I'm Thinking About Giving Up Blogging

I still love to read blogs, but it's hard for me to find the time, passion, and desire to post consistently. For the rest of this month, I should have more free time. I'm going to try to post more frequent, short posts and see if that helps me get back into blogging.

Personal Experiences

It amazes me how many personal finance blogs are now out there. It seems like every week I find a new blog that I want to subscribe to. It kinds of makes me wonder why someone would want to read my blog. My posts are not as useful, well thought out, nor frequent as other bloggers I admire.

In the end, what we're all sharing about is our personal experiences with our own writing styles and our own struggles. I struggle with an dilettante's obsession with personal finance. I've always been more of a generalist in life than a specialist and it shows in the number of extracurricular activities I was involved in while in high school, the things I studied while in college, and even to some extent my career. I wish I could be more driven to track things like Madison at MyDollarPlan or even as dedicated as Millionaire Mommy Next Door with my investment plan. I wish I could devote the time and dedication come up with a solid long term plan rather than just a general idea of where we want to be in at major milestones in our lives.

I just finished reading Your Money or Your Life: (aff link) which I checked out from the local library. I had skimmed through the book before when I was at a relative's house and saw a copy. That was back when I was first getting into personal finance and I thought that a lot of the ideas seemed pretty kooky (e.g. what are you trading your life energy for), but now it seems like a good thing to sit down and actually do the program.

I've convinced C that we should read the book together and do the exercises together since we need to do a better job of managing our finances together. I hope that C and I can read the book and finish the exercises by the end of the year.

I'm Back

After almost an 11 month hiatus, I decided to get back in the swing of things.

The real reason I'm back is I finally decided to tell my husband, C, about the blog. He was surprised, but he encouraged me to continue writing in it.

Since I've been gone from my blog, a lot has changed in the PF Blog world.

A lot has also changed in my life - the biggest change is that I'm now married. Being married brings a lot of blessings and challenges to one's life. That's a post for another day.

Financially I am chugging along. C is not as into personal finance as I am. As a result, it's a bit challenging to get him on board with planning everything I want to do. At the time of our marriage, C was unemployed. However he received two job offers 2 weeks after we returned from our honeymoon.

This post is a bit disjointed since there are so many things to update. Maybe my mind will be more clear tomorrow morning.

Is there a need for so many pf blogs?

Lately I have been thinking about the proliferation of personal finance blogs. I began my blog right around when the number of pf blogs seemed to explode. While I do get a decent number of hits (I average just under 30 a day), I wonder if the pf blog community is becoming too large. There any many blogs written by people with similar experiences at similar places in life. Is the space becoming too crowded? Are experienced old voices and promising new voices getting lost in the shuffle?

I have thought about whether my own blog adds any value to the stratosphere of the web. My conclusion on the status of pf blogging is the act of blogging is therapeutic. Blogging about my finances allows me to express myself and provides me with more accountability. It's true that I have not revealed all the specific details many other bloggers share on a monthly basis. However, I still feel the need to share specific ups and downs with my readers. Thus while my blog probably adds very little actual value to the community, it provides me (and hopefully some readers) with some insights, accountability, and information.

Is pfblogs.org becoming too elite?

If it weren't for pfblogs.org I would probably have 0 visitors. I got the temporary gold star for 2 months for having the pfblogs.org blogroll. I would donate to pfblogs.org since I think it's a great website, however, the privacy concerns prevent me from doing so. Are other donation methods accepted?

I think it's a great boon to have friends of pfblogs.org posts highlighted, but to me it also strengthens the divide between the members and the nonmembers. It makes membership more elite and signifies the divide between friends and non-friends.

I want to be part of the in crowd too.