I’d like to introduce you to Hank Coleman from Money Q&A, a personal finance blog that I 
admire. I met Hank at FinCon13 in October, 2013 and thought his story was interesting.
Here are the questions I put to Hank recently.
1. What got you started in blogging?
I started blogging in September 2007. Believe it or not, I actually started blogging because I was bored while stationed in Iraq on my second combat tour there. I had a lot of down time at night with the type of job that I had. So, a friend of mine knew that I loved finance and investing. He showed me a few websites, and then I find a few more. Before I knew it, I was trying to read 20 at once. Then my friend introduced me to the magic of an RSS Reader. Finally, I looked at him and realized that I could start a personal finance blog. I love personal finance. I love writing, and my college degrees are actually in finance. It was a perfect fit.
I ended up starting a blog called Own The Dollar, which I sold in 2010. I tell everyone that I’ve lived the bloggers dream. I built a successful blog, sold it for a small profit, and then decided to do it all over again. I had seller’s remorse and missed having my own little corner of the blogosphere. So, I started Money Q&A in September of 2010.
2. You explained your time management calendar to me at FinCon and I wrote about it on Square Pennies. What type of things do you list in the goals section for the week?
I’ve been trying to keep it simple with the goals section of my weekly calendar snapshot. My To-Do List is becoming huge, but I’ve tried to limit my weekly goals to five or so in order to keep it manageable. I’m obsessed with wearing my Fitbit pedometer. So, top on my goals every week is to try and walk 10,000 steps every single day. I also have been reading “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield, which is an incredible book! So, I’ve been trying to act more like a professional writer and actually sit down to write for an hour everyday. Also, one of my goals is write a guest post for a large blog every day. That’s the one that I have been struggling the most with.
3. How has being career military influenced your blogging?
I think that the biggest thing that the military has taught me with respect to blogging is time management skills. A lot of people ask me after they find out that I’m in the military how I have time for all the stuff that I do with blogging, freelance writing, and serving in the Army. I simply tell them that I don’t sleep, which is partially true. That’s another way that the military has influenced my blogging. It has taught me how to operate with little to no sleep.
4. You have a beautiful family. What kind of family activities do you enjoy together?
My family and I are obsessed with professional baseball. I’m a die-hard Atlanta Braves fan since the 1980s with Dale Murphy. They are good enough every year to give me hope, and then they break my heart. One of my 100 goals before I die is to actually visit every Major League Baseball stadium. My family and I are from the south. I was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, and my wife is from Atlanta, Georgia. We love the beach. So, when we get a chance to vacation, that is usually where you find us. Other than that, we do the typical family stuff. My oldest is into Boy Scouts and Tae Kwando, and my youngest is shot out of a cannon and into everything. And, we have a little Yorkie, Winston Churchill Coleman, who has us all wrapped around his paw. He rules the house.
5. Any advice for parents?
I don’t know if I have any earth shattering advice. I think that we all, as parents, want the same thing. We want a better life for our children than what we had growing up. We want them to have all the opportunities that they deserve. We want them to be healthy and successful. I guess the only advice I can give is where I personally struggle sometimes. I struggle with materialism. I end up buying more presents and toys that my kids need. My wife has instituted a rule that Santa Claus only brings three gifts to each boy because that is how many Jesus received from the three wise men. It has been a good sanity check in that respect. I am constantly reminding myself (and my wife is reminding me too) that experiences are more important than possessions. We try to spend our money doing things instead of collecting things. This year for Christmas we are taking a family vacation instead of buying a lot of expensive gifts. I’ll only give you one guess where we are going…the beach of course!
6. What has surprised you about blogging?
I’m always surprised and humbled by how incredible the blogging community is, especially the personal finance bloggers. It’s a very helpful bunch. In seven years, I don’t think that I can think of one time where I’ve asked for help, advice, or a favor that was refused. It’s a wonderful community of people who have the most altruistic goal of wanting to help people. In one way or another, we all struggle with our finances, and we all want to help others take control of their finances and accomplish whatever goals they have.
