A lot of investing and personal finance blogs talk about certain topics that I purposefully stay clear from because I really don’t like them and am not interested in them. I often remove blogs from my blogroll if I notice they talk about these things too much.
- 0% balance transfers and the like. Seriously, what is up with this craze?
- Kiyosaki or Cramer (at least, in a positive way).
- Rewards programs. Not a fan. I finally got rid of my Air Miles card and went to the cashback option for our one credit card. I hate points programs, customer loyalty programs, or anything of the sort.
- Trading, daily stock prices, etc… I focus on the long term. I couldn’t even tell you right now what the trend in the markets has been in the past month. I don’t follow the market.
- Promotions. Promotions serve only one purpose, to get new customers. Their purpose is not for you to make $15 or whatever it might be.
- Talking about how to make money blogging, or how much money I made from ads last month, etc… This blog will never be a for-profit operation. Never take advice from a blogger who is trying to blog for a living (or most journalists). How do you know if his/her advice is really coming from the heart if she is getting a kickback every time they right a post? To prove I don’t blog for bucks, download AdBlock Plus for Firefox and please block my ads (I do). Then tell your friends. The only reason I have ads is to cover hosting costs.
So if you are interested in reading a blog that swears to steer clear of the above topics, you have come to the right place.
On the topic of annoying things, I have been receiving an incessant amount of offers these days via email for link sharing, collaborations, requests to demo debt consolidation software, and a number of emails that start out like this one did: “My name is XXX XXX, I recently came upon your blog. I read a few entries and liked it. I work in the financial services industry and as a side project my company has…” Delete!
Amen on the rewards program – I got sucked into the Aerogold thing and although I’ve done ok with it – at this point our annual costs are $170 (for 2 cards) and since we are on a budget, we don’t charge enuf to make it worthwhile anymore.
The plan is to go to Germany next year and use up all the points and then cancel it. A cash-back card sounds pretty good.
My parents got sucked in on the Westjet Air Miles card for $80/year. I keep telling them…just wait until you try getting a flight with it. I bet you will have a tough time getting flights on the dates you want.
Anything that sounds too good to be true usually won’t work out in your favour.
LOL@delete! Yeah that works too.
So what exactly is your motivation for righting(sic) to the public at large?
For me, a lot of peers just don’t know anything about money, –I’d like to think that I am a mentor at heart, always looking out for their best interests.
There’s a million sites out there that recycle the same information about finance. But none of them are bringing information to people who could actually take a lesson from it.
How can we reach out to the rest of internetland who still don’t know what blogs are?
Juan (1mil)
from millionster.com
Juan, my motivation for writing is to help educate others and to educate myself. There is some theory that says you have only completely mastered something when you are able to teach it to someone else. So teaching helps one learn.
I don’t know how to reach those in internet land who still don’t know what blogs are, how to post comments, or what an rss feed is. But I think the more I write, the more chance my posts have of turning up on google searches, thus increasing the chances that someone will find one of my posts and learn something from it.