There are a lot of new readers at More Than Money in the past week. It’s gratifying that you’ve chosen to follow me from Get Rich Slowly. If you’re new here, please check out my first post, in which I laid out my mission statement for this site. An excerpt:

Here, then, is More Than Money at jdroth.com. Yes, I’ll still write about personal finance now and then. But as the name of the blog implies, this site will be about more than money. In fact, it’ll be a place for me to share all of my passions: animal intelligence, awesome people, far away places…and even spiral notebooks.

In short, the site’s name says it all. I’ll cover personal finance here, but I’ll also write about anything else that’s on my mind. I’ll try to keep the articles informative and entertaining, but there will be times that I publish things that are simply personal, as I did last month when my aunt died. Or as I will later this week, when I post some photos from Kim’s birthday party.

This isn’t strictly a personal blog, but it’s not just for business either.

A Brief Tour of More Than Money

More Than Money is built on a WordPress template I’ve been developing for years. There are lots of little things around here that I think are fun. For instance:

• The upper-right corner features a rotating array of photos. All of these photos were taken by me (or taken of me), and they show different important moments from my life.
• The Twitter section shows my latest tweet. In theory. In reality, it most often seems to be filled with blank space as the blog has trouble connecting to the Twitter API.
• The Recent Comments section shows excerpts of the last five comments to More Than Money.
• The Spare Change section shows the last five webpages I think are worth sharing. These will range from stories about personal finance to recipes to silly Flash animations.
• Recommended Reading is a list of some blogs I read regularly, along with links to the last three posts.

If you have any requests for features, please let me know. I’m happy to make the site feel more like home.

Coming Soon!

I have lots more plans for More Than Money, including:

• A contact page. Though my email addresses are easily guessable, I’d like to make it convenient for folks to contact me with questions and guest-post submissions. (Yes, I’ll publish guest posts here.)
• Better archives. Right now, I’m using default archives, which aren’t very useful. I’ll set up something more easily-browsable in the near future.
• Pages devoted to specific topics. I am a man of strong opinions. I like to share those opinions. Soon, I’ll have pages devoted to some of my favorite topics, such as writing and travel. I’ll share tips and tools that help me get things done.
• Book reviews. In the olden days, I read constantly. As Get Rich Slowly grew, I ran out of time. I have more time, now, and I want to share some of the books I’ve been reading. Many of these will be productivity-oriented, but some will be just for kicks. And some will be outside my comfort zone. (I’m an avowed skeptic, but, on the recommendation of friends, I’m in the middle of a book about reincarnation called Journey of Souls. Completely contrary to my world view — but interesting. Maybe I’ll write about it.)
• Long-term projects. For instance, during 2013 I will take my list of 43 lessons from 43 years and expand this into a weekly feature that explores my personal philosophy — in a way that’s useful for you, the reader. When I’m finished (in early 2014), I’ll collect these articles into an ebook.

Basically, I’m jazzed about this site. I haven’t been this enthused about blogging in five years. It’s great to be able to write what I want when I want, and to have some friends along for the ride. We’re going to have fun, you and I, so stick around.