7. What is/are the strangest question(s) you get about finance?
Someone else asked me that the other day, and I actually have trouble thinking of too many strange questions that I’m asked about finances. I’ve been lucky and get some really great ones from my readers that I’ve turned into a series of blog posts answering readers’ questions. I typically get the craziest ones from my co-workers. Many members of the military are notorious for having some pretty unique financial situations and questions. Lately they’ve been asking me about what to do with a huge pile of cash sitting on the sidelines of the market, paying taxes on a home sale, buying whole life insurance from a friend whose turned into a insurance salesman, and a host of other questions. A lot of people I talk to simply do not know where to start. They are paralyzed with the fear of doing the wrong thing with their money. So, they do not invest for retirement or pay down debt. That’s why one of my friends has $100,000 sitting idle in his savings account.
8. On your bucket list (“100 Goals”), you have the goal of driving the entire length of the old Route 66. Why does this appeal to you? What do you expect to experience on that road trip?
I think that like most trips, it is not about the actual destination. It is about all the cool things to see and do on the way. I guess that I’m a bit of a romantic in that respect. I love the idea of seeing the small towns of America. I love the 1950s era. I always thought that driving Route 66 would help capture that time in American history again. I think now I heard that you physically cannot drive the entire route anymore. The road is not physically there in all the places anymore. I guess that I’ll just have to do my best and drive as much as I can of it. I will chalk it up to another goal that can never be fulfilled like seeing a space shuttle launch.
9. Is there anyone who has influenced your life who is a role model? How has that person influenced your choices in life?
I am an only child, and my parents divorced when I was 10 years old. My mother and I are very close. By far, she has been the biggest influence and role model in my life. She is always so encouraging. She is definitely my biggest fan. I owe her everything. I can remember that she was pretty much my only blog reader for the first month I think. She was also the subject or an anecdote for some stories in early blog posts much to her chagrin. After I passed the 500 subscriber mark, I deleted her email subscription to Money Q&A and my mother-in-law’s too!
10. How do you define success in life?
I think that success is how you make this world a better place. Whether that is by raising wonderful children and/or helping people, to me it is about serving others. Maybe that’s why serving in the Army and being a personal finance blogger fit so well in my life. I want to help others. Helping others to make the world a better place is success in life.
11. If you could give just 2 pieces of advice to people to improve their personal finances, what would they be?
Spend less than you earn. It seems simple, but so few of us actually do it. It takes a budget. It takes having control over your spending. It takes actively trying to increase you income, which is a side of the equation that a lot of people forget about. And, spend your money experiencing things and not buying things. We have our entire lives to collect things. We’re a nation of collectors. We all have knickknacks on the wall, decorations that we’ve accumulated. But, we should all strive to accumulate memories. It is a wonderful thing to spend your money doing something, visiting something, building memories with your family.
12. What advice do you have for bloggers just starting out?
I would say that it is a marathon and not a sprint. We all get depressed or bummed out by writing a brilliant, prolific blog post that has the potential to change the world, or at least our little subset of the world. Then we rush to Google Analytics and continuously hit refresh. And, it is a crushing blow to realize that it is just mom who has read it. Or, in my case, my mom would only skim it and miss all the good points of my blog post. It takes a lot of time to build traffic and a following, and I think that a lot of people get discouraged initially when they are just starting out blogging. I sure know I did. But, you just have to keep going.
Thanks very much, Hank, for sharing your thoughts on so many topics. I appreciate you taking the time to give us a window into your world!
Check out Hank’s blog, Money Q&A by clicking here. It is well worth your time!
BONUS
Click: “Schedule & To Do List ” to see a sample of how Hank sets up his schedule and goals for the week. One look at his spreadsheet and you’ll see how necessary it really is! Thanks for sharing this and thanks for fitting Square Pennies into your busy schedule, Hank!
Al Green says
Hank,
I enjoyed the interview, but your comments are just as valuable. I hope people are reading all the way through.
