Liebster Nomination x2 4
Well this was certainly a surprise, Kirsten at Indebted Mom and No More Waffles both nominated me for the Liebster Award. So from my understanding, this is kind of like a networking award to promote new bloggers, but hey I’ll take what I can get! There is no lack of appreciation here, because I am grateful that other bloggers are enjoying what I am doing here. The problem for me is to find 5 NEW blogs that I follow that appear to have not received this award to-date.
Anyways, I feel that this is a great way to provide more information about myself to my readers as well as connect with other bloggers in the community, so that is why I decided to go ahead and do a post about the award. With that said, I have 10 questions to cover, so I better get to work!
Questions from Kirtsen @ Indebtedmom
1.) What is the best advice you have been given/read since starting your blog?
I think that would goto Gretchen at retired by forty blog. She gave me an extremely detailed list of things to do to improve my sites traffic and a daily check list. I kind of had a general idea of things to do, I just didn’t really know how well a strong social media presence can help bring in traffic.
2.) What is your favorite book?
For some reason, both question # 2’s are the hardest for me… To be honest, I am not a huge fiction reader. So I will probably have to go with something lame like The Millionaire Next Door, because this book really tells you that to be rich you probably shouldn’t be appearing rich, but really there is more to life than money (*SHOCKER ALERT! Personal Finance Blogger saying there is more to life than money!*)
3.) What is the one food you can’t say no to?
This one has to be pizza… which I have only said no to once as I had just eaten, but I was highly tempted to still grab a slice. Some was offered to me yesterday and I didn’t say no even though I made pizza for dinner yesterday too! (And left overs today, yum!)
4.) Who has been your biggest supporter through your debt repayment (or blogging) journey and why?
Debt repayment has to goto the wifey, Mrs. Frankly Frugal Finance. She puts up with my personality quirks and my desire for us to obtain financial freedom and generally agrees with what we do. She just isn’t as enthusiastic as I am.
Blog-wise, probably Dividend Mantra, he is always quick to respond to questions and is very helpful in general. I mean, he has no real stake in helping out a new blogger get started, but he takes the time to give advice regardless.
5.) Do you keep your Cheese Whiz in the fridge or in the cupboard after you’ve opened it?
I am like Kirsten who solves this problem by not consuming Cheese Whiz. But I do store syrup in the cupboard instead of in the fridge. Which I always thought was normal from my parents, but it seems like everyone else likes to refrigerate it. I don’t know why, but I don’t like putting cold syrup on my hot pancakes (or waffles).
Speakings of Waffles, Questions from No More Waffles:
1.) When is the last time you ate a waffle? (there we are with the waffles again)
Proof.
Hmmm… it was 3 or 4 weekends ago. Unfortunately I don’t have the exact date, but I do have an awesome waffle maker, it is just annoying to clean so I don’t use it super often.
2.) Who is your personal hero?
Wow… yea how do you pick someone for this one? I would probably have to say my dad, because he has helped me strive to be better.
3.) What is your personal finance philosophy in (in 10 words or less)?
Achieve financial independence through a balanced approach.
4.) What has been your favorite blog post so far?
I’m with No More Waffles on this one for the “massive archives”. Let’s see… I think my best one so far is So I Won the Lottery, but best page views has to goto July Stock Purchases due to it being linked from one of Dividend Mantra‘s weekend reading posts.
5.) What is your favorite type of beer (both type and brand)?
I am actually not a big beer drinker, I prefer sweeter drinks like Moscato Wine or Mike’s lemonades (lately I have been fermenting juices). With that said, the best beer I have had was a seasonal beer at 57 Brew Pub & Bistro, was a Vanilla Porter beer, no brand name attached because they brew their own beer there. (Just missing they’re in that sentence)
My Nominations
Well, as I said this part was going to be difficult to find some blogs that are new that haven’t been nominated (at least that I can tell).
1.) Dear Dividend, he has been blogging since May of this year and puts out some great content concerning Dividend Stocks.
2.) DivHut has been blogging since April and puts some perspective to you use products from dividend companies in everyday like as well as analysis of companies.
3.) Living At Home, because what other blogger will somehow work on a side-gig for video game collectors? He is also the newest blogger on this list having started in June.
4.) Happy Healthy Wealthy Girl, a good mix between topics and stock investing, also has a page on some healthy snacks (which I should look at more closely, I got a few pounds to lose). She has also started this blog back in April.
And from here I think I am out of new bloggers that are putting out consistent content that I think have not been selected so far. So even though this last blogger started early this year, he doesn’t seem to fit what falls into the new blogger criteria, but whatever.
5.) Impersonal Finance, I really like what Ryan is doing with the content here, lots of insightful and interesting posts.
There are other blogs that I have been visiting regularly, but I think that they have all been nominated so I won’t bombard them with extra questions to answer knowingly.
Speaking of questions, I get to choose 5 for these bloggers! Here we go:
1.) What is your favorite color?
2.) What is your quest?
3.) Do you know what the first two questions are in reference to?
4.) What is your favorite blog post to date?
5.) Do you have any big travel plans once reaching financial independence?
So there you have it, questions answered, new questions, fun stuff. If you haven’t checked out any of the blogs mentioned, I would recommend doing so. Plenty to read and learn!
