Finance & Fat

I’m still here. I’ve been tempted to kill the site and forget about it, but funnily enough traffic continues to increase even as I leave the site mostly abandoned. Not that I’m in it for the money (hey that $2 the site earned last month could buy me half a latte), but I enjoy writing and I want to do more of it this year.

Not much has happened since the last post I wrote back in August, 2010. I guess I was about 259 pounds then. I finished 2010 at 265 pounds. I think I hit 267 before Christmas. Amazingly, I actually started exercising and trying to do better the week after Christmas and I’ve been on a nice trend since then—weighing in around 252 pounds today and the last couple of days. That’s a solid loss of 13 pounds so far this year and 15 since Christmas. Not too shabby, and if I’m honest about it, I haven’t really even worked very hard at it.

Not to imply I’ve been sitting around playing World of Warcraft (that game really killed me with the expansion in early December), because I haven’t; I’ve quit that again, something I seem to do about twice a year or so. I’ve done a fair amount of walking in 2011. That’s been my primary source of exercise. I walked 39 miles in January and 36 in February. I tried mixing in some jogging too, but decided to stick with walking until I lose more weight. I really want to take it slow and avoid injuries. And I actually have avoided injuries thus far and I don’t want that to change. I’ve considered 230 pounds to be the starting point for adding some jogging to my routine. I’d still like to run a 5K some day. I don’t know if I really do, but I still tell myself that.

Other than walking, the other major change I’ve made is switching to a Paleo diet. I was learning about Paleo in January and so not really following it until the end of the month. Just about all of February was Paleo compliant (I’d say I’m 80-90% Paleo) and that’s when my weight really started dropping. I can only describe it as effortless weight loss. No doubt that the walking helps, but I had months in 2010 where I logged the same kind of miles I do now and didn’t have nearly the same weight loss.

I’ll share more about Paleo in the future. If you’re curious, here’s a couple of great getting started resources:

• Primal Blueprint 101 from Mark’s Daily Apple
• Paleo FAQ from Robb Wolf

I have a little side project going, called Quotes for Idiots. The idea behind it is humorous takes on the usual, boring quotes we hear all the time, as well as some wacky stuff that someone crazy comes up with. Traffic to Quotes for Idiots has recently taken off so I want to start working harder at promoting it. I’ll be including some quotes in my weekly web favorites post from now on. Enjoy!

“He who hesitates is lost. Unless he hesitates before walking in front of a moving bus, that might save his life.” – funny quotes by Quotes for Idiots

Favorite Posts:

• The Big Question: Are You Better Than Yesterday? – From The Blog of Tim Ferriss and it was written by Chad Fowler, CTO of InfoEther, Inc. – I really enjoyed this post. One great takeaway is when you are working on something long-term, like losing weight, don’t let the lack of immediate results discourage you. Just try to do better than you did the day before and give your results time.
• Are Budgets Dead? [Ask The Reader] – From Saving for Serenity – Great conversation on the importance of budgeting and whether a budget is really necessary.
• Six Words That Saved Me $17,893 – And Can Save You Even More – From Frugal Dad, written by Neal Frankle of Wealth Pilgrim – Read this post and remember “What is the purpose of this?”.
• Frugality Vs. “Big Wins” – Why You Shouldn’t Care About Either – From Man vs. Debt – Big wins or frugality is always a popular personal finance discussion. I think paying attention to both is important.

Carnivals

I was fortunate enough to be included in the Carnival of Personal Finance: House of Rose Edition, hosted by Good Financial Cents and Carnival of Pecuniary Delights #18, hosted by My Life ROI. Many thanks to the carnival hosts for the hard work they put this week!

*As always, you can find all of my ‘weekly web favorites’ and many more links on my StumbleUpon page.

*Maybe this is just a rant, and maybe it’s a bit long, but I think it turned into something worthwhile.

What’s the point of this blog and why do I spend my time writing it?

I started this blog after discovering a few personal finance blogs, I think Get Rich Slowly was the first one I found. I thought doing this would help me get organized and get focused on getting out of debt and getting in shape.

If I’m being honest, I also thought that by writing a blog about getting out of debt I could find vast riches and end up paying off all of my debt just by posting those annoying little Google ads on the site and waiting for the dollars to roll in. Of course, as 99% of all bloggers have found, the money doesn’t come rolling in very fast and only a select few, such as J.D. at Get Rich Slowly, Darren at ProBlogger, Bob at Christian Personal Finance, and Leo at Zen Habits can actually turn blogging into a full-time job (see what I did there? I linked to all of those fancy bloggers hoping that I would get noticed—I can’t help myself!).

I started off fairly well here, I was up to almost 200 subscribers after only a couple of months of blogging. Of course, back then I was posting frequently and taking the time to comment on other blogs and link to other blogs to help get noticed. Shockingly, not posting frequently and not working to get any attention for the site caused the traffic to drop substantially.

