This post feels a little insane to write. As someone who doesn’t stay in one place very long and bops between all sorts of gigs and contracts and jobs for work, the idea that I’ve stuck it out with this blog for this long is a little crazy.

I began this blog in July of 2013 while living on a circus train and pretty much just trying to not drop dead of exhaustion with our insane PR and show schedules. I wanted to quit so badly but knew I couldn’t because I was still paying off student loans and it’s difficult to find decent paying jobs in the arts – especially early career ones.

I’d started reading a bunch of personal finance blogs to try to take better charge of my money – some that still exist (like good old Budgets Are Sexy!) and plenty that have disappeared into the purgatory that is cached. I became a little obsessed with other people’s net worth updates and started tracking my own. I wrote about lots of adventures and misadventures in the world of stage managing. I had a super weird year of partial work interspersed by projects I really liked in 2019 after my mom died. I rode out a pandemic with this blog. It’s currently keeping me company while living abroad and working on what absolutely has to be my last degree.

And you guys have been awesome along the way. I was definitely a lot better at engaging with the personal finance community in the beginning and have been fairly dreadful at it over the last few years but I am super appreciative of my regular readers and especially for IM-PCP from Physician in Numbers for the pep talks on my accountability updates these days and the lovely comments from Budget Life List who blogs about their own unique journey in the Park Ranger life.

There have also been times where I’ve wondered if the fuss of running this thing is worth it. I cut back my writing schedule during the pandemic when I was really struggling with how much time I was spending online. I have twice been hacked the week before a big Symposium I usually present something at and, in a total state of panic, had to pay a significant amount for people to fix my site both times (though their work was impeccable both times).

But without this blog, I never would’ve gotten involved with the Broadway Stage Management Symposium, which has been a really fun and interesting partnership. I also would not have been invited to be a guest speaker for stage management classes at universities on the topics of personal finance, which I actually really enjoy. I would not have done two webinars during the pandemic, though both were wildly panic inducing.

Most importantly though, I kind of think without this accountability tool, my own finances would be a lot more of a mess. 10 years of financial data is awfully useful. I hope it’s also sort of useful to early career stage managers trying to figure out how to budget on the weird smaller but carefully liveable salaries that come with cruise ships and tour life.

In April 2021, I took a month off from posting. At the time, I wasn’t sure how long the break would be, but I did miss this weird little space I’ve built here and decide to switch from the 3X a week posts that made up the blog from 2013- April 2021 to once a week and that has been working ok for me since though I can’t honestly say I expect to make it to a 20 year post here. Quite possibly not a 15 year one either. I’m pretty settled in life and my personal finance stories are not so exciting anymore, lol.

I do also find myself occasionally checking out my blog valuation on Flippa because I do like the idea of the old gal living on under someone else’s vibe once I’ve completely run out of steam (also, unsurprisingly, I like money and the idea that this little corner of the internet is potentially worth anything is absolutely wild to me).

When I started this blog, my goal was to make as much from it as a side hustle as it cost me to run within the first three years. On my 5^th blogging anniversary, I did a breakdown of how much my blog made per month vs how much it cost.

As of July 2018 (5 years), I had spent $394.09 to run my blog. And I had made $30,071.89.

I updated this as I came up on my 6^th blogging anniversary and at that point I had spent a total of $1,417.11 (I told you it was expensive to fix getting hacked), but my total after 6 years of blogging was up to $37,414.85.

If you’re wondering how to start a blog, here is my post on that.

And if you’re wondering where that money came from, I outlined it very clearly in this post about how I make money blogging.

So here’s the 10 year numbers update folks, for a low key, totally small side hustle blogger who puts a pretty minimal amount of effort into things these days (though if you watch the income trends, they do reflect significantly more in the years when I worked harder and significantly less in the years where I just let the blog ride):

To set up brokeGIRLrich through June 2019, I spent:

• Domain Registration (it wasn’t included back then) – $22.51
• Hosting – $286.56
• WordPress – FREE
• Technical Assistance installing WordPress – $5
• Blog Header Design – $80:
• Hosting Renewal 2016 – $296.20
• InLinkz for 3 Years – $107.64
• Miscellaneous – $619.18
• Blogging Courses – $775.86
• Hack Repair – $635.50

Additional Fees – $1,417.11

I’ve gotten a lot less orderly about tracking exactly what I’ve spent the money on but I do have a brokeGIRLrich expense line in my monthly breakdown so between July 2019 and June 2023 I spent:

• $5,543.32

Nearly half that expense was a totally idiotic move on my part of accidentally using a copyrighted image in a very early post and getting sued. So. Be real careful about the images you use if you decide to become a blogger.

$500 of that is also FinCon 2019 fees and I don’t think I included FinCon fees in my earlier assessment of blogging costs because, of course, that was a totally optional extra expense.

