After the success of the online Supermarket Savings 101 course, I started helping some local ladies with couponing and was putting together a list of the best deals at nearby stores for them each week. I kept thinking about how I was sure others could benefit from these lists outside of my circle of local friends.
At the same time, I felt like my personal blog was becoming too over-run with frugal posts and I wanted to have a place to freely share those. I looked for a blog which was covering the drugstore deals and teaching people step-by-step how to cut their grocery bill, and, surprisingly, I found none.
(Back in 2007, blogging was still a new phenomenon so while there were some finance and frugal blogs, to my knowledge, there weren’t any blogs which were specifically dedicated to sharing deals. And based upon the emails I was receiving, I knew that people were really looking for specific, detailed information on how to work the deals and get the best bang for their buck at the grocery store.)
So I kept feeling this nudge in my heart to start a blog dedicated to helping women with the nuts and bolts of using coupons, getting the best deals and also to just share things about finances and saving money we had learned during our lean law school years. I approached my husband about the blog idea and he loved it. However, we both sat on it for a few weeks as we wanted to make sure it was the direction God was leading and I also wanted to make sure I wasn’t biting off more than I could chew.
I also needed a name for the blog, if I were going to start one. We tossed around a lot of possibilities but finally landed on MoneySavingMom.com. I bought the domain and opened up a little Blogger blog. I didn’t even have a header designed for a few months and it was as barebones as it could be, but people started coming and coming and coming. Pretty soon, the blog was averaging around 5,000 visitors per day, then 10,000, then 15,000 and on and on it went.
MoneySavingMom.com has far exceeded my wildest dreams and I’m humbled that God would allow me to be apart of this. Many times when people ask me what is the key to this blog’s success, I’ll tell them, “Hard work and the blessing of God.” I have put a lot of time and effort into the blog and believe that the lessons I’ve learned through failure have been invaluable. However, I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that MoneySavingMom.com would not be anywhere near what it is without God’s blessing upon it.
For some reason, God allowed us to be at the right place at the right time. We didn’t know that the economy was going to go downhill just a few months after MoneySavingMom.com was born. Nor did we know that couponing and frugality were going to become extremely popular. In addition, I knew very little about SEO when I started (search engine optimization, i.e. how you get your blog to show up at the top of the list when people use a search engine).
I’ve made some major mistakes along the way. I’ve offended people by careless words and actions. I’ve struggled with having my priorities in order. I’ve unintentionally hurt people who are very close to me. I struggle with thinking I am somebody (and every time that happens, God will smack me right in the forehead to remind me how human and fallible I am!)
It’s been a humbling and growing process to have the responsibility upon my shoulders of hundreds of thousands of people around the world reading what I write. You all have been gracious, long-suffering and incredibly kind to me along the way and I appreciate it very much.
I’m honored to be at a place now where I can completely choose my own hours to work and have a very talented team of people who do much of the behind-the-scenes work so that I can give the best part of my day to my husband and children. It hasn’t always been this way and if I were to do over parts of my life, I’d definitely seek, by the grace of God, to work less and have my priorities more in order.
Working from home can be a great thing, but if your family and friends are run over or short-changed in the process, it’s not worth it. At the end of my life, it won’t matter how many blog posts I wrote or how much money I made, but it will matter that I was faithful as a wife and mom! As I’ve often said, anyone can be a successful blogger, but only one person can be your husband’s wife and your children’s mom.
Over the next few weeks, I’d love to answer any specific questions you all might have related to working from home in my Saturday posts. So if you have a question related to working from home you’d love to see answered, please leave it in the comments here or email me. I can’t promise I’ll have an answer or that I’ll be able to get to every question (depending upon how many are asked!), but I’ll at least pick a few and give them my best shot!
photo: David Reece
We’re almost at the two year anniversary mark of the stock market crash of 2008.
Dubbed as “the black week,” the week that started on Monday, October 6, saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average close lower in all five trading sessions and lose 18% of it’s value.
But it was a few weeks before that – on September 15 – that the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the Dow’s subsequent 500-point drop (the largest single-day drop since the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks) when the panic surrounding the financial crisis peaked.
