Additional menu

Fiery Millennials

Financial Independence from a millennial's point of view.

Fiery Millennials: Year Two

By 35 Comments

You guys! On this day, exact­ly 2 years ago, I reg­is­tered this domain and start­ing blogging!

HAPPY BLOGIVERSARY TO FIERY MILLENNIALS! I MADE IT 2 YEARS!

I am so incred­i­bly grate­ful I start­ed blog­ging. I’ve met so many fab­u­lous peo­ple, devel­oped mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ships, and learned so much.

I have no doubt my life would­n’t be any­where near as amaz­ing as it is right now if I had­n’t start­ed blog­ging. My invest­ments are opti­mized (ish), I’ve trav­eled to some amaz­ing places for free through churn­ing and friends open­ing up their homes, and I have more amaz­ing mem­o­ries tucked away for rainy days than I could’ve ever imagined.

Watch­ing a friend drunk­en­ly inhale In N Out.

Pad­dling around a still lake at twilight.

Stay­ing up until 2 in the morn­ing dis­cussing the mys­ter­ies of life with new friends.

Sum­mit­ing a moun­tain and feel­ing wisps of clouds caress my cheeks.

Start­ing this blog has allowed me to form deep­er rela­tion­ships with those in the FIRE com­mu­ni­ty and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to express how much that means to me.

In the past two years, I’ve attend­ed 5 offi­cial FI events and many more unof­fi­cial mee­tups. I’ve had the plea­sure of going to Ecuador for the Chau­tauqua in 2015, the Berk­shire Hath­away blogger/FI meet­up 2016 in Oma­ha, the OG Camp Mus­tache in Seat­tle, Fin­Con 2016 in San Diego, and Camp Mus­tache 2017 in Flori­da. Unof­fi­cial­ly, I’ve been able to hang out with FI peo­ple in Chica­go, Dal­las, Maine, Lon­don, and the greater Mid­west area.


Meet­ing all these peo­ple and form­ing friend­ships with them has cre­at­ed a far-flung net­work all around the world. The loca­tions isn’t the only thing that’s diverse though. Every­one is dif­fer­ent: younger, old­er, mar­ried, sin­gle, kids, no kids, cho­sen method to FI, rentals, no rentals.…. It’s allowed me to expand my thought process about my path to FI.

When I start­ed this jour­ney, I was going to work for Mega­Corp until age 35. Because of the encour­age­ment and wis­dom I’ve gained from the com­mu­ni­ty, that path has changed! All for the bet­ter, don’t worry.

It’s been fun for me to go back through my archive and see how things have changed in the last two years.

I’ve writ­ten 130 arti­cles! WOW!

In the begin­ning, I had a few close friends read­ing and giv­ing me feed­back. Slow­ly, so so so very slow­ly, traf­fic start­ed to rise as I found my voice and start­ed to inter­act with the community.

I tweet­ed this pic­ture just a few days into 2017:

And this is what that exact same view says today:

views

In the first quar­ter of 2017, I’ve already got­ten HALF the traf­fic I had in 2016. That’s amazing!

To all the new blog­gers out there read­ing this, just keep writ­ing. I think I had 500 total views for 2015. I’d have days where I would get 1, 2, or even no views at all. Now, I aver­age about 500 views in a sin­gle day. The love I get from every­one warms me up on even the cold­est days. So, read­er, thanks for read­ing! To those of you who send me emails and inter­act with me on social media, thank you so much for the time you take to write those mes­sages. I save each and every sin­gle mes­sage in a spe­cial fold­er. (I don’t know what I’ll do if I get a nasty gram. Stay tuned.)

A num­ber of things have sur­prised me about blog­ging in the last 24 months.

First off, I am sur­prised at just how freak­ing hard it is to blog. Fig­ur­ing out the tech­ni­cal behind the scenes stuff, wrestling every­thing into look­ing how I want it to, and espe­cial­ly how dif­fi­cult it is to keep com­ing up with fresh, new con­tent. The Rock­star Blog­ger Direc­to­ry has close to 1,000 blog­gers in it already! Grant­ed not every­one is a FIRE blog­ger on it, but still. That’s a lot of pres­sure to come up with new stuff and try­ing not to copy any­one’s pre­vi­ous posts.

