I usually try to keep email interviews to around ten questions so this is first come, first serve. That said, I’ll do my best to try to get Mr. Bledsoe to answer your questions.

The one thing roundups did provide was the necessity for me to read other blogs—a practice I have almost completely gotten away from in recent months. With all that I have on my plate, I have not been able to spend the time necessary to network with my fellow bloggers. I’m going to try to change that. Here’s how:

I have been thinking about roundups and how I can do them differently on AFM that will make them interesting and useful to AFM readers and my fellow bloggers. I decided that something that would be cool to try would be a topical roundup. Each Tuesday, I plan on posting a roundup with all the links focused on one particular topic. For example, one week it could be on 529 plans. The next week it could be on life insurance.

By focusing on one particular topic on a weekly basis, I think the roundup would be more useful. I could even keep a list of the topical roundups on my sidebar for easy reference.

Now, to do this I will need the help of my fellow bloggers. Bloggers who are interested in participating, can email (JLP – at – AllFinancialMatters.com) me a link to their ON TOPIC post in code-ready form (so that I can save time in putting the post together). Posts that aren’t in code-ready form will not be used. The deadline for each week’s roundup submissions will be Sunday at 4pm CST.

The ONLY thing I require from those who’s posts are included in the roundup is a link to that week’s roundup.

Here’s a list of upcoming topics:

March 9th: Income Taxes
March 16th: Creating an Asset Allocation Plan
March 23rd: 529 Plans
March 30th: Strategies for Buying a Home

So, what do you think? AFM readers, do you like this idea? Would it be beneficial to you?

Bloggers, if you like the idea and you’re interested in participating, let me know. The roundups start next week.

AllFinancialMatters.com Fan Page

I just set it up tonight so it’s still a work in progress.

I’m hoping to get 6 million fans by the end of March. Too aggressive?

For one, I added a lovely picture of my wife and me, taken on my brother’s birthday last November. Every year my forehead gets bigger and bigger…lol.

Second, I changed up the books section on the right sidebar. I’ll be using this section to alert you of different books I am reading or perusing. Yes, those are affiliate links.

That’s it for now. I’ll be looking for more ways to kind of spruce up the site. Let me know if you have any suggestions on things you’d like to see.

Oh, and if you’re reading via a feed, PLEASE stop by and visit the REAL blog every so often. I understand the importance of RSS feeds, but I hate them.

Thanks for reading.

The reason the word free is in quotes is that Larry asks that if you attend the webinar and LIKE IT, that you preorder his book, “Your Kids Are Your Own Fault – A Guide for Raising Responsible, Productive Adults,” that will be out in January.

If you’re interested, visit here. If you’re interested in pre-ordering the book through my blog, you can click here.

Congrats to ladam8518. I’ll be sending you an email with instructions on how to claim your book.

There will be more giveaways to come. Stay tuned…

*Affiliate Link

Oh, there’s been good things that have come from blogging. Things like:

• making friends with people from all over the U.S. and world. Some of my long-time readers I count as friends. I’m even friends with a few of them on facebook.

• the outpouring of love and concern for me and my family when my Dad passed away in March 2008.

• helping people understand personal finance. Unfortunately, I could have done better with this one. I started out pretty good with this one but have strayed a bit from this cause for a couple of reasons. The first being that I felt like exhausted a lot of the basic topics and that there just wasn’t that much more to write about. I have ton of helpful topics and posts but you have to dig to find them.

• learning new things from my readers and commenters. I have been blessed to have really smart readers that have taught me a lot about topics that I wasn’t 100% sure about. It makes blogging interesting and humbling.

• read lots of books. Most of them have been good.

• made a little money. Not enough to justify the time spent blogging though…

There have also been lots of frustrations…

• blog maintenance can be a major issue for someone with limited coding skills.

• getting sued for copyright infringement and having to change my blog’s name and URL.

• watching my blog’s traffic and revenue plummet this past year. It was a fun watching my blog’s traffic and revenue grow. Once they started falling, I began to lose interest in blogging. I began to wonder why in the hell I was doing this.

• watching other blogs continually grow while I seemingly sputter along.

• allowing my emotions to get in the way while discussing politically-charged topics. I did enjoy the discussions though.

Like I said, it’s been fun when it wasn’t not fun.

What does the future hold for me and AFM?

I’m not sure. I’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching and contemplating where I want to go next. So far, it’s still foggy.

Anyway, I’m going to celebrate tomorrow by hosting this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance.

Whatever I did, unleashed a nasty, nasty virus that rendered my computer useless. My screen was blue with ominous red writing (full of misspelled words and horrible grammar), telling me that my computer was at risk. They then tried to get me to download some “anitvirus software.”

In an attempt to get rid of the virus…

I ran Spybot Search & Destroy…it didn’t work.

I ran Malwarebytes…it didn’t work.

I ran Windows Defender…it didn’t work.

I did a boot-level scan with Avast…IT DIDN’T WORK!

NOTHING WORKED!

I even had my brother work on it for me. Apparently the virus unleashed different files that disabled various programs (Windows Update and Defender would not update properly). Internet Explorer was hijacked and every place I tried to go was redirected elsewhere.

It was very frustrating.

I finally decided to admit defeat and do a complete format/restore, which took my computer all the way back to the way it was when I bought it over three years ago. I have been reloading software this evening and hope to be back up and running tomorrow morning.

BOTTOM LINE: BE CAREFUL. There’s a lot of crap out there. DON’T CLICK ON ANYTHING—warnings or otherwise. Keep your software up-to-date (easier said than done).

Okay, I’m not sure what Twitter is all about but I figured since nearly every other blogger has a Twitter badge, I had better get one too. So, as you can see on the upper right hand side of this page, there is a brand new fancyTwitter badge (or you can use the one in this post). If you are into Twitter, I’d love it if you followed AFM (Twitter.com/AFMBlog).

Thanks for reading…