We just wrapped up two years of Frugal Jon. And I’m confident that year three is going to be the best yet. I have good plans of what I want to write about. More on that later. Right now I want to step through how year two went, compared to year one. There were certain points this year when I felt like a real writer and the blog had some wins. But there’s plenty of room for improvement (where were all the September-December posts?). Here’s what went right, what I did poorly, and what’s in store for Frugal Jon in 2023.
Part of my plan is to form better habits around writing so that I work it in every day. In June, July, and part of August, I was writing 500 words almost every day. And it produced a lot of writing! Unfortunately I was dedicating all of my writing time to writing and very little to editing. So now I have a whole bunch of drafts written that aren’t good enough to see the light of day. Part of my task this year is to rework these posts and get them out. A lot of effort went into them and I don’t want them to go to waste.
2022 Stats
In 2022, I published 17 posts. That’s an average of only 1.4 posts per month. The easiest goal for me this year is to crank that all the way up to 2 posts per month. Breaking down the posts by season, I wrote 3 in the winter, 4 in the spring, 8 in the summer, and 2 in the fall. Almost half of my blog posts were written in the summer. Those 8 posts in the summer led to some momentum in page views here on the blog. Momentum that quickly ran out when I stopped publishing posts in September. Focusing on blog posts published is a lagging metric, a measure of things completed. I was writing best when I focused on the leading metric of writing 500 words per day. Practicing and tracking a leading metric like that one is vital to having a bigger year here at Frugal Jon.
So What Have I Been Doing?
Yes, my writing output has been poor this fall, but I haven’t been completely stagnant. Since July, my reading life has entered a Renaissance. Like a lot of younger readers, I drifted away from regularly reading around late high school/early college. I sporadically read since then, but starting this summer I’ve read more than I have in a long time. I started to track the books I finished and from July to December, I read 20 books. The subjects were a good mix of popular history (3 Erik Larsen books in a row) to pragmatic nonfiction (Cal Newport, and others) with some Michael Crichton mixed in for good measure. All this reading will make me a better writer and exposure to new ideas gives me interesting things to write about. Even with my blog output faltering to close out 2022, the increase in my reading life was a huge success.
The Content of the Blog
This will always be a personal finance focused blog. To date, I’ve covered a lot of well trod personal finance territory. I may be the millionth blogger to talk about Roth IRAs and index funds. The best personal finance advice is pretty boring- long term, sustained saving isn’t flashy! But to stand out in a crowded blogging space, I need to branch out. One outcome from all my reading is a synthesis of different perspectives on building a fulfilling life. The financial independence movement is one vision of how to build that fulfilling life, but there are plenty of FI adjacent ideas out there that are compelling. I plan on writing more about these slightly alternative visions of a life well lived and how personal finance intersects with them. No, this is not Frugal Jon abandoning frugality or even the pursuit of financial independence. That’s still a major goal for me. There are plenty of blogs that cover the gory math and details behind how to reach financial independence. I want to cover different territory, focusing on how what we value in life should influence our financial priorities and career. Good personal finance supports a satisfying lifestyle, but is not what makes a life satisfying to live.
Being Happy with Successes
This year was full of successes for me as well. Even with the market down 20% this year, my wife and I still put a decent amount into our investment accounts. And got a good discount on the stock market! We used the ongoing federal student loan repayment pause to completely pay off my wife’s private loans in August. After that, we’ve paid off chunks of the interest paused federal loans too. We continue to save for a house that we can be in a good position to buy as the housing market continues to decline. On the blog side, a post of mine was featured in a personal finance blog newsletter. And I had my highest daily views this year. I have a stable job that I mostly enjoy. And most importantly, my little boys are growing big and healthy. Life, in general, is good, which is certainly something to cherish and celebrate.
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