About BTG

Sarah L. - Owner/Founder, Bridging The Gaap

Sarah L. is an undergraduate finance student. After finishing her degree in the Liberal Arts (which honed her critical thinking and writing skills), she took a personal finance course on a whim, loved it, and never looked back. Concerned that she had never been exposed to such necessary education before, Sarah decided that one day she would find a way to help disseminate financial information to as many people as possible.

That day ended up coming sooner rather than later; the mortgage meltdown/ credit crisis/ savings fiasco of late 2007 early 2008 simply reinforced the idea that people need access to free high quality financial education and information. To this end, Sarah founded Bridging The Gaap (btgnow.net) on June 1st 2008.

For more detailed information as to why Sarah started Bridging The Gaap, please click here!

Additional Qualifications - Events of Note:

BTG’s Statement of Core Values

1) First, Do No Harm

The whole point of starting BTG was to help people.

BTG is committed to offering our readers high quality information, using high quality sources. As we grow (both fiscally and in scale), all our educational articles will be reviewed by experts in the field, and all sources will be cited where appropriate. 

BTG also asks for permission before using any images, content, or media in relation to our site. This means that all images on the site are either created for BTG, or we being used with permission from the owners.

2) Be Accessible (aka The Language Mandate)

BTG is committed to making it as easy as possible for people to access, and understand, their finances.

One of BTG’s founding beliefs is that financial information must be accessible to people in their native language.  We here at BTG think this information is so vitally important that people should have access to it in the language in which they are most comfortable.

To this end, we offer machine translations of BTG in 22 foreign languages. To translate a page, click on the appropriate flag in the upper left sidebar.

3) Don’t Be Greedy!

The astute among you will have noticed some advertising on the site. We mention this only to reassure our readers that BTG is not, for lack of a better word, going to sell out. At BTG, content is king, as is our journalistic integrity. No pay per posts here! At BTG we are committed to putting your education first. That being said, BTG is a business, it has costs, and our advertising partnerships help us profit and grow.

4) “Absolutely Don’t Forget To Listen To Your People!”
 (bonus points if you know which video game advertising campaign that quote is from)

BTG was created for YOU, the reader seeking high quality, easy to understand information about everyday financial issues. In order to better tailor our content to your needs, we need your help! And YOU, yes YOU, can help! Post a comment! Send us your thoughts via email! Link back to BTG! Let us know what you need to know, and we’ll do our best to provide it for you.

BTG Goes GREEN!

Through our partnership with our webhost, HostPapa, BTG is helping to make the world a little bit greener. Disclosure: if you sign up with Hostpapa via this website, I receive a small referral bonus.

BTG is very concerned about the environment (have you ever spent the winter in Canada? They’re getting WORSE) so when we went looking for a web host, imagine our delight to find one that uses 100% renewable energy, and as cost effective for us to boot.

As described by their website, Hostpapa, “uses 100% certified green renewable energy sources” (source: http://hostpapa.com/green/go-green.shtml)

This is actually sort of a misnomer, so here are the facts: No, this does not mean that their offices are solar/wind/green powered (they may be, but this is not what’s advertised). Here’s what it means straight from them:

“After an energy audit by an outside provider to calculate our total electrical energy consumption from traditional sources, HostPapa purchased “green energy tags” or certificates from a certified green energy supplier. That supplier calculates the total energy consumption of our operation and uses their suppliers of green energy to pump in 100% equivalent energy back into the power grid.” (source: http://hostpapa.com/green/go-green.shtml)

And here’s what that means in plain English:

HostPapa has found a way to contribute to cleaning up the environment and still keep their costs down. It can be extremely costly to a business to mount and maintain the infrastructure needed to go green on your own (especially when you’re working out of your parent’s basement… but you can help, donate to BTG now!). I actually like Host Papa’s solution a bit better (from the point of view of an entrepreneur): every year they tell a green energy company how much energy they’ve used, and essentially pay to have the green energy company supply an equivalent amount back into the grid, for everyone’s use. They do this by purchasing “green energy tags” or certificates from a certified green energy supplier.

Here’s an example:

If you think of the energy grid as an energy filled reservoir (like a bowl full of water), every year HostPapa uses some of the energy in the reservoir for their normal day to day activities. At the end of the year, HostPapa measures how much energy they used, which was originally pumped into the reservoir using non-green, polluting methods.

Host Papa then tells a green energy provider how much energy they used and requests that they pump in that much more energy back into the reservoir for next year, only this time using clean methods to do so. That means that the energy doesn’t have to be pumped back into the reservoir using harmful methods, which makes us all better off.

The same amount of energy is in our “reservoir” as there was last year, but HostPapa (and through HostPapa, yours truly, BTG) was able to ensure that some of that was replaced in a green way.

The reservoir is filled with a mix of energy that was pumped back into it using some polluting methods, but now there is more energy in the reservoir that was pumped in using clean methods.

As more and more of this energy is used and replaced using green methods (remember ANYONE can use this energy, so who knows, maybe the computer you’re reading this on is being powered right now by energy pumped into the grid using green methods), more and more of the reservoir energy is pumped in non polluting ways.

That’s how BTG is trying to make the world a better place to live, both financially and environmentally.