Comments on: Here’s an excerpt from last week’s IWillTeachYouToBeRich chat

By: Jerry

Jerry — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 08:10:41 +0000

Man, you need to really rething the credit cards thing. If you can’t control your credit card – don’t even think of becoming rich. Credit cards are a must for the entrepreneur and most come with the added bonus of interest free days and reward points. I’ve gotten many free trips overseas thanks to the free miles! Also, imagine going out for dinner with 20 people. Bill comes up to $1000. You collect the cash, charge it to your card and walaa, that’s $1000 interest free until the next payment date.

By: John

John — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 10:50:27 +0000

I also remain modestly shocked by your view that CD’s aren’t for young people. How do you recommend young people (or any people) beat 5.31% in a Roth (where there’s no tax on CD proceeds)? This is *guaranteed* gain.

By: John

John — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 07:37:36 +0000

You don’t have a 401(k)? You max out your Roth IRA at $4k. And then you just stop? Any tax bracket above 15% needs a 401(k), don’t you think?

Also: There is no such thing as good debt. There are good investments, worth incurring debt, and serious learning is high among them.

By: John

John — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 20:34:35 +0000

If you had some kind of forums on your site then you could have all the instant feedback benefits of periodic chats without the drawbacks of chatrooms. For instance when people decide to behave like idiotic trolls you could just permanently ban their IPs from using your forums. Also it would keep things simpler and arranged by topic and let you respond to posts when/if you feel like it rather than feeling rushed to respond to 100 different finance questions simultaneously being thrown at you.

By: J.D.

J.D. — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 02:09:46 +0000

I love your comments about making money from blogs. You and I have talked a little about this via e-mail. I wrestle all the time with whether or not to have ads. They do provide an income stream, but it’s smallish. And it’s never really going to be enough to support me. Ultimately I’ve decided that if the ads are relatively innocuous, there’s no harm in leaving them.

At the same time, though, I’d love to strip them off completely. I’m afraid that would take away the carrot from the stock, though, and I’d have less motivation.

I’m not sure why I think this, though. It’s a Barrier of sorts. I blogged for FIVE years without any thought to revenue. (Though, admittedly, that was for a personal blog, a blog I did in my spare time.) Why shouldn’t I be able to do it now?

It’s one of the fundamental questions I wrestle with EVERY day.

RE: credit cards — My position is changing. A little. I still don’t like them, especially for myself, but I think the key is to KNOW YOURSELF. If you have think you have a problem with credit, don’t use it. If you can handle it, then by all means: make use of them. I still think it’s wise for college kids to take some time to get accustomed to managing cash before they obtain credit, though.

Great post.

By: candice

candice — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 02:30:22 +0000

Thanks for posting some of the transcript.

I’m in consulting/startup hell (well, the moneymaking good kind) and didn’t get time to stop in for it.

(Maybe I’ll throw my hat in for friday entrepreneurs when the business has a website that doesn’t look so hasty and awful. Soon, I swear.)

By: Jon Payne

Jon Payne — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 20:26:20 +0000

“A: guys, what matters is getting started. read the myth of the great idea. there are so many things – the idea is not novel/secret. execution matters.”

I love this, and agree wholeheartedly. If you spend your time refining the perfect idea and delay actually getting started you don’t stand nearly as good a chance at success. I have several ventures I’ve started myself and I run a web marketing firm, so I’ve seen my share of both successes and failures. Action and putting the effort on the implementation is the common denominator in the successful cases.

By: Cody McKibben

Cody McKibben — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 19:24:43 +0000

Wow man, I think this chat thing was an excellent idea. I am so dissapointed I missed it.

You never spoke much (at least not in the excerpt) about if you have a business plan for PBwiki. Do you guys outsource much of the actual nitty-gritty work to real tech geniuses and just handle most of the self-promoting and making deals yourselves? And who are the type of people Ramit Sethi eats lunch with? (in other words, who are your 5 networking contacts/mentors/etc?)