Why We Started a Finance Blog
Welcome to post #1 on our finance blog.
We are thankful you’re here. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy your stay.
It seems logical to begin by explaining why we started a finance blog.
Truthfully, even though this is our first post, we’ve done hours and hours of preparation just to get to this point.
Technically, this is the 13th post we’ve written, but it occurred to us we might need a starting point to explain ourselves a bit.
Here are our six primary motives for starting a personal finance blog.
1) Why we Started a Finance Blog: Curt Enjoys Finance
A lot of people read novels or books about a particular hobby. I have a small library of finance, tax, accounting, and estate planning books.
We learned a lot about accounting and finance in undergraduate studies and picked up more when we got our MBAs. That financial education has been very useful both professionally and personally.
I started with basics like Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover and The Millionaire Next Door. As life grew in complexity, my appetite for more complex concepts in finance grew deeper still.
For years I’ve been listening to podcasts, following bloggers, reading books, and watching YouTubers; I’ve even been known to peruse the IRS website from time to time.
Mind you, I do this in my spare time, for fun.
You can call me a nerd. I wear the badge with honor.
Eventually, I decided I wanted to read what the pros studied. So, I started buying used financial planning textbooks on eBay.
I literally looked up financial planning programs on various collegiate websites and found what I could about their curriculum and study materials.
You can still get pretty good deals on used textbooks if you know where to look 😉.
Yep, it’s weird, but I’ve become a bit of an expert. From time to time I’ve considered a career shift into financial planning, but it never really made sense which lead us to…
2) Why we Started a Finance Blog: We Love to Teach
Not long after Lisa and I started dating we got asked to lead a church retreat weekend with a group of high school seniors.
We were both in college at the time and had been leading group studies separately for a while. We knew it was a talent and calling we both felt, so teaching together sounded fun.
What we discovered that weekend was even though we both enjoyed teaching, we had a real chemistry teaching together and felt more fulfilled and effective this way.
I was already saving for an engagement ring, but this was meaningful confirmation to both of us that, in at least one key way, were better together than apart.
Fast forward a couple of decades and little has changed. We’ve been teaching married couples for 13-plus years now and still find a lot of fulfillment in it.
We enjoy training new folks at work. We’ve coached soccer teams. We tutor our children regularly in their schoolwork. Speaking of our kids, they probably get tired of conversations on long car rides turning into yet another teaching opportunity.
I suppose it’s just sort of our bent.
For a long time, we’ve felt like we’ve been doing some things financially that others weren’t. In many cases, we saw them struggling because of it.
The problem is it’s difficult to introduce money as a topic in normal social conversation. For a lot of people, it’s a very private matter.
Besides, no one likes to hear that they’ve been doing something the wrong way, even if it will help them in the long run.
So, just like I steer clear of discussions about politics and COVID-19, I’d keep financial topics to myself unless the ideal circumstance arose to talk about it; which is pretty rare.
Well, guess what? A website is a pretty non-confrontational way to convey our approach without putting my nose into someone else’s business.
So here we are. Maybe my dream of a Christmas party conversation about the merits of using Roth over Traditional savings vehicles while in the 24% tax bracket will finally be realized.
3)Why we Started a Finance Blog: We See A Lot of Financial Frustration
You probably do too. You don’t have to look very hard to find people struggling with debts, rapidly increasing costs of basic necessities, and stuck in jobs that don’t pay particularly well or provide much hope for helping them reach their financial goals.
Additionally, there seems to be this overarching sense of fear regarding economic uncertainty. Some food for thought:
- A July 2022 report from Bloomberg showed that 80% of Americans in one survey feared losing their job during the upcoming “potential” recession.
- According to a survey conducted by the blog I Will Teach You to Be Rich, 70% of Americans feel like they don’t earn enough money.
- 77% of Americans are “anxious” about their finances per a Capital One survey.
Meanwhile, all of this is happening in the middle of the most powerful financial productivity engine in the history of the world: The U.S. Economy.
I’d like to make a proposal…
Generally speaking, I think we have a bigger problem with self-pity and fear based on ignorance than we do with an actual lack of economic opportunity.
There are definitely exceptions, but generally speaking, we tend to play the victim card more than we want to acknowledge missed opportunities or past mistakes.
Could it be we tend to exaggerate financial challenges?
Maybe we find too much pleasure in complaining or having an excuse flag to wave when things don’t go our way.
