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Today, on January 28th, marks three years since I published my first personal finance blog post on Spills Spot. You can read recaps from my first year and second year.
It’s crazy to think that it’s been three years, and 165 posts. What most readers don’t know is that Spills Spot actually started as a small sports blog in March 2015, as a portfolio to help showcase writing samples for potential job opportunities. After struggling to find a full-time job after graduating in 2013, I finally found the right fit. In May 2015, I began making $15/hour doing Content Marketing, and after three months became a salaried employee.
Landing that job and finally making consistent income ignited my passion for personal finance. My wife and I had been married for about a year and had a combined $40,000 of student loan debt, plus a $15,000 car loan. My parents had taught me the basics, but I realized that in order to make significant progress in our finances I needed to take that understanding to the next level. Money is one of the biggest sources of stress and conflict in relationships, and I wanted to do whatever I could to remove that from our lives.
Learning About Personal Finance
I began to consume dozens of personal finance blogs, podcasts, and books. We attended Financial Peace University at our church and began budgeting together. Slowly as my knowledge grew, we began to see progress in our finances. Our savings were growing and our debt was shrinking. I found myself realizing that I wanted to share what I was learning in my money journey with as many people as possible, to help them along their own journey.
For some reason personal finance is rarely taught in schools, and this leaves many people left to fend for themselves and learn through trial by error. My number one focus is to inspire my generation to be more interested in personal finance and improve at managing their money.
On January 28th, 2016, I pressed publish on my first personal finance post on Spills Spot, and thus begun a new journey.
Looking Back on My Blogging Journey
It’s been an incredible three years. I’ve continue to refine my writing, built new skills, formed bonds within the personal finance community, and strived to make an impact in people’s lives.
This year brought more steps in the journey, and some significant accomplishments including:
- Paying off our student loans
- Paying off our car loan and becoming debt free
- Maxing out my 401k and our Roth IRA’s
- Writing a free budgeting guide, A Beginner’s Guide to Overhauling Your Budget.
- Having one of my posts be featured on Rockstar Finance, and a few others curated on the site
- Recording 4 podcast interviews
- Taking the Facebook Ads for Bloggers course and implementing the strategies to help increase site traffic
Just Getting Started
These past three years have involved hundreds of hours of effort, but it has all been well worth it. I’m as motivated as ever to continue to grow the site and reach more people, and there are hundreds more topics I want to write about! I have grown as an individual, my ideas and perspectives continue to become further refined, and hopefully people’s lives have been positively impacted. I still love to write, and I love thinking of all the possibilities of where this blog can go in the coming years.
Thank you for following along with me throughout this journey at Spills Spot! I promise there is plenty more to come this year and beyond. I wouldn’t be here without you!
For more, check out my Top 10 Posts of 2018 and 2019 Goals