MoneyAhoy.com is Five Years Old!
I cannot believe it – MoneyAhoy.com is now five years old! Time flies when you’re having fun, no? It has been a great ride over the past five years, and I still have a bit of blogging left in me 😊.
Why Did I Start Blogging?
When I started MoneyAhoy.com back five years ago, I had a several goals:
- To help other folks improve their personal finance situation (think money saving, emergency funds, and such)
- Push myself to save more and be much more critical of our spending
- Learn more about investing in the stock market and building a business
Over the past five years, I have been able to achieve these goals. I have helped thousands of people start their own business, coached family and friend on ways to improve their personal financial situation, and invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in the stock market with some nice returns. I even wrote a FREE eBook on investing – Stock Market Investing for Newbies.
Reflecting Back on Five Years of Successful Blogging
As I have worked to help others expand their knowledge (and my own) in the realm of personal finance, this blog has grown and developed. It has been fun over the past five years, and I am sure there is more fun yet to come. As I reflect back over the past year’s ups and downs, is it always interesting to go back even further and check out the old Birthday posts – you can find them here:
- Happy Birthday MoneyAhoy!
- MoneyAhoy.com is Two Years Old!
- MoneyAhoy.com is Three Years Old!
- MoneyAhoy.com is Four Years Old!
Top Posts for MoneyAhoy.com – Year Five:
Here’s a listing of the top most popular posts that were written in the past year in terms of traffic:
Start and Setup an LLC on-line in Less than 6 Minutes! – This was an older post, but I continue to work on updating it to keep the information relevant. So far, it has helped thousands of folks to start their own business online and save hundreds at the same time! This post has been so helpful that I have “stickied” it to the front page.
How to Start a WordPress Blog with Bluehost – I created this mega-post to help folks understand how easy it is to start their own blog to explore their passion. This post has also been “stickied” because of how helpful it has been to readers.
Monthly Money Reports – These Monthly Money Reports bring readers back month over month to see how I am making, saving, and investing my money each month. They are a fun way to learn about my opportunities and mistakes as I work to improve my personal finances.
Moving to Oregon – We had a huge life-changing decision that we made toward the end of 2017. This was to move the family from Georgia to a brand-new company in Oregon! The move was incredibly hectic and disruptive to our lives, but we are loving it in Oregon so far. We aren’t 100% settled in yet after several months in our new home, but we are getting there.
Money Results Over the Past Five Years
One fun thing to explore during the Birthday recap is to look back and see how much money we’ve saved, made, and invested as a direct result of starting the blog. It’s my favorite part of this post mostly because I’m a numbers guy 😊. It is pretty tough to calculate the exact amount of impacts, but I will do my best.
Money Saving
MoneyAhoy has helped us to save a considerable amount each year by having us focus on things we could easily eliminate from our routine and non-routine spending. Here’s a quick summary by year:
- Year 1 Savings – $4,500
- Year 2 Savings – $13,000 ($17,400 total)
- Year 3 Savings – $15,500 ($33,000 total)
- Year 4 Savings – $17,800+ ($54,000+ total)
- Year 5 Savings – $19,000+ ($73,000+ total)
It is pretty incredible, but MoneyAhoy.com has helped our family to save over $73,000 in total over the past five years!!! Insane!!
