How Blogging Can Help Get Your Finances in Shape
My money habits are pretty strong, and this has a lot to do with the fact that I write about money to make my living. I’m not alone. Plenty of other writers, whether paid or not, use blogs as a platform to get their finances in order and document their goals. Some of the most popular money sites started out as blogs. If your finances are holding you back , blogging can help you figure things out.
Blogging Sheds Light On Your Money Habits
Behavioral research about money is always fun. They talk a lot about our financial habits and how meaningless and automatic they can be. For example, we spend less when we pay in cash . We also tend to save more when we just watch the time differently . And there are countless studies of how stores manipulate you into spending more than you think.
The point is, we like to think that we are in complete control of how we use our money, but sometimes our habits and decisions are almost unconscious. Journaling can make your actions more mindful . For example, a study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association found that people are more likely to stick to diet and healthy habits if they keep a diary. The researchers called this “self-control.”
In conclusion, despite the existence of methodological limitations in the studies reviewed, there was sufficient evidence for a consistent and significant positive relationship between self-controlled diet, physical activity, or weight and weight control success.
Like journaling, blogging about money gives you a reason to reflect on your behavior and decisions. You can just keep a diary yourself, but there are several additional benefits to blogging available to the whole world.
When you write, you learn
If I have learned anything as a technical writer, it is that the best way to understand something is to explain it to someone else.
When you blog, chances are most of your posts will be personal and will relate to your personal experience with money. However, you have to learn something new when you get your finances in order, and if you have to write about it, you want to know what you are talking about. You can also create new content and write about what your readers will find useful or interesting. Need to start saving for retirement? Write about how to get started with 401 (k) s – many people need help with this. This gives you another reason to explore new topics. When you write about these topics, you explain them, which means that you have to learn them inside and out. In fact, many of the posts I’ve written are topics that I needed to learn more about, such as investing , social security, and even changing banks.
Of course, you can just research this stuff yourself. For example, when I first learned how to start investing, I did a little research and bought a few funds with a set date because it was easy. However, as I wrote this post , I needed to know more so that I could explain the topic to the readers. And I learned that these funds have drawbacks: their fees are usually higher and they may not perform as well as regular index funds. Lessons learned, portfolio adjusted accordingly.
In short, when you need to explain a topic to someone else , you tend to research more beyond your own questions. You learn all the intricacies so you can write competently on a topic. In the meantime, you have increased your financial literacy and accumulated useful knowledge.
Blogging gives you a platform for accountability
Finally, public blogging involves accountability. When you write about your own experiences with money, you are documenting things like:
- Your spending habits and decisions
- Your progress towards financial goals
- How do you recover from financial setbacks?
When you blog, you communicate this to your audience. In a sense, they hold you accountable for your actions and progress towards a goal. For example, if your blog is about getting out of debt, you might think twice about how your audience will react if you spend too much money on restaurants in a month (even if that audience is just your mom).
But even if you don’t think twice, the process of documenting your experiences encourages you to reflect on how it affects your goals. Without that responsibility, you could just brush it off and do it again.
Where to begin
Obviously, blogging wo n’t solve all your problems and magically make you cool with money. There is a lot involved in money management. It takes more effort than typing a few words every week. However, blogging can help you along the way, and getting started is easy and free.
Choose a platform
First, choose a platform for your blog . There are plenty to choose from (and Kinja is a good option!) Here are some other popular platforms:
- Blogger : Blogger is Google’s web logging tool that, like most Google services, is easy to set up and get started. You won’t have a lot of customization options if you don’t want to customize the HTML, but this is an easy option to write.
- Tumblr : Tumblr is mainly focused on sharing memes, gifs, or images. Sure, it allows for long posts and many users write long posts, but its design and community is geared towards fast content reblogging.
- WordPress : WordPress is probably the most popular platform for writing long forms. It may not be as intuitive as Blogger, but more customizable.
- Medium : Medium is for writers who want to be known, and it’s a great platform for that . While it’s great for openings, it’s not so customizable. You also give them free access to your content.
Some blogging platforms like WordPress have a paid option where you can buy and host your domain . When you’re just starting out, a simple free site will do. At this point, you are just trying to record your progress rather than building the next big personal finance site.
Most platforms make it easy to set up your own blog. WordPress, for example, has ready-made themes that you can install with one click ( although you can create your own as well ). From there, come up with a poignant title (“ Get Rich Slowly” and “ Budgets are Sexy” are two of my favorite personal finance blog titles), make it look pretty, and get started!
Finally, once your blog is officially launched, you’ll want to educate people about it and have a writing schedule that you can stick to. In this way, responsibility can work in your favor. Blogging can open up other possibilities as well. You can even make money from it . But even if you don’t, it can still be an effective tool to help you achieve your monetary goals.