You added a few things in this comment that are very beneficial. Most of us have jobs and many even have kids. This takes up a lot of time, but we can really make a lot out of our time later in the night and very early in the morning.
I was in the military too and I really think this has helped us to learn to be very productive before the sun comes up. It’s just as important to repeat this process at night.
I believe that if we are working towards our goals it is worth losing some sleep. If we lose the sleep now we can do whatever we want in the future.
That’s the idea anyway.
Al Green
maggie says
Thanks Donna and thanks Hank!
Donna says
What a great interview and interesting man Hank is! I’m looking forward to checking out his blog. I agree, this is one of the best interviews… very open and personable. And thank you Hank for your service!
maggie says
Hi Donna! You’d think it’s just common sense to spend less than you make, but not in our credit card culture! Sometimes parents overbuy things for their kids for Christmas and birthdays. We want to give them everything, but that’s not good for them. What is good for them? Spending quality time with their parents. It’s a simple solution that benefits all. When they have kids someday they can pass on those traditions. So you can actually set in motion a multi-generational flow of good family memories!
Thanks for stopping by, Donna and I’m glad you enjoyed the interview!
Donna Merrill says
Hi Maggie,
Thank you for having Hank in your interview!
Hank,
The best financial advice you gave is spend less than you make. Too many people are over-spending and running that race of paying things off.
I also like what your wife suggested for Christmas. Three gifts for each child because that is what Jesus received. I am taking that line and using it for myself! Thanks.
It is so much better to take your family on vacation at the beach and have great quality time with them, than to buy them tons of stuff. Stuff gets thrown out or given away. Time together creates heart filled memories that will last forever.
I enjoyed your interview,
Blessings,
-Donna
maggie says
Whew! You’ve given me a lot to think about Hank! I do think we will not completely agree on this. And I think there need to be more long-term studies on the amount of sleep people get. What studies I have seen (and I haven’t seen many) say that 7 hours is the optimal amount and that most people don’t need more than that. So the old “8 hours of sleep” is probably outdated.
I’ve read that about 200 years ago people thought it was entirely normal to wake up in the middle of the night and work on something for a couple of hours. When returning to sleep it was known as the second sleep. Go figure!
I think there is much to be learned about sleep, but in the meantime I’m sticking with 7 hours. I have read that sleeping more than 9 hours a night on a regular basis is correlated with some kinds of cancer. Maybe because we need more exercise? Anyway, I’m sticking with 7.
Hank, I’ll look into Gary Vaynerchuk. I don’t know a lot about him, but I’ll take a look. Since you get 5-6 hours sleep a night, I hope you choose the 6 hours instead of 5 most nights. It’s your choice, but the mama in me just has to say it! lol
Hank says
Susan,
Thank you for the kind words. I really appreciate it. I think that we might have to respectfully agree to disagree about the length of sleep needed. I think that I average 5 to 6 hours a night on most days. While you are right and I don’t want to advocate ‘no sleep’, 8 hours might be too much though.
The problem is we say we “need” 8 hours of sleep. Is it really a need or a want? Far too many times, we justify wants at the detriment to our goals and dreams. For example, many people justify to themselves that we “need” to watch tv every night instead of working on our blogging or small businesses. Whether we get 5, 6, 8 hours, or more, I think that a lot of people and especially those looking to get ahead whether it be through blogging or a side job forget about the “other 8 hours”.
Robert Pagliarini wrote an incredible book a few years ago called “The Other 8 Hours”, and it changed the way that I looked at my own personal time management habits and productivity. We all typically work 9-5 jobs, and we try to sleep for 8 hours a day. It is the other 8 hours that can help us accomplish our dreams. Laura Vanderkam has written some incredible books and eBooks on the same subject. “What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast” is fantastic! For the most part, we are wasting our other eight hours.