Sec­ond, it’s a bit dis­con­cert­ing (and awe­some) when I go to talk to some­one in per­son, and they tell me, “oh, I know. I read about it on your blog”. I’ve done it to a few blog­gers myself and now I under­stand their reac­tion. [I hold no regrets about being called a super fan. It’s true so…]

Final­ly, it’s a fan­tas­tic con­ver­sa­tion starter. Men­tion­ing that I’m a blog­ger gives me some sort of dif­fer­ent sta­tus in peo­ple’s eyes. Espe­cial­ly now that I’ve been at it for two years! My words car­ry more weight now than they nor­mal­ly would com­ing from a 26 year old. It’s def­i­nite­ly made me stop and con­sid­er what I’m about to say more than once.

So. I’ve been blog­ging for two years now. (!!!!) Where do I see Fiery Mil­len­ni­als going?

Well, have no fear. I’m not going any­where! I intend to keep blog­ging for as long as peo­ple are inter­est­ed in my story.

That being said, there will be a few slight tweaks to the blog. I men­tioned one of my goals this year was to start mon­e­tiz­ing the blog, and I intend to start that in the next few weeks. Don’t wor­ry, I’m not going to plas­ter the site with ads or shove affil­i­ate links for things down your throat, but I’m not going to cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly reject offers, either. As the site grows, host­ing becomes more expen­sive. Hav­ing affil­i­ate links will allow me to con­tin­ue host­ing the site and bring­ing you awe­some new content!

13301404 10206433610134903 2789008104201521422 o

I’ll con­tin­ue to write about my adven­tures, lessons learned on the path to FI, shar­ing my num­bers, and detail­ing every­thing about my rental prop­er­ties. I will prob­a­bly split the reports into two: one for rental properties/blogging, and the oth­er one for my per­son­al expens­es. I will be track­ing them sep­a­rate­ly for tax pur­pos­es, so it only makes sense to split them up into two dif­fer­ent reports as well. This way those of you that don’t blog will be able to con­tin­ue to see what my “nor­mal” expens­es look like! And, to those of you who do blog, you’ll be able to see what expens­es and income I get from the blog!

I’ve got­ten a lot of mes­sages telling me how much you all appre­ci­ate the num­bers so they’re not going anywhere!

Here’s to the next year of blog­ging! I can­not wait to see what it brings!

Love,

name

 

 

 

Reader Interactions

Comments

    • Thanks Fritz. I’m glad I made it this far! Can’t wait to see what you come up with in a few weeks!

      Reply

  2. Con­grat­u­la­tions! I’m glad you stuck with it, and I look for­ward to read­ing about the rental prop­er­ty and blog cash flow. Those high pro­file mee­tups sure look cool…

    Reply

    • Me too, Dylan! ha! I can’t wait to share all the num­bers with everyone!

      And if you get a chance to attend a FIRE meet­up, I high­ly sug­gest them!

      Reply

    • This is where I would nor­mal­ly come up with a cute dit­ty in response, but I’m com­ing up empty 🙁

      Reply

  5. Wow, what a way to start the morn­ing by read­ing this post. I love read­ing your posts and it was so nice to meet you the oth­er day, though we still need to work on our lyrics! Thanks for all the encour­ag­ing words for the new­bie blog­gers out there; Team Waf­fles is def­i­nite­ly in that boat and a lit­tle inspi­ra­tion def­i­nite­ly goes a long way. I am tru­ly hap­py for you and wish you all the best with whats to come.
    Mrs.Wow recent­ly post­ed…Not all Detours Are Cre­at­ed EqualMy Profile

    Reply

    • I can’t wait to actu­al­ly get to sit down with Team Waf­fles and have a nice long chat! We’ll get the lyrics down some day — I’m not wor­ried at all. 

      I’m glad I could pro­vide a bit of inspi­ra­tion for you this morn­ing! Keep up the great work on WoW!

