I’ll catch you up on the life of JLP.

On August 8th, my wife and I went to see Chris Isaak in concert. AWESOME SHOW! If you get a chance to see him, GO! You will not be disappointed.

Then, Sunday night my cousin and his three daughters came into town for a visit. We were priveledged to be able to take him and his daughters to the beach for the first time ever. It was cool to watch their responses when they looked at the Gulf for the first time. We spent one day down in Galveston and another afternoon in Houston.

They left Thursday morning.

Friday was my wife’s and my anniversary. SIXTEEN YEARS! Wow! I bought her one of those electronic picture frames and she got me Season 2 of The Sopranos*. Any Sopranos fans out there? I think it is an awesome series.

Now I’m behind on everything so it will take me a few days to catch up.

The kids start back to school next week. The year is flying by.

*Affiliate LInk

• Calculated Risk

• The Conscience of a Liberal (sounds like one of my favorites…lol)

• Economist’s View

• Grasping Reality with Both Hands

• Greg Mankiw (we used one of his text books back in college)

• Marginal Revolution (I used to read this blog years ago but quit reading for some reason)

• The Baseline Scenario

• EconomistMom

• Econbrowser

• Real Time Economics

To their list of bloggers, I would also like to add the writings of Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams.

If you want to take part in next week’s roundup on AFM, I need the following:

1. A paragraph or so stating WHAT YOU THINK MAKES A GOOD EMPLOYEE.

2. Email your submission to me (JLP – at – AllFinancialMatters.com) with What Makes a Good Employee Roundup in the subject line.

3. Be sure to include your blog’s URL and your blogging name.

I’ll then assemble all the responses (or at least the ones that I think are worth posting) and post them next Monday (July 13, 2009) along with a link to your blog.

Have a great week!

I have refrained from saying anything on my blog but I can’t for the life of me figure out where my traffic has gone.

Look at this trend:

Everything was okay until around January of this year when my blog got hacked. I’m wondering if my traffic has anything to do with that? I don’t know. I have asked several friends who know a great deal more about this stuff than I do and none of them really had any answers.

All I know is that I’m back to levels from two years ago. That shouldn’t be happening.

Perhaps I’ve lost my edge. That may be true but my missing numbers seem to be from lost google search results. My adsense income is down tremendously too. The confusing part is that I am still getting google traffic. I would think if google was the problem, then my google search traffic would be almost nil.

It’s troubling because I look around me and see other bloggers going like gangbusters. And yet, here I sit, stagnating.

All this has me scratching my head and frustrated pretty much most of the time. I’m not sure I want to keep blogging if things aren’t growing.

Maybe it’s time I move on… If things don’t turn around or I don’t get this figured out, I may just concentrate my efforts elsewhere.

Thanks!

If I am the winner I would give thanks to our almighty god first and then my friends Publishers Clearing House for my blessing. It doesn’t matter what I receive after taxes. I would then pay off all my debt, and with great joy and pride move out of my apartment into my beautiful blessing home. (House)

Thank you Lord for all the gifts you have given me throuout my 56 years….Please continually direct my path and be with me through conflicts and the great God days….

Well I pretend that I have already won and make plans as such. It makes dealing with day to day like much easier when it is so hard to get by with a family. I would take 3750 a week over nothing anyday.

My husband and I are retired, love camping and meeting folks at campgrounds…we travel within 100 miles of our home since fuel is so high, would love to have extra money to pay off mortgage and help others that are in need…Thanks for your consideration of us…Millie

Pretty sad if you ask me…

I have some business to take care of this morning but hope to be back to bloggin this afternoon. I know you are all just waiting to see what JLP’s gonna post next…lol.

There’s lots of stuff to write about.

1. Forecasters are predicting a historic drop in retail sales for 2009.

2. Democrats are trying to lower economic expectations. Look, I know the economy stinks. I just think it’s funny how they didn’t do this during the election.

3. The Finance Buff has a not-so-favorable review of Phil Town’s book, “Rule #1.” The book has been out a long time. I’m only mentioning this review because I have always thought Phil Town was full of…

4. WIN a copy of Kay Bell’s book.

5. Wanna lose a lot of money really quickly? The Digerati Life shows how trading stocks is a great way to lose money.

6. Here are 6 ways to motivate yourself.

7. Lazy Man has some ways to save money on utilitities. My house is nearly 50-years old. It would take a sizeable investment to make it energy-efficient.

8. Has tipping gotten way out of hand? Weigh in with your opinion.

9. Meg talks about her refinancing.

10. Lastly, here are 5 ways to take advantage of deflation.

I became aware of this blog only recently but I like what I have read so far and I think you will too.

For those of you interested in selling stuff on eBay, you’ll want to check out his eBay post.

NOTE: If you have a blog that you would like to be considered for Blog of the Week, send me an email. Please be sure to put “Blog of the Week” in the subject line. I’ll be happy to consider any nominations.