So, if little to no sleep is not the answer and it probably isn’t for most people, we will all have to take a hard look at those other 8 hours. That’s where we can gain productivity. I’m a huge Gary Vaynerchuk fan, and he says the same thing. After we tuck our children in at night, for eample, there are a lot of hours left in the late evenings from 8pm til midnight and beyond where we can “Crush It”.
maggie says
Thanks Susan. I too have reservations about the lack of sleep. We’ve all had to operate on less than 7 hours at various times. I’ve read that getting less than 7 hours a night is harmful to your health if it continues over time. There was even a study that said that was worse for your health than eating unhealthy food. I don’t know if I believe that, but it’s worth considering.
My mom used to get up an hour early every morning before she went to work to enjoy her hobby, sewing. She got an amazing amount done that way when the house was quiet and no distractions. I have a feeling that Hank’s writing for an hour every day is like that. Many bloggers write at night when the house is quiet.
Hank, I hope you get at least 7 h0urs a sleep most nights. You challenge yourself to do so much and I am in awe of that. Still your health is important for you and your family. Being so organized, I’m sure you will find a way.
Thanks again Hank for sharing so much with us. I’m sure you will continue to have great success!
Thanks Susan for sharing your thoughts with us!
Susan Neal says
Hi Maggie and Hank,
Many thanks for a fascinating, inspirational interview. I love Hank’s honesty and enthusiasm for life – and I thought his wife’s solution to the Christmas present issue was really neat!
My only concern is the fact that Hank says one of his secrets to getting so much done is to survive on very little sleep. For most people, a good night’s sleep is essential and I know when I’ve been through periods of sleep deprivation, when I’ve got by on 5 hours or so, I’ve ended up feeling absolutely dreadful. I think there’s some research suggesting lack of sleep can cause long-term damage to your health, including possible links to dementia. I guess I’m just worried that some readers will see that and think it’s the answer to their time management problems, when it’s not usually such a good idea.
I love the two bits of financial advice you give at the end – if we’d all heeded the first one, the world’s economies wouldn’t be in the state they’re in today! And I like your point about collecting experiences and memories, rather than “stuff”.
Thanks for a great read – this is one of the best interviews I’ve come across on a blog.
maggie says
It was fun Carol. I like #5 also. I can’t help but wonder if the kids put higher ticket items on their wish lists when they get just 3 gifts.
We took our kids on many road trips having all sorts of experiences along the way. Now that they are grown, they still talk about all the fun we had. They even join us on a few road trips now. With the grandkids along it makes for wonderful memories.
maggie says
Thanks Cori! Sometimes we need to share a bit about ourselves for others to appreciate where we’ve come from and where we expect to go. We all have a story and we learn from each other! I hope you have a great weekend too! Enjoy the season whatever it brings!
Corina Ramos says
This was a great interview Maggie. You asked all the right questions for us to get to know Hank.
Hi Hank, thanks for telling us about yourself. I would also like to thank you for serving our country!
I need to take a page out of your book and take some time to visit all the great places we have here!
I have a to-do list but I don’t have it broken down by time. Perhaps if I did that it could help me manage my time better. Thanks for sharing that with us.
It was so great to meet you Hank. I’ll definitely be stopping by your blog to check out your posts. 🙂 Maggie, thanks for this great interview!
Hope you both have a great weekend!
maggie says
Thanks for adding to the discussion, Hank! I’m glad I happened to sit next to your at dinner that night. I learned a lot and it was one of the best conversations I had at FinCon.
Hank says
Thanks, Sicorra! It is sometimes hard for me as a blogger to open up on a personal level which I know is surprising to a lot of bloggers who build their sites around their personal stories. It was never that way for me. So, I truly appreciate Maggie prying some details and tidbits out of me in this interview. It was very probing and very rewarding to write about things that I don’t often talk about with my readers.
As for selling my first blog, I thought that I should add that I never set out to sell my blog. An offer just kind of fell in my lap. So, I don’t know if it is fair to say that it was ever a “dream” of mine to sell. It just kind of happened that way, but it was a great experience. And, selling the old blog helped me make Money Q&A into what it is today. It was definitely a great learning experience like Maggie said.