Yes, exactly two years ago I gathered enough courage to publish the first article on The Money Principle. It is not amongst my finest efforts but I still read it sometimes and it makes me proud: for someone who didn’t know what a blog is or, for that matter how to write for a blog it is not too bad. It shows I am a natural :).
Usually people have cake for their birthday; I am not sure what blogs have but as the owner and the Mistress Supreme of The Money Principle I would have appreciated some. John, our Technical Wizard and Web-Master Extraordinaire, would have probably appreciated some as well. This, however, will have to wait: I am in Oman and he is back in Manchester. So, instead of inviting you to share our virtual birthday cake (double chocolate, no less) I started this post with a picture of the Sultan’s Palace in Muscat (Oman) I took five hours ago.
Oh, and the yellow, shiny bits that you can see if you look very carefully; yeah, they are pure gold!
Birthdays are time for reflection so let me mention some of the key markers for The Money Principle (and of course, for us; the people behind it).
Two years ago I made you our readers a promise to inform, educate and entertain you. You are the only people who can tell me whether we’ve kept to our promise; all we can say that we did our best to keep to this promise regardless of any other pressures we may have.
Since we started TMP we have published 459 articles; this is the 460th; we have written and shared close to 320,000 words – they all make sense J.
The three most read articles on The Money Principle over its life time are:
How much do you need: a retirement calculator: John developed this tool (pretty simple but nifty) to calculate how much money you need to have to generate the income you want for retirement. There are two differences with other calculators: a) you can change the assumptions; and b) it includes assumptions regarding the cost of care later in life. No wonder people pop over to have a look and play.
100K (157K) to zero in three years flat: everyone loves good news, right? This is the post in which we told you that we managed to pay off all our consumer debt in three years (OK, three years and three weeks) and outlined the principles of money management that got us there.
One habit of wealthy people: this is what happens when I write a tongue in cheek post claiming there is only one difference between wealthy people and poor people – the former spend because they want to and the latter spend because they can; give it a catching title; and GoBankingRates tweets it. Recipe for a popular post!
The most commented posts are:
100K (157K) to zero in three years flat: thanks guys, for your good wishes and wonderful messages full of hope and determination.
Money for all seasons I: it is worth it coming up with an original idea from time to time and your reactions to this article is evidence. Probably it is time to consider taking this idea further!
And talking favourites, the articles I like are somewhat different from the ones you seem to have voted for. But this is not important today!
What else happened?
Well, The Money Principle still has the Yellow Jersey of the Tour de Personal Finance we won last summer (it was just the time of the Brits, it seems). We also became finalists in the GoBankingRates Summer Olympics that took place at the time of the Olympic Games – and The Money Principle was the only blog amongst the sixteen finalists that was not North American.
Most importantly, when we started The Money Principle we were deeply in debt; today we are free of consumer debt and looking to invest (on top and beyond the pension schemes we keep going). All one needs to know, think about and experiment with to achieve the same is on these pages.
We not only talk the talk; we walk the walk!
And we share!
We intend to be around for a long time yet; writing and maintaining TMP is too much fun to let it go. In fact, we have big plans about growing the blog. Stay with us and share in the fun – the world is an amazing place and (personal) finance is its very essence.
I’ll leave you now with a picture of my latest investment :).
happy blogoversary! What a great journey, I hope you have many more fantastic blogging years. Congratulations for keeping it up for so long already.
Interesting statistics on your blog, and congratulations, Maria!
Happy Birthday MP. Maria congrats. John congrats. I think a cake is good for a blog. 🙂
A big hug and muah to your both.
Jai
Congratulations Maria, John, and Money Principle. It’s great that since I’ve met you, I can really determine your voice here, which makes it all the more gripping and entertaining. Much more of the same, please! 🙂
Congrats on 2 years! That’s a nice milestone, particularly with 460 articles. Even better is how you noted that you’ve gotten out of debt!
Congratulations on your anniversary Maria and John and continued success to you both!