Why Financial Independence is Easier Than Blogging
Why Financial Independence is Easier Than Blogging
Ok, I admit it, bloggers tend to be a little self involved. So before you roll you’re eyes at yet another post about the process of blogging, hang in with me for a minute. The point of this post is to show that financial independence is simple. Don’t be fooled by this statement. Simple does not mean easy! In order to meet your goals, you will have to work long hours and spend years planning. But the path is relatively straight forward. Can anyone do it? I’m not sure. But I will emphatically say that for me, financial independence is easier than blogging. Much easier. In fact, from the time I started my first job as physician to financial independence was about 12 years. I have blogged since 2005 (13 years) and I still am struggling to figure how to do this right.
I would say that most people with a reasonable job, frugal habits, and normal expectations will eventually reach financial independence.
The majority of people who start a blog will quit within six months.
Creativity
There are a million paths to financial freedom. Although creativity helps, it is not a required skill. Yes you can supercharge the path with side hustles, home businesses, and all out ingenuity. But you don’t have to. You can go to work everyday at whatever it is you do, max out retirement accounts, save 50% of after tax income, and 19 years later you will be ready to retire.
Financial independence is easier than blogging. Without creativity, a blog dies. People stop reading. No matter how good your content is, if you cannot present it in a pleasing manner with a snappy title, no one will read.
You have to continuously create new and relevant topics in which to expound upon. You have to learn about these topics and master them.
There Are No Nights and Weekends
No matter how onerous the job, almost everyone gets at least some nights and weekends off. There is also well deserved vacation a few times a year. Personal finance is much the same way. We take intellectual as well as physical breaks every now and then. This is healthy and allows us to recharge and re enter our routine without burning out.
Financial independence is easier than blogging. How many bloggers do you know that take vacations? Oh, they take vacations. But they are constantly either gathering material or actually writing their next post while out-of-town. The same goes for nights and weekends. Bloggers never rest. They only take a prolonged break at their own peril and risk to readership.
Between writing and promotion, blogging is a 24hr/day, 7day/week experience.
Pay For Performance
In the financial independence realm, most of the time, working harder means getting paid more. If you work an extra day at the office, develop a side hustle, or even create a new frugal maneuver, you see the monetary rewards immediately. You can watch as the dollars stack up in your account. Furthermore, money works for itself. You can invest your cash and watch it grow and compound while you sleep.
Financial independence is easier than blogging. Nothing about your blog will form on it’s own. Readership will ebb unless you proactively go out there and market your site. Rewards are fleeting and non monetary most of the time. You can monetize your blog, but most of the daily chores will add nothing to your pocket.
All Joking Aside
I love pursuing financial independence. And I love blogging. It is very clear to me that financial independence is easier than blogging. But don’t be fooled. This post is not really about blogging. It’s about reaching financial freedom.
The path forward is often simple. Work hard. Maximize your W2 as much as possible. Save. Invest. Think about side hustling. That’s it. There is no magical formula. No huge time-saving hack. Your work and time will compound much like your investments.
And then one day you will have enough.
Financial Independence Is Easier Than…
Being a doctor.
Being a father.
Writing a book.
Being a good spouse.
The list goes on and on.
How about you? What do you struggle with that is easier than financial independence? Why do you struggle?
By the way. If you enjoy the blog and want to hear what my voice sounds like. Check out the Millionaires Unveiled podcast episode 28 by clicking below.
You are 100% right that blogging has a lot of behind the scenes activities that most readers have no clue about. I used to think wow look at all the revenue generated by sites like white coat and all you have to do is post your thoughts 2 to 3 times a week. Now that I am 2 weeks into my blog I know that nothing can be further from the truth. Although each post takes about 5 min to read I figure I put in at least 4 hours per post writing content, creating hyperlinks, and then finding suitable images. I love the end product but boy does it take a ton of work to make it look like it does. Only a select few (those that do it themselves) can appreciate the effort (as now I do theirs). Initially it was also like learning a new foreign language as I had no background in web design or even familiarity with WordPress. Thankfully it is a quick learning curve and trial by FIRE (see what I did there?) and now I am much more efficient. Mind you this is when I already have a topic in my head (about 2 weeks prior to launching my blog I wrote 27 posts as the topics came freely). I’m scared but hoping that the well doesn’t run dry. To protect me from going insane I have limited my posts to launch 1x/wk (Tues) with an occasional extra Thursday post. I can’t fathom keeping up with a 3 post/wk blog. Jim Dahle gave me advice/warning saying it doesn’t matter if you have the best content on the web if you don’t attract eyeballs (that is the part I am struggling with now). Hopefully word spreads and my readership grows. That would inspire me to continue and hopefully break through the 6 mo lifespan barrier.
