I decided to try and interview personal finance bloggers I find interesting on Sundays.  These interviews might give my readers a taste of other personal finance blogs I try to read weekly.

To start out, I am interviewing Lazy Man and Money. Lazy Man is a personal finance blogger, originally from the Boston area.  Currently he resides in Silicon Valley with his wife Energy Gal.  Although previously he was computer science engineer, he currently is a full-time blogger and online entrepreneur.  I enjoy his philosophy that personal can be lazy.

1. How did you get your name and what made you start blogging?

Contrary to popular belief – being lazy isn’t a negative in all circles. I’ve been writing computer programs since I was 8 and part of my name is nod towards lazy evaluation (a concept that will probably bore many). The other reason I chose the name is that I believe in working smarter, not necessarily harder. For example, Markus Frind works one hour a day and brings in $10 million a year. That is more enticing to me that working as a 40-50 hour weeks as a landscaper making significantly less.

I started blogging after I read about Boston Gal’s Open Wallet. As a technology guy, I wanted to know more about this “huge blog thing” that I’ve read about (I was late to the game, starting in May of 2006).

Also, as almost every software engineer will tell you, the hours of work are typically long – and you have to spend your free time learning new technology. It’s a very consuming career choice to make.

2. What do you do in real life and how’d you get started?

I mentioned it before, but I was a software engineer. I have since distanced myself from software engineer (except for when I’m working on my own sites). Now I’m part blogger, part home maker, part explorer of other business opportunities, part enjoyer of life. I make about 1/3 or 1/2 as much money as I did as a software engineer, but the quality of life is greatly improved.

3. What is the reason you blog about personal finance?

At the same time I was reading about blogging, I had a revelation. I realized that someone in India, China, or probably a hundred countries could do approximately the same software engineering job that I did for 10% of my pay – maybe even less. I couldn’t logically figure out why, in the long run, businesses would employ me, when it’s not cost effective to do so. In the global economy I figured that either my salary would have to come down or millions and millions of peoples in other cheaper countries would have to go up. I decided that most likely a little bit of both would occur – and I had better have a financial plan in place for that day. Also my wife is in the military and is eligible for retirement and a healthy pension at age 44. I didn’t want to work another 21 years after she retired. I’m 32 years old, 21 years seems like a lot.

4. What were your 3 biggest personal finance mistakes?

- I invested heavily in Internet stocks around 2000. I thought I was being smart avoiding sexy companies like Pets.com and Webvan and betting on infrastructure like Lucent and Worldcom.

- I bought a new sports car (albeit one under $30,000) when I got to a 6 figure salary at my first real job. Due to the crash of the Internet economy, the whole engineering team was laid off… and that very specialized skill that I was being paid a lot for wasn’t what anyone else was looking for.

- I bought a condo in the suburbs of Boston in 2004. The $1,500 month fixed rate mortgage was well within my means, but today it’s worth about $50,000 less than what I paid. I rent it out at close to a breakeven price (since I now live in Silicon Valley), but if I had to do it again, I would have rented a few more years and looked to buy in this market. Hindsight is always 20/20, right?

5. What is your biggest 3 personal finance tips?

I think that most people can benefit by learning how control their spending the most. That said, there are some people who are not making a lot of money and get by with just the bare necessities. If you are one of these people, I would recommend looking for opportunities to make more money rather than tips below.

- Spend less than you earn. Unless you are really good with leverage (and few people are) there’s no other way to have a surplus of money. And when you think about it a surplus of money is a good personal finance goal.

- Think about what you are spending money on. If you are making a big purchase, put a lot of thought into how you can save money. If you are making small purchases many times, put a lot of thought into how you can save money. For example, on the big purchase of a car, you might find these car money saving tips very helpful. On the other hand if you are buying gas all the time, you might find these gas money saving tips very helpful.
- Pay yourself first. Put money aside in an account via an automated transaction before you even see it. You can’t spend what you don’t consciously know about.

6. What are your 3 best posts?

It’s hard to say what constitutes best, but I’ll give it a shot:
- My post on MonaVie has to rank up there with it’s more than 1450 comments. (For those who have never heard of MonaVie, it’s a health juice that costs $45 for 25 ounces… and it’s being convincingly pitched as a cure for all one’s health and wealth problems).

- Next I’d say my post on 15 Products that Save Time, Money, and Space was very popular. I just went through my house and looked at some the some purchases that I got a lot of value out of.

- Lastly, this article on saving money ties together dozens of ideas in 9 common spending categories. I think that’s a good resource for some people to get started with.

7. How are you dealing with our current economic situation?

Fortunately my income has remained steady. As I’ve said before my income isn’t exactly a lot though. I am lucky to have a wife who is a pharmacist for the government/military with the equivalent of tenure.

The biggest difference though is that we’ve been really responsible with our finances in the past. So while others were spending and paying full price for things two years ago, we were saving and looking for value. This economy has been great for the consumer looking for good deals – and we find ourselves in just that position.

8. Has blogging changed you?

Of course it has. There’s really no way it can’t. I’ve learned to be a better writer, a better negotiator, a better businessman, a better networker, and much more. I wrote about many of the things I’ve learned via blogging here.

9. Where do you see yourself in 1, 5, and 10 years?

One year – I see myself pretty much where I am now. Hopefully we have a dog who I can take on walks during the day. I’ll still write for Lazy Man and Money. I hope to continue my budding partnership with Buildify.com (that’s a little exclusive for you as I haven’t announced that previously). And you may see an eBook or two from me.

Five years – This is a tougher call as I haven’t been blogging for three years yet. I hope that blogs are still viable then. If not, I know that people will appreciate good content in whatever form it is. I hope that I’m able to continue to improve and deliver that content. I hope to be out-earning my wife by this point. It will be difficult since pharmacists are paid well. Maybe I’ll spend a good portion of the day taking care of children. Maybe my wife and I will some of her six weeks of vacation and my locationless job to go to Spain and immerse ourselves in Spanish.

Ten years – At this point, I’ll be planning my wife’s retirement party which will be scheduled in late March. Today, I look for ways to grow my business… but by this time, I’ll probably look for ways to maintain the income of my businesses and while reducing the amount of work that I HAVE to do. I’ll probably still continue to work because I’ll want to do it. Plus, I’ll be 42 years old, it’ll be too early to pack up and do nothing. Maybe I’ll coach youth soccer. Maybe I’ll take up a former love of mine in college, linguistics. Maybe I’ll spend an hour or two playing badminton each day. All of these things presume some level of financial freedom, which I hope to have by then.

10. Tell me something unusual about yourself.

I’ll give you a few things. First, I’m a robot. Most robots don’t really enjoy badminton, so that’s kind of odd. Other than that, I’ve got man-crushes on Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, Jacoby Ellsbury, and Joss Whedon.

On that last point, Joss Whedon’s new show Dollhouse is premiering Feb. 13th, and I’m trying to get the word out. Fox has a way of canceling every show that I like (Andy Richter, Firefly, Wonderfalls comes to mind off the top of the my head) after one season. I’m pretty used to it because many of my favorite bands, Poe, Elastica, Skindive, Toadies, (and probably another seven that I can’t think of right now) have one good album only to struggle with record companies to put out a second one which is never as good.

I’m not bitter or anything (my robot programming doesn’t allow for it), just think that I have an odd talent of being able to end entertainers’ careers.
I hope you enjoyed this interview with Lazy Man, I did.  I actually really liked Firefly and the movie Serenity wasn’t bad either.