Two years later, where do we stand?
The recession, skyrocketing unemployment rate, and general fear around the stability of the U.S. and world’s economy has no doubt changed us. But to what extent? How has our savings, investment, and overall sentiment about our finances changed over the past two years?
Let’s take a look.
Saving Up
As you can see in the graph below, the U.S. personal savings rate has roughly doubled from around 3% in the third quarter of 2008 (right before the market crash), to around 6% in Q2, 2010.
That personal savings rate is six times what it was as recently as 2005, when it hit its lowest level. Today, it is, in fact, the highest that it’s been since the mid 90′s. The savings rate had been in a steady decline since the mid 80′s, when it topped out at about 11%, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Clearly, Americans are saving more. Whether it is out of fear, because of stricter lending guidelines, or a complete shift in consumption habits, we are putting more of our discretionary take-home income into the bank instead of spending it. Since our economy is largely driven by consumer spending, that hasn’t been the best thing for job creation or the stock market, but there are certainly some positive benefits that come from saving, particularly, less debt.
Investing Habits
Dow Jones Industrial Average (October, 2008 – September, 2010)
It’s no secret that investors have shied away from the stock market, and for good reason. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has been hovering around the 10,000 mark most of this year – a level that it first hit back in 1999. That’s right. If you invested all of your money back in 1999, you’ve seen two market crashes, and it’s quite possible that over that 11-year span you didn’t make a dime. And if you started investing somewhere in the middle of that period, it’s very possible you lost a great deal of money.
There is now a heavy distrust in Wall Street and its regulators. And investing behavior is following suit. Since early 2008, equity mutual funds have seen total cash outflows of about $245 billion, according to data from the Investment Company Institute, a mutual fund industry trade group. More conservative bond mutual funds, on the other hand, have seen total inflows of close to $616 billion.
Could the gen-X’ers and gen-Y’ers who lived through these two crashes at ages when they just started dipping their toes into investing in stocks become the lost generation of investors? Only time will tell if either generation regains its trust of the stock market .
Overall Financial Sentiment
Back in May, I ran a few polls on my personal finance blog, 20somethingfinance.com. I asked a few simple questions, and the responses were intriguing.
One of the questions was, “Are you better or worse off financially than you were two years ago?”
The response was definitive:
A total of 91% felt that they were the same or better off financially than before the start of the financial crisis.
Surprised? When you think about it, you shouldn’t be. Gen-X’ers and Gen-Y’ers (the majority of my blog’s readers) have plenty of time to recover economic losses and don’t hold as much savings in the market as older generations. Our losses were somewhat limited in comparison.
I also asked a follow-up question, “How do you feel overall about your finances?”. The results were definitely not in-line with the answers to the previous question.
Here, more than half of respondents said that they were “worried,” or “struggling.”
There are certainly those out there that are struggling mightily at the moment, as the unemployment situation has not improved much since the start of the crisis. Their troubles should not be dismissed.
But why is there such a discrepancy between the reality of our financial situations and how we feel? Perhaps we’re listening to the media and politicians more than we should be.
Americans are saving more and cutting debt at levels that haven’t been seen in almost two decades. That might result in some short-term pain for the economy and job creation, but an economy that is almost entirely dependent on consumer spending is simply not sustainable.
We are re-prioritizing – and, many argue, for the better. Keep working hard, attack your debt, save for emergencies and the future, and drown out the noise of those who want you to feel like things are worse than they really are.
GE Miller is the author of the personal finance blog, 20somethingfinance.com.
The Birmingham <b>News</b> Pink Edition: Supporting the fight against <b>...</b>
Reports on the work being done in our community to fight the disease and sharing the stories of breast cancer survivors.
"One in three households" have Wii console | <b>News</b>
Nintendo has revealed that one in three households in the UK contain a Wii console, while over 11 million people - around...
