The Amateur Financier

It might be hard to accept (I know it was for me), but this post marks three years that I have been blogging here on the Amateur Financier.  Yes, three years ago this very day, February 6th, I wrote my first post in what would become The Amateur Financier.  Now, things were a bit different back then; I was only twenty-six, rather than the ripe old age of twenty-nine where I currently find myself.  I was only dating Sondra, rather than planning to marry her (which looks like it’s going to happen in March).  Perhaps most importantly for the founding of this blog, I was, at the time, unemployed and looking for a way to bring in more money (as well as express my increasing interest in investing and personal finance).

The blog itself has changed quite a bit, as well.  I spent the first month and a half on Blogger (where you can still see my initial few blog entries), before getting help moving to my current location and starting to use WordPress.  I had done much less reading about personal finance, and was much less informed than I have become in the years since.  (If you spend several hours each week, every week, for a few years, you pick up a few things.)  My opinion on various personal finance issues has grown and expanded as I’ve learned more and explored the concepts in more depth; one of the best examples is the Fair Tax, where I’ve gone from cautious supporter to opponent, albeit one who still thinks it would be an improvement on the current tax system.  (Although, it’s hard to think of a tax system that wouldn’t be an improvement on the current hodge-podge of laws, restrictions, loopholes, and thousands of pages of notes we call the US Tax Code.)

Throughout all of this, I’ve been pleased to have friends, readers, and fellow bloggers who have supported and encouraged me along the way.  Thanks to all of them, and all of you, I’ve kept going even when it seemed at times that I was sending my posts off to the abyss, never to be seen again.  So, I just wanted to take this opportunity to say: Thank you.  Thank you all very, very much for all the comments, questions, support, and, if I can use this term to refer to the feelings that online readers have for the writers of their reading material, love, that you all have shown me over these past three years.  I appreciate it more than I could ever properly express, and it makes me want to keep this blog going for not only another three years, but another three hundred.  Thanks for everything,

Sincerely,

Roger the Amateur Financier.

Here's to Another Great Three Years of Blogging!

Woo, hoo!  I’ve posted more than six hundred posts in the course of keeping my blog running.  Actually, I’m well passed my six hundredth post, if you just count how many articles have been posted on this blog, but when you consider all the guest posts that I’ve put up, the number of articles I’ve written and put up is closer to 600.

So, since this is as about as close to the 600th post as I can get, and since I’m going to be pretty busy the next few weeks visiting my mother and then taking care of my fiancee Sondra when she gets the last of her wisdom teeth removed, I’ll call this the 600th post and get my celebrating in now.  It’s been a long, sometimes tough road, but I’m glad I’ve stuck with it.  I’ve met lots of interesting people, learned more about personal finance than I ever would have by just reading through books, and in general, had both a great deal of fun and lots of learning.  Thanks for all of you reading this, as always, for reading my articles, digesting their meaning, and leaving great comments.  It’s much appreciated, and here, to show just a fraction of that appreciation, are some of the best posts of the past week:

Good Yakezie Posts

 Don’t Let Time and Risk Aversion Be Your Enemies – It’s easy to fall into a trap and take on too little risk on your path to meeting your financial goals.  However, as Money Reasons notes on Yakezie.com, you need to be willing to take some risks and let time work for you if you hope to have a successful life.

3 Ways to Earn Blog Income – Blogging is one of the most commonly recommended means of earning a passive income, and this article on different types of blog income on Passive Family Income provides several approaches you can take to make it big (or have fun trying).

So, Are You Well Off? – Interesting question, no?  Robert of The College Investor asked this question of his readers, and got some very interesting answers.  I’ve got a way to go, but hopefully soon I will be able to answer a solid ‘Yes’ to this question.

Six Tips for Travelling with Small Children – I am going to spending this week chauffering a puppy across the great state of Pennsylvania.  It’s not the same thing as traveling with children, but these tips from Melissa of Mom’s Plan should still come in handy.

The Number of Acorns Saved is Affected by the Number of Trees Nearby – That’s one impressive article name, and one that fits pretty well for Squirrelers.  The point of the article, that you need to be willing to move to where the jobs are, particularly in a tough economy, is pretty solid as well.

Deciding on the Best European Cruise For Two – For a problem more of us probably wish we faced, see if you can give Financial Samurai some advice on what cruise to take.  It’s interesting to see the sort of choices that are available, as well as see some of the logic he is applying.  Not bad for learning about the whole decision making process in general, for that matter.

How to Avoid Frugal Fatigue as a Couple – It can be rough trying to frugal, much in the same way that sticking to a diet makes you start eyeballing seven layer cakes.  Luckily, Young and Thrifty has some tips to make things more manageable, so you can stick to your frugal ‘diet’ and resist the urge to splurge.

