2 year blogging anniversary (and 38th birthday!)

Here’s a look back on 2 years of blogging on my 38th birthday.

It’s been two years since I first started blogging and so much has changed in that time. For a start we only had one kid and now we have two. I was settled in my job and now I’ve changed job twice. The world was preoccupied by Brexit and now it’s Covid. But haven’t changed that much at all. I still feel like I’m the same person maybe I have one or two grey hairs more and my weight is maybe up a kilo or two but I’m still me. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose?

First on the name: we (GFF & the Lady) have two kids a boy – the Master/M, born 2016 and a girl – the Little Lady/LL born 2018. That combination makes a Gentleman’s Family and the blogs about finances right – so that’s where GFF comes from. Turns out it’s a bit too long for Twitter but who cares. {LINK}

I’m not going to write about how our lives have changed in the last 2 years but I will simply say that the fear that’s driven me to want to become financially independent now seems a little irrational. It’s less what you have and more what you do. But that’s another story.

Blogging

This post was inspired (indeedably)  and when I think of the bloggers that I’ve read for years – people like Monevator, Retirement Investing Today, Simple Living in Somerset, The Escape Artist, DIY Investor, Quietly Saving and many more – I don’t think that I’ve got anything better to say than they have already said themselves. I’m very easily influenced and often my own “ideas” are just rehashed musings from someone else. So the struggle to remain relevant and interesting to readers and detailed enough without writing long boring posts is always there. There are great bloggers out there who can explain things like the 4% rule or SIPP/ISA or how to make a budget or can tell you which blogs to read or whatever. It’s also hard to write a good post which gains readers attention and grabs and some of the most popular bloggers are adept at what I’d call popcorn posts – light, sugary, easy to ingest but contain no nutritional value and won’t fill you up.

So blogging isn’t easy and it’s a challenge to stay original, make sense and keep people entertained. If I’v done any of those things to you then I’m happy – and hope you keep reading.

Top 5 Best Posts

I’ve written over 200 posts and had over 100,000 views. Some post really gained traction (including a feature on Rockstar Finance for one). It’s funny to think that the route to “success” in blogging is often how much attention you get from influencers – one good link can do more than 10 good posts. Anyway, I digress; my top 5 posts in order of views were.

• I’m a millionaire but don’t look it
• Millionaire part 2
• What I learnt from my Dad’s early retirement
• Dad’s early retirement part 2 (part 3 still in draft btw)
• We’re all going on a Mortgage Holiday

Top 5 Worst Posts

Of course I’ve written some rubbish too. Some that I put a lot of effort into didn’t work well and others fell flat on their face. The below are maybe worth a look – they are mostly about family stuff and mixing family with finances is difficult to get a good audience. My bottom 5 post in order of views were:

• Fatherhood (Part II) – 13 views
• Hard Lucks and Let down – 5 views
• One week to go! – 5 views + 7
• Back to work – 5 views
• PPI check – the price of prudence – 21 views

Top 2 Personal Favourites

I enjoy the process of writing and if anyone thought that I had a flare for it, I would be very happy to hear that. My personal favourite style would be satire, if I could come up with the jokes and write them down quick enough to avoid forgetting them or losing motivation. My two favourite satire posts are a humorous (hopefully) take on financial pitfalls we could all face.

Thistle Wright Asset Trust – a satire on the golf club financial advisers and family office wealth managment firms of old(?)

GFF’s guide to Making Loads of Money – (luckily the Liverpool Britannia Hotel was commandeered to house the homeless during covid saving my skin!)

Family Finances & the Future

Today is actually my birthday, so I’m now one year older. It’s a good time to take stock on what’s going on. I think that our family finances situation is resolved, we’ve reached Financial Independence so I can relax a bit. The Lady even got a new job this week! Compared to 2 years ago we are better off financially but life’s not all about money. Longevity is now a risk that I’m getting old – I’m more likely to die before 65 than go broke! So what if I might be out of work soon but I don’t really care. I’ve wasted enough of my life on work as it is – plus with the kids getting older, the stupid commute I was doing just reduces family time. If it’s a choice between money and your life, I’ve got enough money thank you – time to live instead!

I think that blogging in a (semi)-anonymous way gives you the freedom to write what you like and also the duty to stand by your word. The pen is mightier than the sword and all that. But I also think that there are enough good quality FI/RE blogs out there and more come along all the time and originally I thought that the blog could be about Family as well as Finance. Turns out that the “Mummy Blog” genre is teaming with great blogs out there but for Family Finances there’s maybe a gap in the market or nobody is all that interested.

I hope that I can keep going for another 2 years. Maybe I’ll shift more towards the family angle. Some posts were received in the past but they require a lot of effort and as a family we have a passion for travel and now it not the right time to start a Family Travel slash Finances blog (or maybe the perfect time). Who knows what the future will bring.

Thanks for reading until the end. GFF