Microsoft officially announces Mattrick promotion | <b>News</b>
Microsoft has officially announced the promotion of Don Mattrick to president of the Interactive Entertainment division,...
eric seiger eric seiger
After the success of the online Supermarket Savings 101 course, I started helping some local ladies with couponing and was putting together a list of the best deals at nearby stores for them each week. I kept thinking about how I was sure others could benefit from these lists outside of my circle of local friends.
At the same time, I felt like my personal blog was becoming too over-run with frugal posts and I wanted to have a place to freely share those. I looked for a blog which was covering the drugstore deals and teaching people step-by-step how to cut their grocery bill, and, surprisingly, I found none.
(Back in 2007, blogging was still a new phenomenon so while there were some finance and frugal blogs, to my knowledge, there weren’t any blogs which were specifically dedicated to sharing deals. And based upon the emails I was receiving, I knew that people were really looking for specific, detailed information on how to work the deals and get the best bang for their buck at the grocery store.)
So I kept feeling this nudge in my heart to start a blog dedicated to helping women with the nuts and bolts of using coupons, getting the best deals and also to just share things about finances and saving money we had learned during our lean law school years. I approached my husband about the blog idea and he loved it. However, we both sat on it for a few weeks as we wanted to make sure it was the direction God was leading and I also wanted to make sure I wasn’t biting off more than I could chew.
I also needed a name for the blog, if I were going to start one. We tossed around a lot of possibilities but finally landed on MoneySavingMom.com. I bought the domain and opened up a little Blogger blog. I didn’t even have a header designed for a few months and it was as barebones as it could be, but people started coming and coming and coming. Pretty soon, the blog was averaging around 5,000 visitors per day, then 10,000, then 15,000 and on and on it went.
MoneySavingMom.com has far exceeded my wildest dreams and I’m humbled that God would allow me to be apart of this. Many times when people ask me what is the key to this blog’s success, I’ll tell them, “Hard work and the blessing of God.” I have put a lot of time and effort into the blog and believe that the lessons I’ve learned through failure have been invaluable. However, I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that MoneySavingMom.com would not be anywhere near what it is without God’s blessing upon it.
For some reason, God allowed us to be at the right place at the right time. We didn’t know that the economy was going to go downhill just a few months after MoneySavingMom.com was born. Nor did we know that couponing and frugality were going to become extremely popular. In addition, I knew very little about SEO when I started (search engine optimization, i.e. how you get your blog to show up at the top of the list when people use a search engine).
I’ve made some major mistakes along the way. I’ve offended people by careless words and actions. I’ve struggled with having my priorities in order. I’ve unintentionally hurt people who are very close to me. I struggle with thinking I am somebody (and every time that happens, God will smack me right in the forehead to remind me how human and fallible I am!)
It’s been a humbling and growing process to have the responsibility upon my shoulders of hundreds of thousands of people around the world reading what I write. You all have been gracious, long-suffering and incredibly kind to me along the way and I appreciate it very much.
I’m honored to be at a place now where I can completely choose my own hours to work and have a very talented team of people who do much of the behind-the-scenes work so that I can give the best part of my day to my husband and children. It hasn’t always been this way and if I were to do over parts of my life, I’d definitely seek, by the grace of God, to work less and have my priorities more in order.
Working from home can be a great thing, but if your family and friends are run over or short-changed in the process, it’s not worth it. At the end of my life, it won’t matter how many blog posts I wrote or how much money I made, but it will matter that I was faithful as a wife and mom! As I’ve often said, anyone can be a successful blogger, but only one person can be your husband’s wife and your children’s mom.
Over the next few weeks, I’d love to answer any specific questions you all might have related to working from home in my Saturday posts. So if you have a question related to working from home you’d love to see answered, please leave it in the comments here or email me. I can’t promise I’ll have an answer or that I’ll be able to get to every question (depending upon how many are asked!), but I’ll at least pick a few and give them my best shot!
photo: David Reece
We’re almost at the two year anniversary mark of the stock market crash of 2008.
Dubbed as “the black week,” the week that started on Monday, October 6, saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average close lower in all five trading sessions and lose 18% of it’s value.
But it was a few weeks before that – on September 15 – that the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the Dow’s subsequent 500-point drop (the largest single-day drop since the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks) when the panic surrounding the financial crisis peaked.