How Yoga Helped Me Reach My Goals and Be a Better Person – I’ve never really tried yoga, but my sister has been doing it for years, and she recommends it highly.  She’s not the only one; Miss T. of Prairie Eco Thrifter suggests it as well, for the discipline and mind clearing power it possesses.

Don’t Live Within Your Means – Sounds like the last thing you’d hear from a personal finance adviser, but Flexo of Consumerism Commentary notes how some advisers are suggesting ‘consumption smoothly’, leveling out your consumption throughout your lifetime, borrowing more in your youth and paying it back when you get older and earn more.  It’s an interesting concept, but if taken too far (or you don’t earn enough in the future), you can find yourself in a world of hurt.

Money Management: 9 Ways Golf Can Help! – I love being able to find new ways to think about money, and this article from Dr. Dean of The Millionaire Nurse is a good one.  I’m not a golfer (yet; give me a few more decades and I’ll likely much of my time on the course), but the lessons on money management are solid.

Where The Amateur Financier Was Featured

My post on Financially Balancing Your Future, Family and Fun won a KC Award!  Quite a great honor, and here’s hoping it’s not the last!

My Frugal Friday – Going Out post was included in the How to Get Out of Debt Carnival (catchy name, hunh?) run by Get Out of Debt Guy.  Thanks, Guy!

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I imagine that even my most die-hard fans might not realize it, but today is something other than the Superbowl.  (Go Steelers, by the way.)  Yes, two years ago on this very day, I wrote my very first post for the Amateur Financier.  It’s been a long and interesting journey, and I’m glad for every comment I’ve gotten, every reader who’s shared their thoughts, and every post that I’ve been able to write.

Speaking of posts, I thought the best way to celebrate my anniversary would be to look at some of my favorite posts from my first two years blogging and sharing my thoughts here.  With over five hundred to choose from, it was kind of hard to narrow things down, but

My Favorite Posts from the First Two Years of The Amateur Financier

12. 5 Ways to Get Rich Quick – An April Fool’s post on how to quickly and easily earn more money.  I like being able to have fun while blogging, and this was probably my funniest post for the first year of my blog (to me, at least).

11. Three Things My Mother Taught Me About Money – Almost all my positive traits in life I owe to my mother and her influence.   My success in life pretty much comes down to everything she’s done for me.  (Is it too early for Mother’s Day shopping?)

10. Things I Will NOT Do For Money – On the subject of what my mother taught me, I decided to do a list of things that no amount of money could get me to do (and others where it would require very special circumstances to convince me to do anything).  If you want to know the things you have no worry that I will do, feel free to read on.

9. The Amateur Financier One Page Financial Guide – All of my money wisdom, distilled down to a single page.  Besides being a very succinct, award-winning (no, literally; I won a contest using this one page guide) summary of my accumulated knowledge, it’s a pretty straightforward method of controlling your money, if I do say so myself.

8. Fifteen Things to Tell a Younger Me - One of my favorite posts, it’s a list of everything I intend to pass on to my past self if (when) time travel is ever perfected.  Besides appealing to the sci-fi nut in me, looking back on the ‘mistakes’ I’ve made helped give me an idea of where I can make improvements in my life.

7. 7 Things You Don’t Know About The Amateur Financier – I like being able to share personal information about myself, and here’s one of favorite posts on my personal life.  If you want to learn more about me and what I do when I’m not writing for The Amateur Financier (or studying), be sure to check it out.

6. Does Success Skew Your Perception? – One of my favorite of my more ‘psychological’ posts, I take a look at how success (or failure) in your activities can distort your perception on their difficulty or complexity.  Sometimes it seems that people take too much of a ‘if I can do it, anyone else can, too’ attitude.

5. What I’m Thankful to Have – I decided to celebrate my first Thanksgiving writing this blog by posting a list of the things I’m incredibly thankful to have in my life.  I enjoyed the concept so much, I did it again last year, and fully intend to make it a yearly tradition.

4. When Companies Get Really Creepy: ‘Dead Peasant’ Life Insurance – Possibly the article that’s inspired the longest, most thought provoking comments that I’ve gotten on my blog.  It’s always nice to get other perspectives, and I do enjoy reading and considering other ideas from my readers.

3. 10 Steps to Control Your Finances Reviewed – The finale of a week-long series creating an order for your financial goals.  If you want a way to prioritize your plans, this is a decent way to get started (in my admittedly biased opinion).

2. Unemployment and Motivation: A Case Study – By FAR my most popular post (being featured on MSN will do that, you know), I explain how receiving unemployment has affected the motivation of at least one person: me.  Next time you hear someone debating about how unemployment stops people from looking for work, feel free to point them my way so I can set them straight.

