On August 5th of 2008 I put up my first post. I had no idea if anyone would read about my journey, nevertheless care about what was going on in my life, but I wanted to share my thoughts with whoever wanted to read them. Since putting that first post up I have seen somewhere between 570,000 and 630,000 pageviews (analytics vs sitemeter) and while that is probably a day’s worth of views for a news site I am pretty happy with it, especially since most of the first year or so I was getting under 15 page views a day.
I figured I would go through the full archive of My Journey to Millions and pick out some of my favorite posts in hopes that some of my newer readers can see that my writing was actually even worse back then! Some of the tax information may have changed but I think these posts stand the test of time almost a half decade later.
It is funny as I built this list there doesn’t seem to be a connection between the topic of the posts, some are financial planning based, some are just about my life, and some are law based. While there is no topical question I think the style in each of the picks chosen were me being me.
Favorite Posts from 2008
- Everybody Needs a Will
- My Greatest Asset is My Wife
- Education is Not Always Tax Deductible
- It only took about 20 days before I told The Wife about my blog
- Are CDs worth it? Maybe I should do a follow up on the topic since I would LOVE to have some of those interest rates today
- Who Cares that the FDIC raised the insurance limits
- Socialism is never a good idea
- To Know Thyself is the Only Way to Overcome your Deficiencies
- Simplest Personal Finance Advice for Newlyweds
- The Wife and Finally Implement a Plan and Build a Financial Road Map
- 15 vs 30 Year Mortgages why I like Longer
Favorite Posts from 2009
- Goals for 2009 – Funny for me to read it. As much as things have changes some things have not!
- The Wife and I almost get ripped off while on vacation!
- Forget your RMD? You can beg the IRS for Forgiveness
- Accountability Leads to Success – Easily one of my favorite posts of all time that doesn’t have to do with my personal life
- Life Insurance and Annuities May be Right for Retirement
- Top 10 Reasons you need a Will ASAP – This is when I found out my father was having major surgery
- A real life story of how lack of diversification destroyed a client’s retirement
- Life is More than Finances – 14 hours spent at a hospital for my father’s surgery
- A reminder that an average of 10% investment returns doesn’t guarantee success
- Planning for Children with Special Needs Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3
- Colleges are the Next Big Bubble to Burst – A theory I am still believe in but am waiting for it to hit
- 9 Months and I paid off $12,000 of Credit Card Debt!
- My First of many posts about Whole Life Insurance
- An apology post I had to write
- reasons a 401(k) is better than an IRA – My first of many posts about how there are very few bright line rules in Personal finance
- Comparing the United States against Marx’s Communist Manifesto
- Announcement of a Child The Wife and I were Expecting, the subsequent loss of that child (still hard for me to read today) and The Wife’s views on the situation.
- New York Defaults getting thrown out because of bad service (and bad attorneys)
- 2008 Tax Statistics prove that Multiple Streams of Income Are Key to Success
- Lesson Learned the Hard Way – Some Lenders do Not Apply Extra Payments to Principal
- Buying Life Insurance on a Child Part 1 and Part 2 (advice where I eventually practiced what I preached)
- Using Whole Life Insurance to Build a Pension Like Stream of Income
- Ode to my Dog
- Living Paycheck to Paycheck Could Cost you Your Life
- There were Never Good Ole Days when it Comes to Personal Finance
- I don’t Understand Personal Finance Blogging – A problem I still have today
- What did African Americans Think President Obama was Going to Do? Some fun, “Evan you are a racist” type of comments
- Four Words in Personal Finance that PISS me off and The Wife Says them ALL the time – She has since stopped saying them as we got older
Favorite Posts from 2010
- Goals and Objectives of 2010
- The Wife’s Post about Messing with my Manhood
- The Basics of Personal Finance are the Same Regardless of Income Level
- Is There Anything More Important than Money When Talking about a Job?
- Three Common Qualities of High Net Worth Individuals’ Balance Sheets
- Good Humanitarian or PF D-Bag?
- The Very First Start of my Dividend Investment Portfolio
- My first attempt to narrow down my Dividend choices
- Defending Financial Planners
- A Million Bucks is still a LOT of money
- Asking Whether the Health Care Bill was Constitutional – Boy did I miss the mark on this one, huh
- What is Valuable May not be Worth Anything
- Coming up with a theory on Cell Phone Insurance
- A real life reminder of wanting financial freedom – Side note this guy has since changed jobs and is loving life!
- My Easy Fix for Illegal Immigration
- We are expecting a child! – VERY welcomed after the shit we went through in 2009
- Most People that Tell you that they don’t want to be wealthy are LYING
- Faith Based Investing May be a Terrible Idea
- Some People may Need a Nice Car
- People who Refuse to Change What Makes the Miserable Drives me Nuts
- How I try to overcome paralysis by analysis
- Why Teachers Anger me – I still get comments on this post every so often lol
- Would you Opt out of the Social Security Ponzi Scheme?
- A letter to my unborn son on my 2nd Blogging anniversary
- How I have to keep myself Cash Poor
- Are Generation Y-ers Different? Do I follow the stereotypes?
- My Theory on whether Money Buys Happiness
- Get off your Ass and Follow Through with your Business Idea
- If you have a Child with Special Needs Please Check with a Financial or Legal Professional
- I don’t understand the Early Retirement Extreme Movement
- Example of a High Net Worth Balance Sheet that Inspires me
- Do I think about Money too much?
- Do You know what You spend per year?
- Introducing my Baby Boy! I can’t believe how little he was!