Two years later, where do we stand?
The recession, skyrocketing unemployment rate, and general fear around the stability of the U.S. and world’s economy has no doubt changed us. But to what extent? How has our savings, investment, and overall sentiment about our finances changed over the past two years?
Let’s take a look.
Saving Up
As you can see in the graph below, the U.S. personal savings rate has roughly doubled from around 3% in the third quarter of 2008 (right before the market crash), to around 6% in Q2, 2010.
That personal savings rate is six times what it was as recently as 2005, when it hit its lowest level. Today, it is, in fact, the highest that it’s been since the mid 90′s. The savings rate had been in a steady decline since the mid 80′s, when it topped out at about 11%, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Clearly, Americans are saving more. Whether it is out of fear, because of stricter lending guidelines, or a complete shift in consumption habits, we are putting more of our discretionary take-home income into the bank instead of spending it. Since our economy is largely driven by consumer spending, that hasn’t been the best thing for job creation or the stock market, but there are certainly some positive benefits that come from saving, particularly, less debt.
Investing Habits
Dow Jones Industrial Average (October, 2008 – September, 2010)
It’s no secret that investors have shied away from the stock market, and for good reason. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has been hovering around the 10,000 mark most of this year – a level that it first hit back in 1999. That’s right. If you invested all of your money back in 1999, you’ve seen two market crashes, and it’s quite possible that over that 11-year span you didn’t make a dime. And if you started investing somewhere in the middle of that period, it’s very possible you lost a great deal of money.
There is now a heavy distrust in Wall Street and its regulators. And investing behavior is following suit. Since early 2008, equity mutual funds have seen total cash outflows of about $245 billion, according to data from the Investment Company Institute, a mutual fund industry trade group. More conservative bond mutual funds, on the other hand, have seen total inflows of close to $616 billion.
Could the gen-X’ers and gen-Y’ers who lived through these two crashes at ages when they just started dipping their toes into investing in stocks become the lost generation of investors? Only time will tell if either generation regains its trust of the stock market .
Overall Financial Sentiment
Back in May, I ran a few polls on my personal finance blog, 20somethingfinance.com. I asked a few simple questions, and the responses were intriguing.
One of the questions was, “Are you better or worse off financially than you were two years ago?”
The response was definitive:
A total of 91% felt that they were the same or better off financially than before the start of the financial crisis.
Surprised? When you think about it, you shouldn’t be. Gen-X’ers and Gen-Y’ers (the majority of my blog’s readers) have plenty of time to recover economic losses and don’t hold as much savings in the market as older generations. Our losses were somewhat limited in comparison.
I also asked a follow-up question, “How do you feel overall about your finances?”. The results were definitely not in-line with the answers to the previous question.
Here, more than half of respondents said that they were “worried,” or “struggling.”
There are certainly those out there that are struggling mightily at the moment, as the unemployment situation has not improved much since the start of the crisis. Their troubles should not be dismissed.
But why is there such a discrepancy between the reality of our financial situations and how we feel? Perhaps we’re listening to the media and politicians more than we should be.
Americans are saving more and cutting debt at levels that haven’t been seen in almost two decades. That might result in some short-term pain for the economy and job creation, but an economy that is almost entirely dependent on consumer spending is simply not sustainable.
We are re-prioritizing – and, many argue, for the better. Keep working hard, attack your debt, save for emergencies and the future, and drown out the noise of those who want you to feel like things are worse than they really are.
GE Miller is the author of the personal finance blog, 20somethingfinance.com.
The Birmingham <b>News</b> Pink Edition: Supporting the fight against <b>...</b>
Reports on the work being done in our community to fight the disease and sharing the stories of breast cancer survivors.
"One in three households" have Wii console | <b>News</b>
Nintendo has revealed that one in three households in the UK contain a Wii console, while over 11 million people - around...
Microsoft officially announces Mattrick promotion | <b>News</b>
Microsoft has officially announced the promotion of Don Mattrick to president of the Interactive Entertainment division,...
eric seiger eric seiger
No comments:
Post a Comment