I think it all takes time! If you are like me, you will see content ideas everywhere in life so hopefully the ideas will keep coming. You couldn’t find a better mentor than Jim Dahle!
Well you’re not making the blogging thing any easier on yourself by posting every day 😉
Very true that blogs can wither without constant attention, but many bloggers are not in it at all for money and can take big vacations and not post and still keep an audience. One that immediately comes to mind is The Power of Thrift. Anita has a huge audience and posts maybe once a month. She could monetize now and make decent money, but she doesn’t really care.
And AWESOME job on the podcast, hope to hear more in the future!
I know. I know. The frequent posting is a little much-but I just feel like I have to write everyday. True, there are some who are less engaged and get viewership, but it’s the exception.
Thanks for listening to the podcast!
Yeah the daily posts probably make it far worse. I post 2x a week. Half the week my blog activity is more marketing. It ramps up though the more you post.
I know daily posting makes things worse, but it’s the part I enjoy most. The actual writing, to me, is easier than the editing and marketing!
I’m so glad to hear that someone (The Power of Thrift) posts rarely and has garnered an audience. DocG, I don’t know how you do it every day! I totally think posting daily and writing as well as you do is harder than FI.
Now, I’m off to listen to you on Millionaires Unveiled. What a treat!
Posting is not hard for me…it’s getting people to read what I post! Thanks for listening to the podcast. Hope you enjoy.
Yeah, I’m one of these weird people who money is kinda easy for at the moment – now I’m not in American Doctor league, but I’m doing ok. So yeah, financial independence is easy, and blogging is harder for me. But I’m loving the challenge, and the opportunity to learn new skills is good for me.
I have the podcast queued to listen to……….it did seem kinda familiar with the details, but I couldn’t place it – now I know it’s you!
I have learned so many skills from blogging. Good point!
I think both are simple in theory, but hard to execute in real life. With financial independence, you need discipline to save and invest. Many people will never reach financial independence. Or they may have to stop working by necessity and live a lower lifestyle. Blogging is hard no doubt. It’s like a 24/7 part time job. I’m always thinking about my blog. But so far it’s fun and rewarding that I can build something from scratch and watch it grow.
They both fall into the easier said than done category!
I think you’re right. Financial independence is easy once you set yourself up for success. Save and invest consistently and you’ll get there. Blogging is much more proactive.
FI requires a lot of work up front, but you can coast after that. Good observation.
I think this is one of our messages. FI is simple. We all know and can teach the steps. It might take a lot of work, but its not a hard concept to grasp. Although I chose blogging for fun, I could have just as easily substituted physics, or playing violin, etc.
FI is “easy” when it comes to the numbers, but not so when it comes to the dedication required to get there. But you’re right, if you can set and forget your savings each month, it can go on autopilot. No matter how big of a blogger you are though, you have to continually push forward new content etc. Well, unless you’re MMM 😉
Yes. I can get my head around my finances. Blogging still puzzles me. Yes MMM figured it out. I think he’s smarter than me!
It’s called marketing. Actually I find your blog far more interesting than MMM
Thanks…I guess I better keep running the lawn mower!
In today’s investing environment as a plan FI is trivial. You can buy quality dirt cheap investments, for dirt cheap commissions (thank you Mr Bogel) and store them in vehicles that grow tax free and distribute tax free like Roth IRA’s. If you put $5500 a year into a Roth and $6500 when $6500 becomes available for catch up, in a 50:50 total stock/total bond portfolio and in 40 years you will have close to $1.5M in the bank. If you are married and your wife does the same, 3 million bucks baby, not to mention social security. $5500 is $460 bucks a month.