Update: I received a new nomination from Debt Discipline and from Million Dollar Ninja, the answers to their questions are below from them in the order listed (aka Debt Discipline’s Q’s first):
1.) What was the biggest amount of debt you were ever in?
Just under $133,000 in December of 2013. That is right after getting the mortgage and just before student loan repayment began, so it was the highest point for sure.
2.) What’s your goal with your blog?
My goal with my blog is to utilize it to share my story towards financial independence and to hold myself accountable during the process. On a side not, I do hope in a few years it may be able to generate a little cash to at least pay for itself and maybe help with my financial goals, but that is more long-term.
3.) When did you first become financially literate?
I guess I have always been a bit of a saver and understood some things about finance. In fact when I transferred from community college to a 4-year undergrad program I did so with $11,000 in savings and no debt. All of the student loans that are on my balance sheet are from the wife’s education and the car loan was my bad… I could have potentially avoided it if I wasn’t trying so hard to prepay down her non-subsidized loans and kept more of an emergency fund. But anyways, only recently I am learning about investing. That is a piece that is still a work in progress.
4.) What’s your dream job?
That is a good question that I do not know the answer to. I think that when I reach financial independence I will do a search for my dream job. It would have to be some sort of part time gig that I highly enjoy and would feel rewarding. It would also need to be flexible so that I can travel when I desire as well.
5.) Optional Create your own question – did not create my own, you will have to settle for the 15 other questions I answered 
1. What made you start your blog?
Main reason is accountability. By putting everything out there it gives me an extra incentive not to waste money :).
2. Do you have any special talents?
Besides being able to walk into inanimate objects and leap over small rocks in a single bound? Not much. I do hope to one day do some sort of martial arts again. I enjoyed Tae Kwon Do as a kid and depending on my future kid’s interests’ maybe that would be a good time to start it up again.
3. What is your dream job/career?
think I had this same question from Debt Discipline. Basically that is something I can have the joy of finding when I am financially independent. I would say it will have to involved working with people because I enjoy helping people. I am kind of intrigued by some bloggers doing personal finance coaching. That would be something high on my to try list.
4. If you were to start a band, what kind of music would you play?
Well that is an easy one. I am a big fan of 90′s rock so some sort of rock or grudge type band.
5. Have you read any good books lately that you would recommend? (It doesn’t have to be personal finance related)
Well in the past year I have read a decent amount of books (for me at least). I think the Millionaire Next Door would be at the top of my list to recommend.
Congratulations on the nomination, Kipp! You’re doing a great job. Keep up the good work with your blog!
Thanks Addison! I did look at your site to nominate you but it looked like you started blogging back in 2013, not sure how “new” the nominees needed to be (I haven’t found a newer blog than mine yet, so that wouldn’t work :).
And thanks for the encouragement, I try to have some good relevant information that others can maybe learn from.
Blue… Oh no, yello-ooooooow! (Monty Python!)
Great nominations, Kipp! Hadn’t seen Living at home, but looks very promising. I’m a video game collector myself, so I can definitely relate to him.
Also, Dividend Mantra is one of the biggest reasons I started my financial independence journey too. Excellent tips and Jason is a great guy!
Have a great weekend,
NMW
Hehe you gave away the answer to the nominees! Oh well, I think most would have gotten it anyway :).
Yea Jason seems to go out of his way to help and provide information while having such a large blog. It is pretty amazing when you think about it.
Congratulations on your Liebster Liebster. I hear an echo!
I agree, Jason is a great blogger. Since I’m trying to learn to manage my investment portfolio, I do frequent a lot of these same blogs to learn some stuff.
Getting linked to Jason’s blog is really cool, I was linked once as well. Now if I could only get him to read my blog regularly. hee hee
Yea, I really enjoy his blog and the detail he pours into his posts. I was looking at the nominations again to congratulate you and for some reason I thought you were nominated before but I don’t see it now.
Hi Kipp
Yes, I’ve been nominated before and was recently nominated again by Islands of Investing and Even Steven. It certainly gives one a boost of confidence when we are a new blogger.
Congrats again on the double bonus!
Debs
Kipp,
Congrats on your nominations! That’s awesome, bud.
And I appreciate the shout-out. Happy to support you and your journey. The more of us, the merrier. We’re all on the same team.
Keep it up!
Best wishes.
Hi Jason,
Thanks for stopping by and I appreciate your help!
Kipp
Congrats on the nomination! And thank you for nominating me! I’ll definitely be returning the favor to other bloggers out there. Thanks!
Hey Henry,
Sorry, it looks like I missed your comment before. I am glad you accepted the nomination :).
Thanks for the nomination Kipp! I actually got started last October, but when I updated my site, it re-dated my posts. However, that doesn’t matter at all, really. So I don’t even know why I mentioned it. I’ll be sure to post the answer to your questions shortly, but just wanted to say you’re doing a great job here man. I know I’m not the only one picking up what you’re putting down, so keep it up. Well done.
Thanks Ryan for the encouragement and I am glad you are enjoying my posts!
I think format wise I am basically set except for adding a few top pages, but nothing major.
Thanks for the mention, Kipp – happy to help!
No problem Gretchen!
Congratulations. I love watching the Liebster awards circulate. Keep up the great work.
Thank you May! I figured I would link back to Brian since he had nominated me as well.