The Problem with Personal Finance Bloggers | Everything Has Been Said

I am not a fan of most personal finance blogging. Nearly every post is repetitive drivel that doesn't need to be said anymore. The personal finance game has been solved.

Jonathan at My Money Blog solved the puzzle years ago. So did J.D. Roth at Get Rich Slowly. And Trent at The Simple Dollar did as well. Here's the solution to the PF puzzle in five steps:

1. Know where your money is going (make a budget)
2. Spend less than you earn
3. Set some money aside (emergency fund)
4. Pay off your debts
5. Save some money for the future and let compounding interest go to work

BONUS STEP 6! Start a personal finance blog and write about these 5 steps for 3-5 years. Make thousands per month off of Adsense and banner ads and then sell your site for six figures.

How many ways can you write about these five steps? Personal finance bloggers are doing everything they can to find out.

Everything That's Wrong with Personal Finance Blogging

Sure, there are some details, like Roth TSP vs Roth IRA, that require further explanation. But those are just details.

The big ideas have already been written about ad nauseum. If I see one more list like “5 Critical Financial Goals for 20-Somethings”…I will do nothing but rage silently against the internet. And maybe write a blog post about it. How ironic.

But seriously, look at this post. It has, oh, what do you know, 5 steps:

1. Make giving a priority
2. Develop your career skills
3. Eliminate credit card debt
4. Build your emergency fund
5. Start investing for retirement

But look at those last three steps I bolded. How many articles out there give the exact same advice? Hundreds. Maybe thousands. While the first two points are kind of original and something not a lot of people are writing about, the last three points are fluff.

The thing with personal finance blogging is it's almost always been said before or done before. It's 2019. Personal finance bloggers have been writing posts for the last 10+ years. You need something very original or very detailed to have anything new to say.

If you're not saying anything new, you are not contributing to the conversation. You are generating noise, not signal. Noise is distracting. Noise is annoying. Noise wastes your time. Noise wastes your readers' time.

Please, if you're going to write something and publish it online, make sure it provides value. Make sure it gives your readers something to think about. Don't just repeat the personal finance catechism. Be original.

The catechism is important. You must have the fundamentals of PF down before you can move on to the more advanced stuff like early retirement or credit card bonuses. It's fine to include the five standard pieces of advice, just make sure that's not all you're writing about.

Authentic Blogging

When you look at any top 100 personal finance blogger list, like on Wisebread or Money Crashers, you'll notice something interesting. Almost all of them are corporate owned. They were either sold to a company by the original creator (Get Rich Slowly, The Simple Dollar) or are blogs run by companies (Quizzle – Quicken Loans, Consumerist – Consumer Reports, Credit.com Blog, etc.).

While there is nothing inherently wrong with a corporate owned blog, the kind of content you get from a corporate blog versus one owned and operated by a smaller team or even just one person is completely different. Corporate blogs are some of the worst offenders of just repeating the PF catechism or running articles that have little to no relevance to anyone.

Besides the corporate blogs on the top 100 list, nearly all the other bloggers offer much of the same old advice, just repackaged in different forms. Very rarely are there examples of truly fresh perspectives or new ideas. The two most original and challenging perspectives I can think of are Mr. Money Mustache and Early Retirement Extreme.

These two pop out because they buck the conventional wisdom. Save 10% of your income towards retirement? How about saving 80% of it like ERE did. These are the types of bloggers we need. The ones that challenge us and offer a different perspective. Not just the same old advice.

Is the Military Money Manual any different?

I hope so. I try to not just preach the catechism and to actually provide fresh, new ideas relevant to savers and investors serving in the military. I try to write about things I'm actually doing to increase my income and savings while on active duty.

There are only a few military specific personal finance bloggers out there. Ryan Guina's excellent The Military Wallet and Doug Nordman's The Military Guide are the two best one's I can think of.

However, Ryan separated a few years ago and Doug retired a few years back, so there are no active duty military PF bloggers, other than this site. I hope my perspective, from the trenches, can help my fellow 1.5 million active duty servicemembers.

If I ever do slip into the standard personal finance bullshit that most sites publish every day, I hope someone calls me out on it.

I don't want to add to the noise.

I want to be the signal that provides clarity and solid advice to military members looking to achieve their financial goals, whether it's buying a house, saving for their kids' education, or financial independence before they're eligible for military retirement.