All the reasons you list is why I don’t write a blog, especially a monetized blog, and double especially own a blogging/media syndicate. The experience would be like running a lawn mower 24/7 outside my open window. I’d rather win the lotto.
I think your lawn mower analogy says it all.
I agree that blogging is hard. Marketing is hard. Figuring out wordpress is hard. I am posting once a week. I think this is about right. My blog is attracting lots of informative comments. Several commenters are commenting here as well. Questions lead me to look something up which leads to a post. I do not understand SEO at all. I will work on improvements and possible monetization after I retire my practice. Cheerio.
Yes. I stumble over Bluehost all the time!
Hey Hatton1. I am by no means an expert but I can try to share what I learned about SEO. First and foremost you need the plugin Yoast installed and activated. Once it’s activated (at least for me) when I look at all the posts I have written (scheduled and published) there is a traffic light sign column (red means SEO issues, green is good to go).
Next open a post you want to optimize. Scroll down till you see the Yoast Section. One of the big things is you want to make a keyword. It can be 1, 2, or 3 words in length. The key is you want that keyword to show up in your actual body of the post as many times as possible (I was told it should be a minimum of 2% of all words). How do you find the percentage it shows up? In another tab, open up: https://wordcounter.net/ Now go back to your post and click anywhere in the body. do CTRL + A (selects everything), then CTRL+C (copy). Go to word counter and then in that section do CTRL + V (paste). In the right side bar there is a section called KEYWORD DENSITY. x1, x2, x3 Select each one and see what word or words shows up the most and pick the most appropriate for your keyword (again try to pick one >2% density). Above the place you put the keyword density there is a button that says EDIT SNIPPET. Click that. It will bring up SEO title. You can copy and paste your original post title there but if it doesn’t contain the keyword, it gives you bonus points if you put it. Say my title is FINANCIAL MISTAKES. My keyword happens to be house. I would then do this: FINANCIAL MISTAKES | House as my SEO title. Below that is a meta description. This is basically a summary of what you want someone scanning a google search to see. So type an intro/summary of your post (keep typing till it turns green b/c it needs to be a certain length. By doing just these 3 things I have made all my SEO status lights change to green. You can also do some minor bonus things like select any image you have and click on the edit/pencil icon. In the meta description do a description that can include your keyword. Hope this helps
Thanks for these tips Xrayvsn!
No problem. I made use of a 1 month service using Word press live ($150/mo can cancel anytime). It gave me live support w a WordPress agent who could do a screen share and basically told me what to do. Can call as many times as you want (m-f 9-5 mst). They took away the headache of web design and everything else I had issues with. Allowed me to concentrate on content. Highly recommend if just starting out. I was getting frustrated before I used them and glad I did
Thanks xrayvsn
Commenting on other people’s blogs is way more fun than writing. Maybe I should have just kept my blog private but I bought that dang bluhost thing and I need to use it up!!
DocG, when I have insomnia I go on Feedly and seeing a post by you brings a smile to my face. So thanks.
Monetizing? Bahahaha- I’m just glad I don’t stop before that 6 month mark. And I was happy I had gone past the 3 month cause I thought THAT was when most people stopped.
Wait a minute DocG, I think Dr. MB just implied that your blog cures insomnia! That’s damning with faint praise if I ever heard it! Uh Oh, I’m dozing off now…zzzzzzzz.
If that is the case it is praise indeed. I should be able to monetize easily! No?
I think both FI and blogging can be easy, it just depends on where the goal posts are. If the goal is to achieve super obese FIRE and run a highly successful monetized blog (e.g. WCI, MMM, etc.), then both are VERY hard. The path to both is “simple”… but definitely NOT easy.
That said, I continue to be impressed by your rate of writing a post a day. Your content is always compelling, refreshing, and often provides a different perspective on already interesting topics.
Super Obese Fire…I love that!