Some Thoughts on Nine Years of Blogging

Some Thoughts on Nine Years of Blogging | brokeGIRLrich

N.I.N.E. years.

My blog is hands down the longest relationship I’ve ever been in.

My blog’s birthday and mine are very close to each other, so I feel a strong passing of time towards the end of July every year.

When I started this in 2013, I had no idea what I was doing, only that I never wanted to be trapped in a job I really hated again.

In 2022 – I’m still not really sure what I’m doing but I haven’t been trapped in a job I’ve hated since. I’ve stayed at some jobs longer than I should’ve and dealt with some nonsense I probably should’ve walked away from sooner, but all in and all, I was never again in the situation where I had to stay.

So – success?

I think the key way blogging about personal finance helped this goal is that this ridiculous, rambling blog is pretty much my money diary. It keeps me accountable. The accountability updates that I write every month are, quite honestly, more for me than you.

In 2013, I was about to turn 29 and my first accountability update was $30,651.41. This was mostly thanks to the guy I dated when I was 25 who badgered me into opening an IRA (so wherever you are, Doug, thank you!). My last net worth update was $305,839.71. Not terrible for a massive expense year after cash flowing a move to England and tuition and the nightmare that is the US stock market at the moment.

Tracking things. Setting goals. Taking time each month to reflect and consider my strategies – it made a world of difference.

The community is pretty awesome too. I love reading about frugal people sharing great hacks that could help me (or that entertain me and make me think they are insane cause personal finance is really so personal).

Early in my blogging days I met a ton of cool bloggers in person who were all incredibly encouraging. As a whole, I still find this community wildly encouraging. I’ve been straight up astounded watching the success of several of the folks from those early days meet ups while I keep chugging along with my solid little side hustle over here and my primary focus on my weird entertainment career.

This blogging side hustle has had its ups and downs. Until April of 2021, I posted three days a week, every single week. I took April 2021 off in a fit of digital burnout but actually found I missed blogging and returned at one post a week that I write, plus any other content that actually makes the blog money.

This has also been a bit of a roller coaster. Some months the blog makes a surprising amount of money and the next month, it’ll make like $21.16. But the balance to that is that I’ve really put minimal work into the whole thing. There are periods where I have a lot of free time and spend a significant amount of that on brokeGIRLrich and there are times when my professional life is bananas and I don’t do anything more than just get my posts up for the week.

Speaking of making money –overall the blog has been a pretty decent side hustle over the years. You can check out the full recap of the first five years of blogging here but essentially, in the first five years, the blog made $30,071.89. Since then, I’d estimate that amount has doubled. Next year, if I’m still around, I’ll do a proper breakdown again.