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Blogging About Blogging: Our Sixth Month

October 1, 2017 By Kim

Can you believe that we’ve already reached (and almost passed) our sixth month of blogging? We can’t, and so we’ve decided to share our sixth month update. We’ve had some exciting things going on since the last blog update . In July we had the pleasure of doing our first podcast interview with Talaat and Tai of His and Her Money; it aired in August. If you haven’t already, you can check it out here.

We also joined Rockstar Finance, which is basically a directory of blogs that cover some of everything under the sun in regards to finances. I’ve come across some pretty interesting reads from the directory. So if you’re looking for other blogs to check out, they have over 1200+ listed.

And in case you haven’t noticed, we’ve made some slight changes to the blog. I’m doing my best to not buy a new theme so I try to find little ways to update the one we already have. I removed the triangle banner that was at the top; we never really liked it to be honest. And thanks to Twisted Logic Photo, who took some great family pictures of us, I decided to update the pictures of us on the blog.

Lastly, I decided to update our About page. When I was on Instagram I realized that we never shared that much of our story on there. Yes, we share it all throughout the blog posts that we write, but not as concisely in one place as it is now on the About page, which you can check out here if you’re interested.

Usually, I just write the blogging update posts for both Omar and me, but this time I decided that I would actually ask more of Omar and exactly how he feels after our sixth month of blogging.

 

Omar’s Thoughts On Our Sixth Month Blogging

Blogging has still been nice for the most part. I’ve had to adjust my expectations of blogging itself over time. It would be nice to make money from the blog one day, but for right now it’s a hobby. And that’s OK because we started this blog to help people and share our story and ideas in regards to personal finance.

I’ve also had to change my expectations and realize that we’re not going to change the mind of those who aren’t seeking to do better with their finances. This stuff is more so for the people who are seeking the knowledge to do better. And it’s been great helping them and encouraging them, especially the ones that have reached out to us personally. The main reason why we started the blog has continued to be validated.

It’s been great connecting with people on Twitter and reading other people’s blog posts as well as learning from them. It’s great connecting with people who want to get to financial freedom as much as I/we do.

Kim’s Thoughts On Our Sixth Month Blogging

Every so often Omar and I will check-in with one another to see how the other feels about blogging. Just recently, I thought everything was good. Our stats are increasing, we continue to get good feedback, and we seemed to be enjoying it. Or so I thought.

Omar already mentioned that he had to change his expectations. But during that conversation, for a minute I thought he was going to quit blogging. I told him that I didn’t want to run the blog without him, but if that’s what he wanted to do… Then I’d quit to. After our discussion and him realizing that he needed to refocus his expectations, especially since we have lives outside of this blog, he decided not to quit. Besides, I wasn’t going to let him quit that easily!

I’m seeing more and more that personal finance is something that you can always learn more about and there are definitely many different views. When I have the time I try to check out other people’s blogs and social media accounts. However, all of this is still a bit overwhelming at times because I just don’t see how people have the time to blog, get on social media, work, and take care of their kids if they have any.

It doesn’t help that I can be a bit of a procrastinator. Given the fact that I’m trying to juggle all of the above, maybe that’s why. Or it could just be an excuse. Haha. But all of this is why we’ve decided to continue to publish new posts on Tuesdays instead of Mondays (in case you haven’t noticed). It gives me one more day to procrastinate get everything done and still enjoy the weekend.

Final Thoughts

We’re going to continue on this roller-coaster of a ride that we call blogging. It’s been a challenge, but we’re determined to see it through for at least a year. Besides, we’ve already paid for it! And we’ve already made it to our sixth month. So why quit now?

We continue to appreciate the support and feedback, which brings us to something that keeps subtlely (or not so subtlely) coming up. It’s been asked and/or suggested a time or two or three if we’ve ever thought about doing YouTube videos. The first time it was mentioned, we laughed. We had never thought about it. The next couple of times it was mentioned, besides laughing, it made us wonder if we should or shouldn’t do it.

We know sometimes people don’t have time to read or they simply just don’t want to read, but wouldn’t mind listening to audio. At the moment we don’t know if we’ll ever do YouTube videos or maybe even a podcast, but if we decide to… You’ll be the first to know!

So tell us, are there any personal finance topics that we haven’t covered that you would like for us to cover? In regards to YouTube videos or a podcast, do you prefer to read content or to watch and/or listen to content? Let us know below!