1. What Christmas Ornaments Taught Me About Money – A personal story, telling about how I managed to make a surprising amount of money at my elementary school’s Christmas ornament sale.  It’s one of the things that’s really stuck with me in the years since (as evidenced by the fact that I blogged about it more than a decade later), and one of my favorite stories from my past.

This is, of course, only a small sample of the many, many interesting posts you’ll find here on The Amateur Financier; with over five hundred, I could barely scratch the surface, even limiting the selection to my favorite posts.  Hopefully, though, you’ll see something you didn’t read, or haven’t properly digested already.  Thanks for encouraging me throughout the past two years, and here’s hoping we can celebrate again in two years from now (or beyond)!

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Wow, it’s hard to believe, but this is the 500th post I’ve put up here on The Amateur Financier.  When you combine this with the upcoming second anniversary of when I started to write for this blog early in February of 2009, to say nothing of the fact that I’ve managed to get my Alexa score back under 200,000 about a week ago, and January is turning out to be a pretty interesting month for me, blog wise.  (Given that I’ve needed to take my car into be repaired twice so far, ‘interesting’ is an understatement, but this is going to be a happy post.  Tomorrow I’ll cover the details of my latest brush with automotive troubles.)

To celebrate my 500th post, I thought I would share some of the things that writing 500 posts of personal finance information has taught me.  (Well, nearly 500 posts; there are the occasional guest posts in there, so I’ve only written about 490 posts personally.)  Now, I suppose I could share my top 500 financial tips, but that seems a bit excessive.  So, instead, let’s go with the top 5 personal tips I’ve learned from reading and blogging about personal finance for more than two years:

The Top 5 Personal Finance Tips

5) Invest Early, and Invest Often: One of the best ways to improve your net worth is to invest.  There’s so many different ways to invest that I could fill this blog with possibilities (and did a pretty good job of it already; over forty percent of my posts discuss investing to some extent, including but not limited to my Investing 101 series), but the most important is to invest, not necessarily what you invest in.  Keep it simple, find something that meets your needs and is easy enough to understand, and keep investing throughout your life.

4) Develop Alternative Sources of Income: One of the major reasons I started this blog in the first place is try to develop a source of income outside of a typical nine-to-five job.  Given that most of the time I’ve been blogging, I’ve either been unemployed or worked unusual hours (no nine-to-five for me), it seemed, and still seems, like a good idea to diversify my sources of income , as well as boosting my income.  I recommend that my readers look into other ways into building their income as well.  (Although, from my own experience, I’d suggest blogging only if you are willing to put in a lot of work and risk the possibility of not making much income.)

3) Be Prepared for Emergencies: If nothing else, the numerous problems I’ve had with my car this month drove home the need to be prepared for the unexpected events in life.  There are many ways to prepare for emergencies, since there are many different types of emergencies you could face, from simple car problems to serious health problems.  The best thing to do is to try to foresee and prepare for any possible emergency, however unlikely it might seem while you are preparing.

2) Keep Debt to a Minimum: There is quite a lot of disagreement in the personal finance community about what constitutes ‘good debt’ and what qualifies as ‘bad debt’ (to say nothing of the debate over whether any debt can be considered good, regardless of its purpose or the interest rates associated with the debt).  As a result, if you do much personal finance reading, you get a range of advice on how much (and what types of) debt you should take on, from absolutely none to as much as possible (assuming it’s used for leverage purposes).  My simple view on how to handle debt: keep it to a minimum, and pay it off as soon as possible (starting with the highest interest debt).  If you can do that, you should have few debt problems throughout your life.

And the top, single most important thing I’ve learned from my blogging:

1) Give back to charity: There are many reasons to have money, and many things to do with the money you have, but few are more rewarding and spiritually fulfilling than using the money you have available to help those who are less fortunate.  I’ve tried my best to spread the wealth, although I’m sure I can do more.  Monthly contributions of $25 to the Yakezie scholarship fund is a start, but I’m sure I can do more (and probably should).

Which is why, in celebration of my 500th post, I’ve decided to donate $500 to charity as a way to help tilt my personal scales back towards giving (and who knows, maybe improve my karma a bit as well).  I’m not quite sure what charity to send it to next, but with how many deserving ones there are out there, I’m sure that I will find plenty of good groups who are deserving of some donations.  (And to keep my generosity going, I’ll set up a few automated transfers to keep up the donations throughout the year.)

There you have it, five suggestion to celebrate my 500th post.  With any luck, I’ll find myself celebrating the next five hundred posts before too long (and having even more readers around to encourage me to write five thousand more).  Thanks to you all for reading, commenting, and encouraging me, my friends!

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