This month marks FOUR years since I started blogging about my journey to Financial Independence/Retiring Early!
Happy 4th birthday to Quietly Saving! 🙂
With so many new blogs springing up all the time and other blogs falling by the wayside, no longer being updated, I guess this must rank me amongst the ‘veterans’!?
Back Then
Although my first post on this blog was in April 2014, I had made a note of my finances in March – my starting or pre-FI plan numbers!
Here’s the comparison between my starting numbers and my most recent update:
- March 2014 – Future Fund: £30,075
March 2018 – Future Fund: £130,574
- March 2014 – Net Worth: £74,595
March 2018 – Net Worth: £219,974
The increases have been largely due to me saving hard so that new capital can be invested every month, although I have also been lucky with investment gains from the (mostly) favourable stock markets these past four years. I also reinvest any dividends and interest I receive.
I’ve aimed to save/invest as much of my net salary as possible (averaging around 40-45%), and also put away income generated from cashback, a bit of rental income, the odd bit of gambling, affiliate links and profits from matched betting. Any bonuses I’ve received from work have largely been invested too, plus as I found a job fairly quickly, I was able to save/invest the bulk of the redundancy pay I received in 2016.
I don’t practise extreme frugality – I just don’t spend a lot of money on stuff I deem unnecessary, but splash out on things I enjoy and which are important in my life, eg holidays, eating/drinking out with friends, my gym membership.
Blog Stats and Numbers?
This is where I could probably post some numbers to show how many visitors I’ve had over the years, page views, followers, subscribers etc.
Apart from the first few giddy months of me starting this blog, I have to say that I’m not really interested in such stats. Although my blog is monetised, it’s never been my intention to make any real money out of it so I’ve never felt the need to work at driving a load of traffic here. The bit of income that I do get from Google Ads barely covers the upkeep of my site but that’s enough for me. The bit of affiliate income I receive is detailed in my monthly updates and is lumped in with the rest of my investments.
Someone even contacted me recently to buy my blog (why??) but I wasn’t interested, not even to see what they were going to offer.
My only goal blog-wise has been to document my own progress on a semi-regular basis.
Some of you may have spotted that I re-added the Modest Money ‘Top Finance Blogs’ badge to my blog some months ago, after ‘losing’ it when I transferred from Blogger to WordPress.
When it was originally on my blog back in 2014, I had a rank of around #260 out of around 500 FI/PF blogs. My ranking has plummeted but the number of blogs is now around 1000, so I guess I’m still around the halfway mark.
I can’t say I’m actively trying to improve my rank, as I don’t have the time or inclination to sweat over analytics, SEO scores, Alexa Rankings or massing gazillions of Twitter followers.
But fair play and massive respect to those who do put in the hard effort and reap the rewards of a decent blog income – I personally just can’t be bothered with it.
As I draft this post, my rank is #596 so it’s probably gone down further by the time I publish this! How low can I go, haha?
For comparison, Monevator is the top UK blog, ranked at #40 (at the time of writing).
Thank You
A massive ‘Thank You’ to all fellow and non bloggers who take the time to read this little blog – I really appreciate your comments and emails.
Thank you very much for helping me keep my focus, keeping me motivated, giving me ideas and helping me stick to my plan!
I will also take this opportunity to give a shout out to the two blogs, Retirement Investing Today and diy investor UK, who between them, have provided nearly 12,000 referrals to my blog! Cheers, chaps! 🙂
Also, thanks to FIREin’ London and theFIREstarter who have posted the most comments over the years – keep ’em coming!
Next Chapter
This time last year, I was unemployed (or practising living the FIRE life!) and I wrote that I would be entering a new chapter of my life.
The new chapter so far has turned out to be not too different from the old – I’ve settled into my job and am just getting my head down, getting on with my work. Next month, I will have been at my ‘new job’ for a year – I know! That’s bloody gone quick, hasn’t it?
Being settled means I can pretty much set things to ‘automatic pilot’ and continue with my plan for FIRE, barring any unforeseeable obstacles which life may throw at me in the meantime!
Onwards and upwards!
Hope everyone is enjoying the sunshine in the UK, while it lasts!