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Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: blog updates, blogging about blogging

See what’s happening on Instagram…

thinkingofsomeday

No long caption. I just wanted to make our last “mortgage principal payoff” calendar update. 😆 It’s been a month and it still feels surreal to us...
On Christmas Eve morning, Omar left out of the bed On Christmas Eve morning, Omar left out of the bedroom saying that he had to go work on something. When he came back he handed me a letter that said:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
“As I sit here on the edge of paying our home off I understand that it isn’t completely about us. Our job is to set the next generation up to do better than us, which makes me think of the generation before me. This final payment would not be possible without [Kim’s dad]. He spent his life working for this money and passed away before he got to use it for himself. We agreed to use that money in a way that would always honor him. So for the past 6 years it has funded our oldest son’s 529 [via the minimum required distribution]. Today, that money has grown enough to pay off our mortgage without touching the initial principal. Today we sever ties to debt forever. Today, we say thank you to [Kim’s dad] for the sacrifices he made and the foundation he laid that made it possible. THANK YOU!!”
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Of course after l finished reading the letter I was like... 🥺😭. Truth be told, I still kind of feel that way. It’s part of why it took so long to share the details of paying off our mortgage. Losing a parent is hard.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Pictured is my dad and I... my favorite picture of of us. He passed away 6 years ago on NYE. He was only 62. After he passed, I found out I was “entitled” to receive part of his pension. Omar and I decided to use some of this money to pay off our mortgage. This is how we were able to pay off most of our $54k balance 7 days into this year.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This is the short version, but if you want the full details, we wrote a blog post sharing:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
• a recap of our initial mortgage payoff plan + payoff journey
• some background info about the pension + how we almost cashed it out when we first found out about it
• the breakdown of the $$ that it took to make this happen + why we did it this way
• how some things didn’t go as planned
• and each of our thoughts in regards to all of this
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
You can find the link in our bio.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
“In all that I do, I strive to make my parents proud. I like to think my dad would be damn proud of me... of us, for this one.” Kim #piecesofsomeday
#tbt To last Thursday (1/7/2021) when we became mo #tbt To last Thursday (1/7/2021) when we became mortgage free!! Yes, you read that correctly! We are 100% debt free! Like debt free, debt free. 🤣
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
To be honest, it’s been a week and it still doesn’t feel real to us yet. But it was real watching that money disappear from our account and no longer seeing our mortgage balance when we signed into our credit union account. We must say, our credit union works pretty fast! Lol.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We didn’t even get around to sharing our mortgage payoff goal for the year with one of the little cute pictures explaining how we were going to do it. But here’s a quick recap of the numbers that we were working with...
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
• mortgage principal: $54,507.37
• mortgage interest: $35.84
• reconveyance fee: $69.00
• paying off our mortgage... definitely not priceless, but oh so worth it!! 😂🙌🏽
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We’ll share more in depth details soon because you’re probably wondering how we came up with that amount of money 7 days into January. It definitely wasn’t from hitting the lottery! Lol. But until then, just know that...
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
WE’RE MORTGAGE FREE!!! #piecesofsomeday
So we took some Christmas / family pictures back i So we took some Christmas / family pictures back in 2020 (as if that was so long ago), but I never got to share them. 😩 So here’s one. I actually like the fact that it’s in front of our house. #piecesofsomeday
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
And I also wanted to add that we finally did another blog post after quite some time. Maybe we’re the world’s worst bloggers. 🤷🏽‍♀️🤷🏽‍♂️ But if you’re interested, we’re sharing a recap of quarter 3 and quarter 4 from our mortgage payoff journey. We’re also sharing what our mortgage payoff goal is for 2021. We’re a bit excited about it! You can check it out at the link in our bio.
2020. This has been a year that I’m sure none of 2020. This has been a year that I’m sure none of us will ever forget. While this year has been ok for us for the most part, there are many people that it’s been a really really tough year for. Whether it’s been financially, emotionally, health wise, etc. etc. etc. So here’s to hoping that next year will be much much better, for everyone, but especially for those who had a tough time this year. ✨♥️
We started 2020 off with owning 43% of our house a We started 2020 off with owning 43% of our house and we now own 69% of it. We had paid off 39% of the mortgage loan and we’re finishing the year out at having 66% of it paid off. (These 2 numbers are not the same for us because of our 5% down payment as well as when we refinanced to a 15-year mortgage.) It’s been really exciting to see these numbers increase this year.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
(Annnnnd this concludes our December numbers. I can’t believe I managed to share them all before the end of the year!! 😂)
Q4 was our best quarter by far, mostly due to the Q4 was our best quarter by far, mostly due to the RSUs that we were able to use. However, even if we hadn’t been able to use them, Q4 would have still wrapped up nicely thanks to us still being able to stick to our 70/30 plan.
For December we were able to color in 4 rectangles For December we were able to color in 4 rectangles. This puts our mortgage balance for the end of 2020 at $54,507.37.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
• 132 rectangles total
• 88 rectangles colored in
• 44 rectangles to go!!
The total of our mortgage principal payments for D The total of our mortgage principal payments for December was $3514.74.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
$995.13 came from our regular payment and $2519.61 came from our budget.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This put us at meeting our second stretch goal of putting a total of $45,000 towards our mortgage principal for the year! Yes, we did a little magic with our budget in order to get it at exactly $45k, but I’m sure that’s what we all do in when we’re trying to hit a certain number!! Haha.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We’re soooo happy that we were able to meet this goal because we really weren’t sure if it was going to be possible or not!
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See what’s happening on Instagram

