The Thanksgiving Day article is always the most difficult article I write every year. I’ve always been uncomfortable publicly talking about how well I have it. Many others in the United States do not have it so well. And the percentages only get worse when I look at it from a global scale.
I have an awesome wife and the proverbial 2.5 kids (though I count our dog as full kid, we’ll give him half credit). We have an exceptional degree of financial freedom and no health problems (knock on wood).
Professionally, I get a lot of satisfaction helping consumers with their finances. This year, I had many bloggers tell me that my website inspired them to not only take control of their own finances, but go on to influence millions of other people. Pat from Smart Passive Income seems like he’s going to be CEO of the online world someday. I remember when he was writing for eHow trying to make a few bucks on the side. Phil Taylor of PT Money said that I influenced him when he was starting out. He’s only went on to become the creator of FinCon, a conference that brings together over a thousand bloggers and financial company representatives each year.
As Hiro Nakamura in Hero’s Reborn might say, “So many butterflies from one blog…”
Nowadays, my interest is in helping people retire early and saving consumers from getting scammed (with a special focus on MLM/pyramid schemes.) Traffic to the website this year just passed 2 million page views, which is a huge amount of people. I’ll expand on this in the year-end review, but the macro-economics of advertising in online publishing are way, way down.
And that leads me to the final thing that I’m thankful for. There’s no non-pandering way to say this, but it’s you, the reader. I’m thankful that you keep coming back (and bringing friends). So let’s close out this holiday strong and blast into the new year.
P.S.
I’m also thankful that I’m not waiting in long lines for anything. I may pop into Old Navy which is having a 50% off sale on (almost) everything in the store. I could use a pair of new jeans. I’ve been scouting the online deals, but the best deals like Amazon’s $35 Fire Tablet and Amazon Echo are products that I already have or don’t need.
I almost want to pick up a $35 tablet for some fun hacking fun.
We just left old navy and are getting lunch at panera. The crowds weren’t bad today. I did go to target and got a few good coupon deals in the grocery section.
We scored at old navy in the clearance section. I got a new pair of jeans for under $20, two shirts for $4 each and one for $0.97.
My daughter got 4 shirts for $7 each and two clearance shirts. For $2 each. Well worth the trip. Have a happy thanksgiving.
I didn’t have a lot of time, so I just jumped in and got a pair of jeans. They were $15 instead of $30. I’ll take it.