And therein lies the rub…you have to work on your blog like it’s a full-time job, or at least a part-time job, just to get it off the ground and achieve even a modest level of traffic, all the while only putting a few dollars in your pocket- if you’re even lucky enough to earn money above your hosting costs. And that’s when blogging died for me*. I could spend that same time doing freelance work for real money as opposed to earning pennies per hour for my efforts here. So that’s what I did, and I earned a lot of money on the side and paid off a lot of debt.

*Not that I’m bitter, this is officially a hobby, not a business. At least that’s how it will be until the money starts rolling in, and that’s okay. Really, I’m not bitter. I think. Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m not.

So where does that leave me and what’s the point?

I’m going to keep writing here and I’m not going to worry about the money or turning this into a job. I already have a ‘real’ job it’s pretty good to me, and I enjoy most of what I do there. I don’t need to add a second job to my already busy life. However, I actually enjoy writing, and I need to do more of it to improve my skills, so that is going to be the real motivator behind continuing to write here.

To be perfectly honest, I find the topic of personal finance rather boring—if you’re honest about it, don’t you think so too? I wish I had chosen a different topic. Once you figure out that you need to live below your means, you’re pretty much done with your personal finance education. That’s the 80% part of the 80/20 rule. The rest is just filling in little details, which can certainly be helpful, but your bang for the buck drops precipitously the farther you go.

I feel like I’ve made a lot more progress on the finance part of this finance and fat concept than I have on the fat battle. However, just like ‘live below your means‘ losing weight can be summed up just as easily- burn more calories than you consume. I don’t really need to learn more about fitness, I just need to get off the couch and exercise while eating fruit instead of donuts. Of course the concept is simple and the devil is in the details, but I think mostly we just like adding to those details so we feel like we are accomplishing something worthwhile when the answer is really just to get off the couch and go for a walk or do some pushups.

Well, I just told you that I think personal finance is boring and there’s nothing more to learn about it and I think the same concept applies to losing weight. I guess the cat is out of the bag, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to stop writing here and it doesn’t mean that I can’t provide anything of value here.

Frankly, I’m very jealous of this guy, Chris at The Art of Non-Conformity, and I want to try to emulate his model of blogging success. I don’t want to remain beholden to Google and AdSense, but I have to create something of real value first. That is of course my next task.

I do think I have something to add to the conversation and I think I can offer a unique perspective. I’m no longer going to share the same crap you can read on 1,000 other personal finance blogs. If I don’t have something at least somewhat unique to say, I won’t say anything at all.

I’ll continue to share updates of my own, real progress because people seem to like that. I think I can offer a little hope, being the average guy that I am who is actually making some real progress to improve my life…and I didn’t do it by finding the perfect money hack or buying the right e-book.

It’s just a matter of working hard and focusing your efforts in the right place. And that’s the message I want to convey and that’s where I think some real value can be created. That’s where I’ll be focusing my efforts and I’m going to do my best to come up with content that is actually valuable to you. And if you made it this far, you really deserve some valuable content! I promise it’s coming soon. Thanks for reading.

Apologies if you have recently sent an email to feedback@financeandfat.com, but I had to delete that email address. There was just too much spam and I didn’t want to dig through it anymore. I created a new address with Gmail, which has amazingly good spam filters. You can now contact me using financeandfat [at] gmail [dot] com.

Please feel free to send any questions, comments, or criticisms to that address. I check it once a day.

I have to admit that I started this blog with dreams of getting rich and becoming debt free simply by writing a blog about getting out of debt. Seems silly, I know. Well, it turns out that writing this blog has become very valuable to me, but in an unexpected way.

I have learned a lot, I have made some great friends and contacts in the ‘blogosphere’, and I honestly credit this site with keeping me motivated and keeping me on track with my finance and fat goals. Most of that credit goes to you, my readers. The comments, advice, and ideas that have come from many different people are very valuable to me and I appreciate every one. It’s because I value that relationship so much that I want to share with you how I am compensated for my work here.

No one pays me to write any of the content on this site. I do not accept ads from products or companies that I can not personally endorse (why I dropped my ads). I will never write paid posts or be otherwise compensated directly for writing anything on this site (if someone sends me a book or product to review I will state how I received it, give my opinion, and give the item away when I am done).

I don’t want to ask for anyone’s money, but if you find yourself in an excellent financial position and would like to donate, of course I would greatly appreciate your generosity. However, please do not send me a donation if you are in debt. That being said, don’t forget about me when you become debt free thanks to the great content on this site.

There are a couple of other ways you can help support this site. If you visit regularly but have not subscribed to my RSS feed yet, please do so. RSS subscribers are very valuable when it comes to selling ads (I do intend to sell a few ads some day, but only for products I believe in). You can also help me if you shop at Amazon.com. Just follow this link and I will earn a commission based on what you buy (no personal information is sent to me).

The other Amazon.com links you will find on this site are ‘affiliate links’ meaning I will earn a commission if you click the link from the site and buy the item. However, you will not find me promoting these products in order to earn money. I am simply sharing information about products that I have tried or recommend. If you feel uncomfortable using affiliate links, simply type the item names into a search engine and find information about them on your own.

Thanks for taking the time to visit my site. Blogging doesn’t pay much, but that won’t stop me from putting in the time to write content and do my best to help others who are struggling with the same things I am.