thinkingofsomeday

No long caption. I just wanted to make our last “mortgage principal payoff” calendar update. 😆 It’s been a month and it still feels surreal to us...
On Christmas Eve morning, Omar left out of the bed On Christmas Eve morning, Omar left out of the bedroom saying that he had to go work on something. When he came back he handed me a letter that said:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
“As I sit here on the edge of paying our home off I understand that it isn’t completely about us. Our job is to set the next generation up to do better than us, which makes me think of the generation before me. This final payment would not be possible without [Kim’s dad]. He spent his life working for this money and passed away before he got to use it for himself. We agreed to use that money in a way that would always honor him. So for the past 6 years it has funded our oldest son’s 529 [via the minimum required distribution]. Today, that money has grown enough to pay off our mortgage without touching the initial principal. Today we sever ties to debt forever. Today, we say thank you to [Kim’s dad] for the sacrifices he made and the foundation he laid that made it possible. THANK YOU!!”
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Of course after l finished reading the letter I was like... 🥺😭. Truth be told, I still kind of feel that way. It’s part of why it took so long to share the details of paying off our mortgage. Losing a parent is hard.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Pictured is my dad and I... my favorite picture of of us. He passed away 6 years ago on NYE. He was only 62. After he passed, I found out I was “entitled” to receive part of his pension. Omar and I decided to use some of this money to pay off our mortgage. This is how we were able to pay off most of our $54k balance 7 days into this year.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This is the short version, but if you want the full details, we wrote a blog post sharing:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
• a recap of our initial mortgage payoff plan + payoff journey
• some background info about the pension + how we almost cashed it out when we first found out about it
• the breakdown of the $$ that it took to make this happen + why we did it this way
• how some things didn’t go as planned
• and each of our thoughts in regards to all of this
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
You can find the link in our bio.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
“In all that I do, I strive to make my parents proud. I like to think my dad would be damn proud of me... of us, for this one.” Kim #piecesofsomeday
#tbt To last Thursday (1/7/2021) when we became mo #tbt To last Thursday (1/7/2021) when we became mortgage free!! Yes, you read that correctly! We are 100% debt free! Like debt free, debt free. 🤣
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
To be honest, it’s been a week and it still doesn’t feel real to us yet. But it was real watching that money disappear from our account and no longer seeing our mortgage balance when we signed into our credit union account. We must say, our credit union works pretty fast! Lol.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We didn’t even get around to sharing our mortgage payoff goal for the year with one of the little cute pictures explaining how we were going to do it. But here’s a quick recap of the numbers that we were working with...
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
• mortgage principal: $54,507.37
• mortgage interest: $35.84
• reconveyance fee: $69.00
• paying off our mortgage... definitely not priceless, but oh so worth it!! 😂🙌🏽
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We’ll share more in depth details soon because you’re probably wondering how we came up with that amount of money 7 days into January. It definitely wasn’t from hitting the lottery! Lol. But until then, just know that...
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
WE’RE MORTGAGE FREE!!! #piecesofsomeday
So we took some Christmas / family pictures back i So we took some Christmas / family pictures back in 2020 (as if that was so long ago), but I never got to share them. 😩 So here’s one. I actually like the fact that it’s in front of our house. #piecesofsomeday
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
And I also wanted to add that we finally did another blog post after quite some time. Maybe we’re the world’s worst bloggers. 🤷🏽‍♀️🤷🏽‍♂️ But if you’re interested, we’re sharing a recap of quarter 3 and quarter 4 from our mortgage payoff journey. We’re also sharing what our mortgage payoff goal is for 2021. We’re a bit excited about it! You can check it out at the link in our bio.
2020. This has been a year that I’m sure none of 2020. This has been a year that I’m sure none of us will ever forget. While this year has been ok for us for the most part, there are many people that it’s been a really really tough year for. Whether it’s been financially, emotionally, health wise, etc. etc. etc. So here’s to hoping that next year will be much much better, for everyone, but especially for those who had a tough time this year. ✨♥️
We started 2020 off with owning 43% of our house a We started 2020 off with owning 43% of our house and we now own 69% of it. We had paid off 39% of the mortgage loan and we’re finishing the year out at having 66% of it paid off. (These 2 numbers are not the same for us because of our 5% down payment as well as when we refinanced to a 15-year mortgage.) It’s been really exciting to see these numbers increase this year.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
(Annnnnd this concludes our December numbers. I can’t believe I managed to share them all before the end of the year!! 😂)
Q4 was our best quarter by far, mostly due to the Q4 was our best quarter by far, mostly due to the RSUs that we were able to use. However, even if we hadn’t been able to use them, Q4 would have still wrapped up nicely thanks to us still being able to stick to our 70/30 plan.
For December we were able to color in 4 rectangles For December we were able to color in 4 rectangles. This puts our mortgage balance for the end of 2020 at $54,507.37.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
• 132 rectangles total
• 88 rectangles colored in
• 44 rectangles to go!!
The total of our mortgage principal payments for D The total of our mortgage principal payments for December was $3514.74.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
$995.13 came from our regular payment and $2519.61 came from our budget.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This put us at meeting our second stretch goal of putting a total of $45,000 towards our mortgage principal for the year! Yes, we did a little magic with our budget in order to get it at exactly $45k, but I’m sure that’s what we all do in when we’re trying to hit a certain number!! Haha.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We’re soooo happy that we were able to meet this goal because we really weren’t sure if it was going to be possible or not!
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