The number also was significantly higher in the last few years than the first few because for the last two years, I’ve subscribed to a monthly service for the backend upkeep of my blog after getting hacked for the second time.

So in total, running brokeGIRLrich has cost $6,960.43 over 10 years.

You can see the breakdown below for the first six years of blogging, resulting in $37,414.85 in income.

• July 2013 = $0\$0.00
• August 2013 = $0\$0.00
• September 2013 = $0\$0.00
• October 2013 = -$394.09\-$394.09
• November 2013 = $0\-$394.09
• December 2013 = $0\-$394.09
• January 2014 = $0\-$394.09
• February 2014 = $0\-$394.09
• March 2014 = $0\-$394.09
• April 2014 = $0\-$394.09
• May 2014 = $0\-$394.09
• June 2014 = $0\-$394.09
• July 2014 = $107.51\-$286.58
• August 2014 = $10.92\-$275.66
• September 2014 =  $0\-$275.66
• October 2014 = $1.14\-$274.52
• November 2014 = $195.80\-$79.00
• December 2014 = $96.80\$17.80
• January 2015 = $305.26\$323.06
• February 2015 = $180\$503.06
• March 2015 = $100\$603.06
• April 2015 = $225\$828.06
• May 2015 = $303.08\$1,131.14
• June 2015 = $179.71\ $1,310.85
• July 2015 = $429.06\$1,739.91
• August 2015 = $0\$1,739.91
• September 2015 = $779.85\$2,519.76
• October 2015 = $754.25\$3,274.01
• November 2015 = $508.50\$3,782.51
• December 2015 = $777.23\$4,559.74
• January 2016 = $475\$5,034.74
• February 2016 = $637.40\$5,672.14
• March 2016 = $638.62\$6,310.76
• April 2016 = $132.47\$6,443.23
• May 2016 = $593.81\$7,037.04
• June 2016 = $685.75\$7,722.79
• July 2016 = $1,439.80\$9,162.59
• August 2016 = $900.90\$10,063.49
• September 2016 = $736.66\$10,800.15
• October 2016 = $644.98\$11,445.13
• November 2016 = $385.20\$11,830.33
• December 2016 = $844.08\$12,674.41
• January 2017 = $221.80\$12,896.21
• February 2017 = $195.80\$13,092.01
• March 2017 = $1,227.76\$14,319.77
• April 2017 = $1,499.80\$15,819.57
• May 2017 = $667.10\$16,486.67
• June 2017 = $744.26\$17,230.93
• July 2017 = $671.90\$17,902.83
• August 2017 = $695.12\$18,597.95
• September 2017 = $592.72\$19,190.67
• October 2017 = $622.21\$19,812.88
• November 2017 = $960.82\$20,773.70
• December 2017 = $1,359.04\$22,132.74
• January 2018 = $1,575.12\$23,707.86
• February 2018 = $1,125.87\$24,833.73
• March 2018 = $1,622.80\$26,456.53
• April 2018 = $408.84\$26,865.37
• May 2018 = $1,568.83\$28,434.20
• June 2018 = $961.08\$29,395.28
• July 2018 = $676.61\$30,071.89
• August 2018 = $586.49\$30,658.38
• September 2018 = $603.90\$31,262.28
• October 2018 = $754.51\$32,016.59
• November 2018 = $797.24\$32,813.83
• December 2018 = $463.24\$33,277.07
• January 2019 = $762.04\$34,039.11
• February 2019 =  $827.45\$34,866.56
• March 2019 = $611.82\$35,478.38
• April 2019 = $892.77\$36,371.15
• May 2019 = $619.98\$36,991.13
• June 2019 = $423.72\$37,414.85

brokeGIRLrich total income after 6 years: $37,414.85

I’ll spare you this weird wiggle tracking system and just tell you that between July 2019 and June 2023, this blog made an additional $39,177.48, bringing the brokeGIRLrich total gross income over 10 years to $76,592.33.

Or a net income of $69,631.90

The best run the blog has had was from August 2021 through November 2022, with only one month of income under $1000 and several over $2000.

The highest income month ever was December 2021 at $2,447.04.

And I honestly couldn’t tell you why on earth sometimes the income is really high and sometimes there’s barely any (like December 2020 with was $19.12 of income) when there’s no change in how I’m running things on this end.

I have noticed that when all of my other income is slow, the blog is inevitably slow too and in my highest income months ever in my regular career, the blog seems to rake it in. It makes no sense. I just chalk it all up to God really.

So those are the numbers on 10 years of blogging.

If I do make it 15, I’ll do another update then. In the meantime, thank you to everyone who has read or contributed the occasional guest post over the years or let me contribute a guest post to them. The personal finance-sphere is a really great group of folks. And for any of the stage managers who turn up and read this thing, I hope some of my ridiculous misadventures in side-hustles and sorting out my budget help save you some grief.

I’m significantly less brokeGIRL when this journey started, so fingers crossed I keep moving in the right direction!