Money Making
I have made quite a bit of extra side money through side hustles over the years thanks mostly to MoneyAhoy. I’ve chosen to invest much of this to help fuel our net worth growth. Here’s a summary by year for side-hustle income:
- Year 1 side-hustle income: $2,005
- Year 2 side-hustle income: $7,050
- Year 3 side-hustle income: $9,900
- Year 4 side-hustle income: $12,400
- Year 5 side-hustle income: $24,980
MoneyAhoy.com has seen awesome growth year-over-year as you can see in the above. I cannot believe year five basically doubled the amount of side-hustle income vs. year four! I am not getting rich or anything, but the extra has seen some nice growth over the years as you can see. I am not getting rich or anything, but the extra $56,000+ sure has helped with our investments! Of course, lots of this was paid back to the government in taxes, but I digress…
Investing Money
I have lost my shirt “trading” in years prior to starting MoneyAhoy.com. After starting the blog and educating myself on proper ways to invest, I have completely turned this around. We took a brief hiatus investing in the markets as we moved across the country, started new jobs, and got situated. This was mostly to ensure we had enough cash to plop down on a down-payment for a new home. Now that this is behind us, our goal is to ramp back up our stock market investing. So, for year 5 below, you will notice a major dip in stock market investing:
- Year 1 – $38,500 invested with $850 in dividends
- Year 2 – $139,000 invested with $2,900 in dividends
- Year 3 – $113,500 invested with $8,800 in dividends
- Year 4 – $104,000 invested with $12,200 in dividends
- Year 5 – $46,600 invested with $20,300 in dividends
We continue to reinvest all dividends into the stock market, and I continue to devote nearly all of my take-home pay to investing in the stock market (my wife’s paycheck mostly covers our bills). I continue to remain the proudest of how MoneyAhoy.com has pushed us to continually invest for our long-term financial success. Over the past five years, we have invested a total of $538,700 in the stock market and received over $45,000 in dividends! This is through a combination of our IRAs, 401(k)s, and private investment accounts… The coolest part is that our annual dividends will continue to grow and grow if we continually reinvest them to take advantage of compound interest!
How Much Has Blogging Improved My Life Financially?
As you can see from the above sections, MoneyAhoy.com has had an awesome effect on our personal financial lives. It has helped us to increase our net worth by an EXTRA ~$174,000 over the past five years ($73K in money savings + $56 side-hustle income + $45K in dividends)! This blog has helped to increase our personal finance discipline and help many others along the way as well.
Running a blog for five whole years is a lot of hard work! It definitely takes time that could be devoted to other activities. But, the trade-off has been super for me. If you are interested in starting your own blog now for super cheap, then check out that link. It is surprisingly easy to get started and makes for a great hobby if you are into writing and helping others.
What’s Next for MoneyAhoy in Year Six?
My goal for year five was to hit at least $1,000 of side-income each month (dividends + MoneyAhoy.com income). This was enough to cover our old house payment each month. We achieved this pretty easily all year, so now it is time for a new set of goals. Let’s see how I did with my year five goals before we establish some new goals for year six!
- Convert my wife’s old 457b into her IRA.
- FAILED – I did not get around to doing this L. We did convert my wife’s old 401(k) to an IRA, but I still need to get this old 457b converted over!
- Achieve annual investment dividend income > $15,000.
- COMPLETE – we hit over $20K in dividends for year 5!
- Achieve 1,500+ subscribers on my MoneyAhoy YouTube channel.
- COMPLETE – My YouTube subscriber count is over 1,900 right now.
- Achieve monthly average MoneyAhoy.com revenue of >$1,500.
- COMPLETE – average monthly MoneyAhoy.com revenue stands at ~$2,080 per month!
- Really focus on putting out more quality YouTube videos with a goal of 4+ per month.
- POOR PROGRESS – I really haven’t posted any new YouTube videos in months as we moved across the country. I definitely need to get back into the swing of things here!
- Get our routine monthly expenses down below $2,500 a month.
- ALMOST – Our average monthly routine expenses for the past year are ~$2,565 per month. So close! I am going to count this one as a win since we are like 99% of the way there…
Goals for Year Six of the MoneyAhoy.com Blog
So, I think we need fairly well on the goals for the past year. Here are my new goals for the next year of the blog:
- Convert my wife’s old 457b into her IRA (repeat from last year).
- Achieve annual investment dividend income >$25,000.
- Achieve 2,500+ YouTube subscribers on my MoneyAhoy.com channel.
- Make it over $2,000 per month of MoneyAhoy.com side-income.
- Work to get some contract writers to provide content for the blog to increase the number of articles I can publish each month.
Final Thoughts After Five Years
If you are a regular reader of MoneyAhoy.com – then thank you! I hope you are getting as much out of this blog as I am. As you can see, getting serious about your personal finances can have some tremendous positive effects on your net worth. That’s the power of spending less than you earn, working hard, and putting compound interest to work for you!
Hopefully your personal financial situation has improved as a result of focusing more closely on your personal finances. I look forward to many more years of blogging fun and excitement – and I hope you’ll be here to join me!
If you have any suggestions on how I can make MoneyAhoy.com even better, please leave a comment below or send me an email.
