The Direction of The Personal Finance Playbook

If you’re a frequent visitor to the blog (thank you!), then you may have noticed that the frequency of my posts has wavered lately.  This is mainly a result of two things, (1) a social life that has been a bit more active than I’m used to (ever since we moved to St. Louis), and (2) I’m at a lull in my life as a blogger.

The social life thing has actually been a nice thing to have to balance.  My life in Kansas City, at times, was too inactive.  More often than not, my wife Rachel and I did our own thing.  I loved that time of our lives, but because I have some introverted tendencies, I decided to make a concerted effort to make sure we did more fun stuff when we moved to St. Louis.  It’s also a place where we have lots of friends and family, so that was easy to do.  Now, at times, it feels like our life is a whirlwind of working and attending the social engagement du jour.  I think the ideal situation lies somewhere in the middle.  The key to life is balance, right?

The blogger lull is something I’ve heard about since I started blogging.  Everyone who starts blogging considers quitting at some point.  You start to ask yourself whether it’s worth the enormous amount of time that it takes, and ask if you’re giving more than you’re getting back (hint: you probably are).  Needless to say, I’ve been a little less than inspired lately.  I still love blogging.  I love writing about personal finance and investing.  I love building something online.  I’m not quitting, but it’s been easy to lower on my priority list.  When you aren’t inspired to write, it makes it tough to produce content that you’re proud of from a quality perspective.

To combat the lull (I have every intention of pushing through it), I have vision for where I’d like the blog to go and what I’d like it to be going forward.  I have some goals.  Here they are:

Interviews.  Last month I did two.  I enjoyed doing them.  I think there was a lot of great information in them.  They were interesting.  They were informative.  They broadened the perspective of the blog.  It gave the blog a careers/entrepreneurship slant.  People who read blogs tend to be people that like to know a lot about a lot of stuff.  Interviews perpetuate that.

Book Reviews.  I’d like to do at least one a month.  Reading keeps you thinking about ideas and coming up with your own.  It keeps you creative.  I think it’s also helpful when deciding what to read.  I honestly search blogger reviews, specifically, before deciding what to read next.

Re-Design.  I’m interested in re-designing the blog in Thesis theme.  I’d like to give it a more customized look.  I love the theme I’m using right now.  It’s a very clean, nice look, but I’d like to have something that’s a little more custom.  Something you won’t see anywhere else (at least not exactly).  I’m excited about doing this, and might recruit my friend Jessie, a graphic designer, to help make it better.  I don’t necessarily have a time frame for this, but hopefully I can make the change over sometime before December.

Reinforcements.  This is the thing I am absolutely the most excited about about the blog.  I have three people that have agreed to write a monthly spot on this blog.  Each of them brings a unique perspective and life situation.  All three of them are smarter than I am.  All three of them are amongst the smartest people I know.  They are all talented, interesting people, and I think adding their perspectives is going to make this one of the best blogs on the web (Obviously a bold statement, but one that I truly believe).

They are each going to write once a month.  At some point in the future, I might roll out more in depth bios – or maybe I’ll just let you learn about them as we go, but in any case here’s a short resume for each of them.

Katie Fink is brand new to the blog.  She’s the only contributor to the site that works in corporate America.  She recently got a new job for her publicly traded company.  She is a CPA, and is finishing up her MBA from one of the top B-Schools in the country.  She’s also one of the smartest, wittiest, funniest and most charming people that I know.  I personally can’t wait to read her stuff.  Our tentative date for her first post is October 22nd.

Josh (hasn’t given me the okay to use his last name yet) wrote a post for the blog before.  I’m not sure I know anyone that is more resourceful or better with their resources than Josh is.  Josh lives in New York and is a professional actor.  When the industry is slow, he supplements his income by running his own personal training business, teaching acting, and doing a little of this and that.  Josh is one of the smartest people I know.  He also happens to have an undergraduate business degree that he applies on a regular basis as an experienced New York haggler and informed consumer.  He’s currently in a play in NYC, so we’re not exactly sure when we’re going to schedule his post.  But it will be either in late October or early November.

RJ Scaringe is my brother-in-law, and, like Katie and Josh, is one of the smartest people I know.  RJ is going to bring a very unique perspective on several fronts.  He recently graduated with his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from MIT.  He’s currently working as a start-up entrepreneur.  He’s a business visionary, entrepreneur and expert in all things green living.  He’s going to be our resident green expert and hopefully share some of his entrepreneurship experiences.  He can routinely be found rubbing elbows with the dregs of society, including lobbyist, politicians, and other engineers that believe in his cause.

All three of these people are going to be writing about pretty much whatever they want, hopefully on a regular monthly basis (I’ll let them write as much or as little as they want, but I’m trying to at least get one post a month from each of them).  Hopefully, this will do the same thing that interviews do.  It will allow the reader to benefit from more perspectives.  I don’t know anything about working in corporate America, or living frugally in NYC, or technology start-ups.  All of these perspectives are going to enrich the blog and make it better.  It will keep me learning, too.  I have no doubt that their posts will raise the bar and improve my writing and research as well.  I’m looking forward to it.  I hope you are, too.  Any other suggestions any of you have are more than welcome as well.  Thanks for reading.

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Tagged as: blogging, kansas city, Katie Fink, reflections, RJ Scaringe, St. Louis, The Home Gym, Thesis theme