Or perhaps we prefer these pretexts over taking the time to learn how we might better control our own financial circumstances?
The problem with viewing things from the perspective of a victim is the things we think about tend to influence our identity and our identity will always present itself in our behavior.
In other words, by thinking of ourselves as financial victims, we give ourselves permission to make less of an effort to change things.
We waste mental time and energy thinking about things that can’t improve our circumstances instead of the things that do.
Besides, when has complaining ever made anyone wealthier? I know the squeaky wheel occasionally gets some grease, but overall, does making excuses really lead to a lasting difference in your financial situation?
We’ll be the first to admit that life isn’t fair. It’s just not. But, there’s still so much opportunity out there.
For example, if you are at the 2022 U.S. poverty line for a single adult with an annual income of $12,880, you’re still wealthier than 83.7% of the world. That’s equal to 40 hours a week at $6.19/hr.
Even poor people in America are wealthy by a worldwide standard.
We want to create a place where opportunities are highlighted and brought to the attention of others as opposed to other divisive, fear-mongering sites designed to make you feel like a victim.
We want a place to recruit people out of the victim’s ditch of disappointment and put them on the road to financial freedom.
4)Why we Started a Finance Blog: We See Teaching Gaps in Financial Education
We also feel like even though the personal finance space is pretty crowded, there is a gap between informative, factual content and helping people make optimal decisions.
Most of the big financial websites are an absolute wealth of information. We know because we’ve been using them for years.
If financial facts, rules, and figures are all you’re after then there are already lots of places on the web for you to learn (not that we won’t present those things too).
But, we hope to take readers a step or two beyond the basic data of financial concepts and to a place where they are confident in making financial decisions that will produce the best outcomes for themselves.
We’ll do this by providing you not just with knowledge, but also tools and examples to make choices that are well-suited for you.
We’ll introduce case examples and stories in our posts that are relatable and easy to follow. As time goes on, we also hope to introduce helpful visual aids like interactive tools and accompanying videos to clarify post-topic material.
Finally, we don’t really have anything to gain from you following or ignoring our input. We’re just a normal family with a story to tell and we hope you find it useful.
5)Why we Started a Finance Blog: We’ve Always Wanted Our Own Business
I hesitate to post this because I don’t want to undermine the purity of our motives here but in the interest of honesty, I feel like we ought to be upfront about it.
Lisa and I have both been laid-off/downsized/reorganized (or whatever other word you’d use to describe losing your job) at different times in our careers. It’s not a great feeling.
Each time we had sufficient savings to ride out the loss of one salary, but it’s still not fun to go through, even if you do have some cash set aside.
I think what bothered me most was the feeling of not having full control of our income. Sure, I had some marketable skills, but they were only useful as long as my company felt like paying me for them.
Ultimately, we’ve never been without work for very long and we’re both happy doing what we do. It has also provided a lifestyle and a level of security we enjoy.
So, why rock the boat? We haven’t been super motivated to leave jobs we enjoy, are good at, and pay pretty well.
But knowing that we don’t fully control our financial future still bugs us.
So, what to do?
Well, I’m sure you’ve heard of the side hustle concept. There are many creative opportunities these days.
I’ve ignored most for various reasons, but one day it occurred to me that operating an online business provided a flexible opportunity without much downside risk if it failed.
I’ve also always wanted to use a business for tax efficiency purposes. If you know much about taxes, you know there are many ways the IRS rewards, protects, and incentivizes business owners through the tax code.
From the outset, there won’t really be any opportunity to make money from the site. Honestly, I’m not even sure how to make it profitable, but I’m sure we’ll need an audience first.
Even if the website fails to exceed even our modest expectations, we’ll have a learning experience with a few tax write-offs.
Keep an eye out for our monthly blog journal updates if you want to observe this part of our journey.
6)Why we Started a Finance Blog: You’ll Regret the Things You Don’t Try More Than the Things You Do.
I think Mark Twain coined this idea. It sounds incredibly intelligent and wise, so that’s probably right.
We all have a list of things we wish we could go back and do differently or even try the first time.
I have enough in my own history and don’t want to add website developer to the pile.
The way I see it, there’s not much to lose by trying.
Hopefully, you’ll learn along with us.
With that in mind, let us invite you to continue with our next post. We also have topical links and a search form on the homepage if there’s a specific topic you’d like to learn more about.
Thanks for stopping by.
