’s personal finance magazine regularly. I like BusinessWeek better.

There are many other good magazines out there, like Forbe’s, SmartMoney, Economist, and Money. All of the six magazines are very good. Some have different scopes than others. Personally, BusinessWeek addresses my needs the best because it keeps me up-to-date on the current topics in the investment world and the state of economy. For people who care less about macro-economics, Kiplinger’s and Money are probably a better choice. Economist is for the most serious investors.

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?

www.prudentbear.com and www.financialsense.com. I get more than 65% of my readings from those sources.

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

I have a post about this. I did not use my parents’ gift money to buy a bigger home when I should have.

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

Taking some salary cut to join a smaller company for a bigger size of lottery ticket, or the so-called stock options. It worked out after several years of hard work and patience.

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

I don’t really trade stocks. I hold most of my stocks from 1 to 3 years. I think the stock market is still in a long term bear market. The only stocks that I dare to recommend are energy and gold stocks like COP, CHK, MRO, GG, NEM, SSRI, etc.

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

For personal finance, save, save, and save. For investing, do NOT be long in $US.

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

Please go check out my website. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed. The content on my site probably has a different focus than most of other finance blogging websites.

>> Visit Frugal’s My 1st Million at 33 Blog.