But I would really like to say.
Thank you for reading this blog.
Thank you for following me through the days. I restarted posting seriously sometime before National Day. And I've seen some growth in numbers in the past 2 months since I've come back to posting. Which is really encouraging. Also, when I receive emails or comments from readers it's also very appreciated.
I do apologize if sometimes my comments or responses might be curt or might sound rude. It's hard to phrase jokes or sarcasm online, and sometimes it comes out wrongly.
As some of you might have noticed, I have started including an additional line at the end of my posts.
"XXX"
Edit : Looks like I'm not going to get coffee from Google.
Online, we read a lot about bloggers getting sponsors or making big bucks out of their blogs. But in the financial/frugal blogging space, even our best, most prolific bloggers in SG, doesn't make enough through their blog to support any form of living.
(I'm referring to bloggers who also share their lives and not businesses like Dollars and Sense.)
We aren't like Xiaxue, MMM, ERE, LadyIronChef, etc, where we get sponsors and cater to a large number of readers, cos basically, they post about topics which more people can relate to.
It's a false impression that I, myself, also once had that I could someday effectively monetize this blog to sustain a form of living. It's just not possible. Our readers are really a niche bunch who are not the general population.
The journey has been long since I first started writing in 2013 and took a few breaks in between.
I have managed to grow and better understand myself by reflecting as I write my posts. I think it is obvious from my tone of writing from my first post vs my current writing style, where I am more open and free when sharing my thoughts. From 30 unique daily readers to 80 to 200 to 500. I even crossed 1000 readers when I was active on Facebook recently. But since Facebook started requiring more personal info, I stopped using it and readers came back to the usual 500.
And when I see those numbers, I am grateful and humbled. It's not a lot. Not like some of the other financial/frugal bloggers. But I never thought that I would get any sort of sustainable readership. 500 readers is 5x the size of my previous department where I worked. So, to me, it is a fairly respectable number.
Going forward, I hope to be able to come up with more creative posts and interesting perspectives which will tickle your minds and entertain you during your pursuit of financial independence. Or that I can share my experience and encourage you during the grueling farming years.
I also hope to grow my readership so that I can encourage more people to be more prudent with their finances or to pursue their dreams and not live a life of a working drone.
Maybe, and I do really hope for this, that we, the frugal community could come together as a force and share our beliefs. Cos I believe, there are more like us out there who are just waiting to be touched. Or they may be in an environment where they are looked down upon for being frugal or want to live their lives differently and they are trapped like many of us are. And I think by sharing and reaching out, we can form a larger community where we can encourage and support each other in achieving our different goals.
Cos I think many of the good readers of this blog are people who don't want to live a life of a corporate drone and as we build a bigger community of like minded people like us, we can find comfort that there are more people like us and we are not alone in our thinking.
So this is what I would encourage. The word is encourage. I'm not trying to hard sell this.
If you believe in the above goal, cos I really think there are a lot more people like us out there feeling lost and out of place. If you believe in it and would like to try to help build this community, to take an article that really calls out to you and share it on Facebook or whatever social media platform you typically use. It doesn't have to be an article from my blog. You could take a post from My15HWW, or any other blog which you really really like with regards to financial independence, being frugal, semi-retirement, etc, and just share it, so that hopefully, as we build the community, we will be able to touch more lives.
(I tend to like My15HWW cos his beliefs and posts are a lot closer to mine... Just sayin'.)
Anyway, I would like to end by saying,
For all your continued support and I hope to continue to keep posting and sharing for many years to come. Cos I really do wonder... Where would we all be 20 years from now? When I'm 55? How would my posts have changed? Would I cover other topics?
Thank you.