Two Years of Lazy Man and Money

Earlier this month, while you weren’t looking, Lazy Man and Money celebrated it’s two year birthday.

The Good and The Bad

The other day, I looked at some of my first posts and I laughed and cried about the roller coaster of good and bad ideas I’ve had when starting out. Two years ago, I was seriously considering buying a condo hotel in Las Vegas. Good thing I didn’t because a year later the W in Las Vegas was canceled. I rationalized my decision this way:

In the end, I feel that it’s probably pure speculation. Something that you buy to flip in the first year or so. I believe it would work out to be a gain, but giving the size of the risk (10% down would be around 1/3 of my net worth), it’s not something that I can get into.

When I read that recently, I wanted to set my nose-hairs on fire for even considering it. Looking back on it, the condo hotel example is precisely why I started this blog. I wanted to share ideas to sort out which are good and and which are not so good. I hoped that people would help me by keeping me grounded from bad ideas. Along the same lines, I wanted to help others where I can as well.

Every single night the same arrangement, I go out and write and write

Recently, I’ve been feeling that Lazy Man and Money has run it’s course. The battle’s done and we kind of won. What started out as cookie dough had indeed become cookies… and much more cooking would have made them ashes. Three thoughts are leading down this path:

• Can I really write about personal finance indefinitely and keep it interesting? I never want to write a post about 72t distributions and I’m hoping to you don’t to Lazy Man and Money to read about them.
• Are we still learning on Lazy Man and Money? I can only speak for myself on this one, and I have to say that I’m learning less and less. This isn’t unexpected. Everyone always learns more in the beginning and, as they become more proficient, learning slows.
• Am I really needed? – When I started Lazy Man and Money, I thought it was only me and three or four other sites writing about personal finance… I didn’t even know that the term “personal finance” existed. For the first 3-6 months, I was convinced that I was dispensing knowledge that couldn’t be gained elsewhere. Then I stumbled on the personal finance community and found out that many other people were writing about the same thing. Now when ING Direct changes it’s rates, you have 25 bloggers writing articles about it. Is there really a loss if it goes to 24?

I Will Walk Through The Fire

Given the above, you might be surprised by my decision to move forward and continue writing. I almost convinced myself there… In the end, I’ve come up with a couple of very good reasons to continue writing:

• I am unique… as is every personal finance blogger. We each bring our own thoughts and experiences into the mix. The hope is that you find someone you can identify with. It seems that for some subset of you, I’m that person. It would hurt me if you stopped reading about personal finance all together because I stopped writing.
• Perhaps I am needed – I’ve noticed that my article about the MonaVie scam is something that some Google search come across. Now I don’t know if MonaVie really is a scam or not (and the comments from both sides were really vocal), but hopefully someone looking into it will find my article and, if they decide it’s right for them, proceed with caution.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Personal finance education has never been more important. Between gas and food prices soaring and the sub-prime mess making credit more costly for the average individual, your wallet is facing one hell of a demon to slay. It’s time to make the tough financial choices… change our destiny. Are you ready to be strong?

Behind this post: Much of this post has been inspired by Buffy Musical – an hour of television so powerful that it’s been running seven years later in movie theaters and sell out across the nation at $10 a pop. It is my favorite piece of writing in any format (book, web, movie, or television) and, quite honestly, nothing else comes close. Other parts of this post were inspired by other episodes of Buffy.