My Money Shrugged Turns 1 Year Today!

My Money Shrugged turns 1 today! I want to thank everyone who has checked out the site and who continues to come back daily, weekly or monthly! It is the viewers of this site that keep me posting things I find and other thoughts and ideas I have.

This site started out as a personal finance blog and has evolved into a personal finance/political blog. I know I probably lost a lot of viewers when I started posting about government intervention...*shrugged*. When I started looking at my finances and how I wanted to always be a saver and be prepared for the future, I realized there are so many outside factors that influence my capital. I also dove deeper into economics and now see how government intervention can strongly decrease not only mine but others people's saving through taxation, inflation, and a loss of our freedoms.

I only other thing I would say, is that I would love to start more of a community here, if you feel like commenting on anything I post please do and we can start a conversation so we can learn and exchange ideas and solution that could help with our personal finances and most importantly our freedom.

Thanks again for everyone who reads and send out my links to friends/family/twitter/etc...

“Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.” - Thomas Jefferson

100TH Post!

Wow, what can I say? I never thought I would make it this far and definitely not this fast. When I started this blog I wasn't sure how much and at what frequency I would post. It all started with an idea to keep myself in check financially and keep a running blog of my progress. As I started writing some post about some of my experiences with personal finance, it slowly started to evolve into how government interference can effect our finances. This got me researching about economics, and how this effects our lives, our money and our freedoms. It has now transformed into a study guide/diary for economics, personal finances and my beliefs.

I don't post as much on personal finance based on there are tons of PF bloggers that strictly cover that, and I am not going to bring that much new stuff to the table. If I come across a good article or an experience I will write about it, but you end up seeing a lot of bloggers write about the same things. Only a few truly bringing unique and interesting ideas and writings to their blogs. If you have been reading this blog for a while you will know I have cut back slightly on my writing because I just don't have the time. Maintaining a blog is a full time job in itself, and I have a regular job so I only get a certain amount of time everyday on this blog. I will mostly post stuff that I find relevant like videos, articles, comics, images, etc...that I learn from and hopefully you can learn from as well.

A big thank you to the readers of my blog, for without you I wouldn't have the motivation to post as often as I do. I appreciate everyone that comments on my posts, even if we disagree. Matter of fact, I enjoy someone else's perspective, I truly look at both sides and I don't think I know everything, but form my opinions from hearing both sides.

I want to thank everyone who has My Money Shrugged in their blogrolls, it really mean so much to me and I am honored that people would recommend my blog to their readers.

Last I want to make this blog a community where people can gather information and learn how to create wealth and what responsibilities we as Americans have to run our country. We cannot allow government bureaucrats, lobbyist, big corporations and the Fed control us while destroying our wealth. So if you ever have a link, idea, or tip please send my way. If you ever have desire to write a guest post, please reach out and contact me and please keep spreading the word of this blog and invite more people to come learn while this blog continues to grow, change, evolve into a resource for everyday people to learn about finances and economics.

Thanks from MMS

Ad Sense Disabled

This morning I was about to write my post when I received a email from google saying my ad sense was suspended. I am not sure, but I believe that some readers might be clicking on number of ads and Google feels it is within there invalid clicks and impressions outlined in the ad sense privacy policy. I have requested to reinstate my ad sense for my site even though it might not happen or take a few months. In the meantime I will continue to blog and hope you enjoy the ad free blog! If my account gets reinstated please only click on ads that you are interested in and not for any other reasons.

Just to keep everyone updated, I now have 2 major issues with blogger/google. Currently my web domain www.mymoneyshrugged.com is lost in the matrix(seriously). I understand the internet and understand mostly how everything works, as I work in the industry. I cannot figure out though why blogger says that this website is already hosted at another address. I spend close to 20+ hours going through google help and godaddy where I registered the name. There is no hope for getting my custom domain name at the moment. Now I have this ad sense issue which is seems very vague and seems like I am at the mercy of google to decide if I should get reinstated. Hopefully they will be able to fix the ad sense issue.

Anyways, thanks to everyone for still be loyal readers and supporters of My Money Shrugged! Please spread the word to friends, family, co-workers, etc...that I am blogging about personal finance and government intervention.

My Money Shrugged has a new tagline!

So I have signed up for the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge over at Problogger. I am a little late starting this because of vacation, but one thing that stood out to me is having a tagline for your blog. I have always known what my blog was about when I started but never thought about writing a tagline for people who didn't feel like reading the about me section of my blog. You might have recognized in the header of my blog but if you haven't, the tagline is -

Holding a budget in punishment for waging war against debt

This comes from the title of my blog My Money Shrugged which was inspired by my reading of Atlas Shrugged.  The novel's title is a reference to the mythical Greek titan Atlas, who in the novel is said to hold the weight of the world on his shoulders (as recorded in Hesiod's Theogony, Atlas holds the sky in punishement for waging war against Zeus). So there you see the inspiration for the title and the tagline for this blog. To find out more about this blog read here.

Also I have sign up for twitter so if you would like to follow me @ twitter.com/mymoneyshrugged 

The Weekly Round Up

J. Money is charging himself $1.00 for every complaint
MyMoneyBlog as a great write-up for first time home buyers
Nickel ask the question "why don't young people care about finances?"
Golguru has something to say about American's saving their money

About My Money Shrugged

My Money Shrugged is a journey with my personal finances, life and my future. I am a 31 year old living in North Carolina. The name is inspired by a book I am currently reading "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. This blog is where personal fiance meets Atlas Shrugged. The theme of Atlas Shrugged is the role of the mind in man's life and, consequently, presentation of a new morality: the morality of rational self-interest. My self interest in creating this blog is my personal finances and so it is a nod to the book.

I recently moved from Los Angeles to the east coast to start a better life for myself. Not that I wasn't having fun or anything, but I was not able to live within my means and was constantly living pay check to paycheck. I was investing in a 401k, employee stock option plan, and whatever was left over I was adding to my Roth IRA but was never able to save up and emergency fund or for anything else.

Once I moved back east I finally for the first time, had money and had no idea what to do with it. First thing I decided to do was to build a budget. Unfortunately for me I had never really created one so I searched and found a ton of personal finance blogs. With a little research I found people blogging about the same situation that I was in. I created a detailed budget and was amazed at how much I could save and really wouldn't have to sacrifice that much with the way I live. (I could have saved money in LA if I had just sat down and create a budget for myself). And this is how I got into the whole PF blogging and been throwing around the idea of starting my own blog to keep me on track with my spending and budgeting.

Some of my goals and some of the purpose of creating this blog is to track and keep myself honest about my personal finances and to track my progress of one day owning a house that is affordable. I have been double timing it to save up an emergency fund that would last me 6 months if something was to happen in this economy. I have also been working to max out my Roth IRA for the first time this year and along all this saving up as much as I can for a 20% down payment for a house.

Some of my personal interests are GOD, my relationship with my awesome girlfriend and family, surfing, cooking, any sports, art, advertising, and music, all which inspire me everyday that I am blessed to be here!

I can promise you that I don't know everything about finances and please take my words only as inspiration, motivation or anything else that might help with your own personal situation.

Please feel free to leave comments and I would love everyone's opinions on the way I am handling my finances because after all this is here ONLY to keep you and me motivated and to keep my finances in check.

I am sure you will find multiple spelling mistakes and not very good english so please skip the comments unless you just want to rant.