      Reply

  6. Yay Yay Yay hap­py Blo­giver­sary to youuu!!!
    It’s so easy to be dis­cour­aged when you first start blog­ging. I remem­ber being absolute­ly tick­led when a whop­ping five peo­ple vis­it­ed my site in the ear­ly days. Cel­e­brate the lit­tle and big vic­to­ries because it isn’t easy to man­age and grow a blog. 🙂
    I’m try­ing to mon­e­tize my own blog in a less-spam­my kind of way (damn you, Google ads). I did take the Mak­ing Sense of Affil­i­ate Mar­ket­ing course and I thought it was pret­ty ben­e­fi­cial to mon­e­tiz­ing a blog with­out spam­ming the liv­ing day­lights out of readers.
    Mrs. Picky Pinch­er recent­ly post­ed…What A Fru­gal Blogiversary!My Profile

    Reply

    • Thanks Mrs. Picky Pinch­er! Turns out this blog­ging thing requires a lot of hard work. Who knew?! Haha
      Earn­ing mon­ey from a blog is such a del­i­cate bal­ance of earn­ing mon­ey and annoy­ing your read­ers.…. I’m a blog read­er too so I aim to make my blog not annoy­ing as much as I can!

      Reply

  7. Just lis­tened to your pod­cast with Mad Fien­tist today. Con­grat­u­la­tions, keep it up, and good infor­ma­tion, I’ll have to add my blog to the ever grow­ing blog directory.

    Reply

    • I high­ly rec­om­mend the direc­to­ry! It’s a great way for peo­ple to dis­cov­er the blog. Thanks for lis­ten­ing to the pod­cast, and good luck with your blog!

      Reply

  8. Wohoo! Con­grat­u­la­tions! Great work in these past two years! I’m look­ing for­ward to con­tin­u­ous­ly fol­low­ing your jour­ney (and I’m so excit­ed for your new house!) I just had my first anniver­sary so this is def­i­nite­ly moti­vat­ing for the future.

    Reply

  11. Yay! And it is so weird how well we get to feel like we know oth­er blog­gers! When I looked at that pic­ture from Fin­Con I rec­og­nized more than half the peo­ple in it and I haven’t met a sin­gle one of them or spo­ken to them in real life. It’s crazy! I know so many per­son­al details but have nev­er said a word to them (or you lol)! 

    Thanks for shar­ing your sto­ry! You inspire me!
    Ellie @ The Ched­da recent­ly post­ed…Net Worth and Income – Jan + Feb 2017My Profile

    Reply

  12. Hap­py two year blog-iver­sary! I’ve only been on board for a few months and I’ve seen you mas­sive­ly restruc­ture your retire­ment date, I can’t imag­ine how it feels for you going through the whole journey.

    If you’re ever writ­ing a post and wor­ry­ing that you’re ‘copy­ing’ some­one else, don’t be. I learnt in Uni­ver­si­ty that there are only sev­en (ish) sto­ries in the world. Com­ing of age, rags to rich­es, the Quest, over­com­ing evil, etc. What mat­ters is your unique voice, per­spec­tive and take on that story. 

    Just think, Avatar was called a bla­tant Poc­a­hon­tas rip-off and peo­ple LOVED it 😀
    Lady­FIRE recent­ly post­ed…She’s mak­ing a list…My Profile

    Reply

    • Ha! In N Out was total­ly amaz­ing. Not as great as get­ting to hang out with you for 3 days though! 🙂

      Reply

    • The very first time I met up with any­one in per­son was the Chau­tauqua in Ecuador and I was so ner­vous. I was fly­ing alone to a dif­fer­ent coun­try on a dif­fer­ent con­ti­nent to meet strangers off the inter­net. For­tu­nate­ly, every­one was SO NICE. I had a mar­velous time! After that first meet­up I was no longer ner­vous since I was meet­ing peo­ple I knew already. If you’re ner­vous, I sug­gest find­ing some­one who will be there and meet up with them right before. That way you have some­one you KNOW is in the same boat!

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

CommentLuv badge