Subscriber Swap Saturday – Interview With No Debt Plan

By Pinyo, on May 23, 2009

No Debt Plan is about getting and staying out of debt with a plan. Kevin, the author, is passionate about budgeting, saving for the future, and using goals to reach financial freedom. You can subscribe to his blog by RSS or email.

This interview is part of a new feature he’s developed called Subscriber Swap Saturday. The basic idea is to get the subscribers of one blog to subscribe to the other blog for at least a week, just to try it out. After a week if you don’t find that blogger’s content enticing, drop it. The hope is that over time you will find several writers that you weren’t familiar with who provide meaningful content to you. You can read more about Subscriber Swap Saturday at his get out of debt blog, as well as his interview with me.

Interview with Kevin of No Debt Plan

The following is a short interview of Kevin of No Debt Plan.

[Pinyo] 1. Can you tell us a little bit about who you are and your blog, No Debt Plan?

[Kevin] I’m just an average guy with a passion for budgeting, getting people out of debt, and investing for the future. I’m a spreadsheet geek (that’s how I do my budget) and kind of a numbers guy although I don’t feel like I excelled at math in school. I am finishing up my MBA in August of this year, I’m happily married, and we’ve had a dog about a year now.

I write from my own personal experiences and perspective. I’m not an expert. I’m not a Certified Financial Planner … although I strive to gain that certification in the future. I’m just an average guy, but I’d like to think I’m doing exceedingly well for my age. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth and I’ve learned as we go along. We’ve made mistakes — I talk about them. We’ve had successes — I talk about them.

I write about a variety of topics, too. It isn’t just about getting out of debt, or just saving and investing. I try to mix in economic stuff and some random stories to keep it interesting. You can only read — and write! — “15 ways to make cheap dinners” before you go crazy. I try to mix it up.

[Pinyo] 2. How and why did you get started in launching a personal finance blog?

I started writing No Debt Plan back in January 2008. I was inspired by several other personal finance blogs (like Get Rich Slowly) and had tried blogging in the past. My blogging efforts were wasted before No Debt Plan because I wasn’t committed. I didn’t have a schedule. I wasn’t taking it seriously.

With No Debt Plan I told myself I would try this blogging thing for a year. One year of consistent posting and I figured I would either be a monumental failure, or I would start making money (while also having formed a blogging habit). I’m not making a ton of money, but the habit is there and I’m writing on almost a daily basis now.

[Pinyo] 3. One of your goals is to become a full time blogger. Do you have a plan that you can share?

Right now I feel like I’m shooting from the hip. Everyone is busy and I’m no exception. My MBA has taken a lot of time during the week on top of maintaining my job, being a good husband (and dog owner), things like that. I haven’t set out a strict plan just yet.

For now I plan to continue pressing forward and writing interesting articles on a daily basis. I plan to start networking better with other bloggers and discovering ways to interact better with the mainstream media. After I finish my MBA I plan to sit down and write out a plan and get advice from other bloggers (like yourself) on best practices.

If I ever get to the point where I’m earning my current full-time income I don’t think I would quit my day job immediately. I would want to build up a significant amount of savings before making any serious life changes like that. After that I would definitely consider going full-time.

[Pinyo] 4. What have you learned so far that you wish you knew when you first started out — both in term of blogging and personal finance?

Blogging: I’ve learned a lot about Search Engine Optimization that I wish I had known. I wish I had better ad optimization when I first started. All kinds of income lessons, especially when dealing with affiliate marketing.

Personal finance: I’ve learned that often the most simple advice is the best advice. Even if other advice makes more financial sense it can overwhelm the person that needs help. I’ve also learned about big wins (Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You to Be Rich talks about a lot) — spending 30 minutes negotiating or changing your car insurance to save $100 rather than having to make consistent changes every day to save 50 cents.

[Pinyo] 5. You said you believe that American education system does an inadequate job of preparing its citizens on money. What do you think we should do to fix this problem?

At the end of the day the responsibility lies on parents to teach the next generation about personal finance. The only problem is the parents don’t know what they’re doing either. I’m not sure what the answer is… I do know I don’t think government intervention will do much. It has to be a societal change that occurs from the ground up. I think this is where bloggers can be a huge help — if people will listen to us. I’m hoping we can integrate better with the “big dogs” of social media.

[Pinyo] 6. What are your favorite finance books and non-finance books?

Non-finance: The Bible (not that I’ve read it cover to cover), parts of Never Eat Alone (about networking), and 1,001 Ways to Be Romantic — hey, everyone needs some inspiration some times

Finance: To be honest I haven’t read that many pure finance books. I read more in the personal finance magazine and blogosphere. I would count Good to Great as a finance book because it talks about the stock returns of great companies.

[Pinyo] 7. Who are your favorite financial gurus?

I like Dave Ramsey although I disagree on his credit card stance. But I’m not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The rest of his stuff is solid and have helped a lot of people.

Well, that’s all folks. I hope you enjoyed learning a bit more about Kevin and please be sure to visit his blog, No Debt Plan. Lastly, I’d like to thank you Kevin for inviting me to participate in his Subscriber Swab Saturday series.

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Pinyo is the brain behind Moolanomy personal finance blog and a few other web sites. If you like this article, please subscribe for free daily email updates.

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