- Review of my 2010 Goals
Favorite Posts of 2011
- 2011 Goals and Objectives (written in 2010)
- Past Wasn’t as Good as you Remember it
- I came up with a new way to track and share my net worth – I updated it every month but only share a few in this list
- Practicing what I preach when I bought Life Insurance on my Child
- Stop Bitching and created a Second Stream of Income
- It is Okay to Just want things
- My Favorite thing about paying off debt
- My Biggest Fear Laid out there for Everyone to read
- Investment Services Don’t make Sense
- Sharing my First Experience Being an Entrepreneur
- Do you Compartmentalize Spending Decisions?
- Are you the Kind of person that Best to Win? Place? or Show?
- June 2011 Net Worth Update (half way through the first year) – Up 33.6%!
- What You Think Someone Else Wants at Death is Irrelevant
- What do you Do at Night? I try to make money
- Is Something Valuable if No one Knows?
- The difference between liberals and conservatives when it comes to Equality
- Insurance Products should not be a 4 letter word
- My Unlikely Financial Hero
- Is your financial ship run by one captain or two captains?
- A cool Scotch tasting experiment my friends and I did – one bottle was free while the other was $130 (and a few in between)
- An update to my family’s cash flow chart
- I feel guilty when making unneeded purchases
- Why I am not a huge fan of Revocable Living Trusts
- It is probably about time to Grow the Fuck Up
- My Trip to Atlanta for my 30th Bday
- Am I a complete Hypocrite or an Opportunist?
- There are other Dividend Stock Lists besides the Dividend Aristocrats
- No Research Reasons why I like Mature Dividend paying stocks
- Don’t assume your time is worth money
- Happy First Birthday to my Boy!
- Great discussion on Unequal Distribution to Future Heirs
- Reviewing how I did on my 2011 Goals and Objectives
Favorite Posts of 2012
We are only half way through the year but I have some favorites:
- Why the Hell are there New Pension Plan Participants?
- You have Absolutely No Patriotic Duty to Pay High Taxes
- Don’t be a Sheep When it Comes to Your Finances
- My Experience at a Storage Auction
- A Reminder why buying life insurance early is important
- Our House is on the Market – Another chapter in my life is going by
- There are Some Business Models I don’t Understand
- Thoughts on Professional, Personal and Family Relationships
- Responding to Someone Calling you Cheap
- There are NO Money Rules
- I don’t get he Hype about the Facebook IPO – Only time will tell if I am correct
- The Secret Business I am dying to open up
- What the Hell is Wrong with Some People – Emergency Fund vs the Smart Phone Statistics
- How I Invested my Child’s Money – I hope to share this with my son one day
- Where Would You Invest if You didn’t Trust the Markets?
If you told me that I would be blogging 4 years later I would have said you were crazy!
- That is as long as HS,
- As long as College
- Longer than I was in Law School
- One-Third of my Relationship with The Wife (we dated a long time before getting married)
- It is more than a seventh of my life
This blog has kept me on track with my finances and has opened up opportunities to save money like I never would have imagined. I started a very viable business with someone I have only met once in real life (I don’t talk about it much here, but it is pretty damn successful); I have shared some of my happiness, scares and tragedies with people I will never meet. I have actually met like-minded people who have their own blog which is always cool.
For all those things above I want to thank everyone who has ever stopped by my blog.
Congrats on 4 years!
Thanks Michelle. It has been great seeing you stop by here more and more.
That’s a long time! Keep up the great work!
Thanks Corey. I am going to try
Congrats! 4 years seems like a long time but I’m sure it went fast. I know the last 4 years of my life only seem like 2 years tops.
You are so right. So much has changed for me in the past 4 years and it scares me that I only remember a portion of the good times. I started a personal blog (more like a journal) but haven’t kept up with it.
Congrats on 4 years…that’s like forever in blog years. Hope you stick around for at least another 4.
I couldn’t imagine doing it for another 4 years, but I never thought I’d make it to the first 4 so well see. Thanks for stopping by!
Congrats! The awesome thing about blogging is that you continually get new readers. You’ve been blogging for four years and I only started reading a couple weeks ago. Here’s to 4 more years!
Congratulations on starting. The biggest hurdle for new bloggers is to IGNORE THE METRICS. Do it because you love it.
Happy Blogaversary dear husband! keep it up! You have a ton of favorites huh? full of yourself? lol j/k!
Well, we knew that.
Wow congrats on sticking it out for so long! As they say in most things your best years are still ahead of you (even if people do gripe about getting older)
Lance, thanks. I am not that old lol only 30 here
Congrats on your consistency. Writing out the annual blog anniversary post is always a particularly rewarding one.
You are 100% correct. It is like wow I have I stuck with something that betters my life for yet another year.
Congrats, keep cranking out the great articles! I really enjoy them!
Thanks Don, I appreciate it.
Good job Evan! May you have another 4 years!
Thanks Sam! Stalled a bit in terms of traffic may need to look into your program
Congrats !! It’s pretty good that you have completed 4 years of blogging. Keep rocking !!
Thanks! I appreciate it
I read your previous blog that caused problems on End of Insanity and I do not see any issues.
Tell her that lol
Congrats on 4 years of blogging! I think one of the things I like most about your blog is that you talk about topics that are rarely covered by other bloggers (at least the ones I read). It’s good to read stuff that I have no knowledge in, helps the brain function a little more lol.
Thanks! I write whatever is on my mind. Sometimes that may be taxes, estate planning, insurance and other times might just be a rant lol
Great job on 4 years of blogging, I’ve only made it through half of your all-time favorites, but I really liked “Do I think about money too much?” and “Overcoming paralysis by analysis”. Your blog is a good mix of personal and just the numbers. Keep up the good work!
Thanks ADP! I really appreciate hearing that others actually like my blog