Two years?

Ten?

What if it was just a few minutes a day?

…ok. This is starting to sound a little like those get-rich-quick Instagram digital marketing scams.

And that’s not what I’m getting at.

I’ve been thinking a little bit about the income from my blog the past week.

I’ve been at this for 11 years. And I didn’t start with any delusions of getting rich. I just thought it would be nice if the blog made enough money to cover the expenses of running it – which have always been pretty minimal.

But over time, some years have had pretty decent income. And over the last 11 years, I’ve netted close to $80,000.

And I was thinking, dang, $80k, but also, dang… this has been a lot of work at times for $80k.

In the beginning, my blog mostly just helped keep me focused on learning more and more about personal finance – which has honestly probably been worth a lot more than $80k to me.

But over time, most of my saving and investing has become largely automated. My primary job became so busy that most side hustles, one of the things I enjoyed writing up the most, got pushed to the backburner, and life became very… reliable.

Not the most exciting content for a personal finance blog. So writing these posts became a little more of a struggle. I don’t have tons of wins to report because the wins brewing (hopefully) are largely aimed for retirement.

And from time to time over the last five years, I’ve considered calling it quits with brokeGIRLrich because I’m not always sure the stress is worth it.

But then I thought a little about that $80k and while I didn’t deposit it all directly into an investment account (though some of that has certainly gone into retirement and brokerage accounts), it occurred to me that the effort I’ve put in, at the fairly frugal rates I live within, is like two years of income.

I could, theoretically, retire two years earlier because of brokeGIRLrich.

And suddenly I felt a lot more positive about the venture. It has been a lot of work at times, but always on my own schedule and to the depth and extent I want to do it.

Even more so, at a 7% rate of return, which isn’t guaranteed but has happened plenty of years, that number, if I had invested it, doubles about every 7-8 years.

I just turned 40. If I invested that amount and aimed for about $40k of spending a year, if I was aiming to retire at say, 67 – 27 more years from now.

I would have already reduced that by 2 years to 65.

By the time I was 48, without adding another penny, I’d have reduced that to 63. By 56, it would be down to 59.

And, if I kept blogging, by 51 I could potentially add another 2 years of saved income.

This silly little side hustle, on a topic I overall enjoy, could easily knock 10 years off of the number of years I have to work.

I mean, it probably won’t. I tend to spend a fair bit of what comes in, but considered in that light, the effort seems a lot more worth it. And no one is stopping me from just investing it all – only my own stupid candle buying addictions and desire to eat takeaway too often.

I suppose the point of this is that little changes, with a nice long runway of time, can really add up.

What are you doing to escape the rat race a little earlier?