Over at A Penny Saved, the question of why the PF Bloggers aren’t wealthy is being asked and answered.
Some unorganized thoughts:
I’m not really sure I agree that it’s hard to find the wealthy bloggers. Maybe all aren’t wealthy people, but many are definitely above the norm for their age group. Like any other slice of a random sampling, you are only going to find a few wealthy people in a hundred.
A few people comment that PF Bloggers talk too much about saving. It may be true to some extent, but there are many that talk about growing your income as well. It depends on what you are looking for because it’s defintely out there. It’s odd that people don’t often write about both growing your income while saving.
One popular way to be wealthy is to start a company. Do people who are starting companies have time to blog?
its crucial for people starting businesses to blog if they want to be on the cutting edge of new ideas and information sharing
I think that depends on the business. I should have been more clear though, do people starting new businesses have time to blog about personal finance? I would expect to see them in an entrepreneur circle. There may be some overlap, but I’m not sure there’s a lot of it.
I’ve noticed this, too — saving money and making money are two sides to the same equation. They’re both important. I think that the reason most PF bloggers write about saving money is that it’s easier to do, and because most of us have a lot of experience with that. But income generation is very important, too. I try to write about it sometimes. I own two business, and have some limited experience with entrepreneurship. It’s a fun subject. (Ramit covers it well, of course — but then he doesn’t write much about the other side of the equation. Maybe he’s the balancing factor in all of this!)
i think the only rich person with a blog is Mark cuban, and he’s sort of retired.
if i was really wealthy, i’d be too busy travelling the world and getting drunk at 3pm to have time to blog! ;-)
You can’t get rich by just saving your money. You need to invest it wisely.
unless you save like $100k a year then you’ll be a millionaire in 10 short years!
but i can’t save a dime on my salary. infact, i need to make an extra $15k every yr off investments just to pay the bills!!!!!
I guess it depends on your wealthy definition. Mark Cuban may be the richest, but I’m sure there are numerous tech people (maybe a large percentage of Google employees) who would qualify as wealthy in my book.
I think the PF bloggers that write about saving are often trying to get out of debt. First things first, I guess.
You’re right – especially the debt and “frugal” bloggers are mostly people who have dug themselves out of debt after having some sort of “personal finance epiphany” – and who want to share their hard-learned lessons. Clearly, they aren’t rich if they did this, although they’ll probably get there – at least if you define “rich” as someone who can live comfortably off the cashflow generated by their assets.
Also, blogging in general is a game for the young; few bloggers appear to be over 40 and most seem to be under 30, while most self-made richer people are at least 40. And it’s true that most businesspeople are far to busy to be active bloggers.
One other thing: few PF bloggers give much in the way of “unusual” advice: it’s primarily standard stuff such as be in the stockmarket, buy income property, etc. I wish I could find a PF blogger who’s invested in a hedge fund or an unusual “high net worth” investment.
Maybe you should visit Miserly Bastard. It seems his wife may have a lot more insight than just a typical PF Blogger. I’m not sure if he writes about it though.
Nice Blog, Will Deff Come back