Oh, what an Impersonal year it’s been. Which is to say, a year has now passed since the first post here at Impersonal Finances.

That’s right, folks. It’s a blogiversary.

While I’m relatively new to this, the first thing I learned about blogging is that you must always talk about blogging—especially on anniversaries. And also, all other days.

Impersonal Finances started as a distraction and potential future side hustle project, and has succeeded in the former and is a laughable attempt at the latter. Through the weirdest year of most of our lives, I spent a lot of time reading, writing, and discovering new things in the personal finance space. Which made it all… not so bad!

The following is a haphazardly compiled summary of the Impersonal year that was.

The evolution of Impersonal Finances

The first few months of this blog’s life were spent cranking out crappier versions of some of the great personal finance content that already exists on the internet. And doing so to nobody in particular. I felt that, should somebody accidentally come to my site, I better make sure to have a baseline of practical personal finance advice for them, in the event that Impersonal Finances happens to be their last stop before quitting the internet forever.

In this noble pursuit, I’ve outlined the six personal finance steps I first took, discussed which debt payoff method is best, and waxed poetic about keeping a budget (with Mint in my case) and the importance of tracking your net worth. Gotta play the hits.

Over time, I’ve branched out within the personal finance realm to tackle topics like which Chase credit cards I currently hold in my half-assed attempt at churning travel rewards, how much you should keep in your emergency fund, and I even made excuses for myself for buying a little too much car. Still fairly in line with the personal finance agenda.

I did a little bit of homework in deep dives on obscure topics like the pitifully low pay for jurors and the fact that only two states, stupid New Jersey and stupid California, tax HSAs. On the retirement account front, I took a closer look at the best time to contribute to your Roth IRA and on participating in a 401k that doesn’t offer a company match. All well and good.

Now that I’m a grizzled veteran as a personal finance blogger, I tend to prattle on about stuff that has nothing to do with personal finance, and then try to package it as such anyway. Things like drinking non-alcoholic beer, reading books, and golfing. So that’s where we’re at now.

Profiting off of your eyeballs

As a visitor of this site, you are actively making me filthy rich, just by being here. In fact, you’re likely contributing to my earning 1/100 of a cent right this second via an impression of a Google Ad. Thank you for that! Hopefully, these ads are non-invasive enough so as not to hinder your reading experience. If not, well, thanks for the hundredth of a cent anyway. Additionally, I enrolled in the big money affiliate program for a tiny company called Amazon, off of whom I’ve pilfered over $10 of sales revenue that otherwise would have been theirs.

Is blogging a viable side hustle? How about some raw numbers from Year 1 of Impersonal Finances to find out?

Total Cost to date (Bluehost, including renewal): $140.27

I fell for one of the personal finance blogger recommendations to use Bluehost, and it seems fine.

Total Revenue to date (Adsense, Amazon): $181.90

That’s $171.30 via Adsense (thanks to a few posts that have randomly found their way to relatively high search engine rankings) and a whopping $10.60 via Amazon Associates.

Net Year 1 Profit: $41.63

Add it all up and you are looking at a profitable blog here, people. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Sure, it works out to about four cents an hour if you factor in the amount of time I’ve spent on writing and performing other various tasks, but that’s besides the point. Plus, thanks to the power of compound interest, my $41.63 in blog profits, properly invested in an index fund earning 10% per year, will be worth nearly five grand in a short 50 years. Who wouldn’t want an extra five grand 50 years from now!?

Personally, I’ve found myself becoming a little turned off by some of the more mainstream blogs that beat you over the head with the monetization of their site. Make no mistake, I don’t knock them for doing so—hell, I’d probably do the same. I’ve simply found myself not reading those sites with much frequency anymore. So, until I’m able to sell out for myself, I’ll keep randomly musing on loosely-connected personal finance topics with no thought to SEO optimization or obtaining big time affiliate deals. Which is easy enough to say since I’m nowhere near the minimum traffic requirements to be eligible to participate in any big time affiliate deals.

Tales from a speculative moron

Blog profits secured, it became clear to me early in the calendar year that I needed to burn through these extra funds as quickly as possible. My biggest financial takeaway from the last year is how easily it is to get swept up in speculative mania, even if you know better. ESPECIALLY if you know better.

Shortly after resigning myself to the fact that I wasn’t the kind of investor who would ever hit on Tesla or Bitcoin, I dove right into meme stock mania. Then, shortly after reflecting on that chapter of my investing life, I perfectly timed the top of the cryptocurrency market, then explored flipping NFTs, and even gambled on a few shitcoins just for good measure. All in the name of a good blog post.

Keep in mind, these speculative bets are small in comparison to my overall portfolio, but I certainly tested the limits of what I consider to be “small.” In the process, I learned a lot about myself, my risk tolerance (non-existent), and my relationship with money. So, finances aside, not a total loss. But definitely some losses.

The bottom line is that I discovered a bull to more dangerous to me than a bear. A big dip in the investment accounts isn’t fun, but I know that a bear market means play dead and don’t do anything. But when there’s a run on dumb money in a bull market? I will see you in Pamplona.

What’s next for Impersonal Finances?

“So Impersonal Finances,” you ask. “Where do you see yourself in five years?”

Five years? Who knows. One year? I think you can continue to expect some sporadic posts at the rate of about 3-4 per month for the foreseeable future. Unless I don’t post, in which case don’t expect them. The nice thing is—to quote Freddy Smidlap quoting Frogdancer Jones: no one cares! If you absolutely can’t miss whatever nonsense pops up on these pages at exactly 6 a.m. on a Monday morning, and then not again until the wee hours of a random Saturday morning three weeks later, your best bet is throwing your email in the Subscribe sidebar on the upper right hand side of the site.

Shoutout to Accidentally Retired, who recently celebrated a much more exciting one year anniversary, for triggering a reminder that this blog had a milestone to celebrate. It came at a good time, too, nearly in the middle of the calendar year. Much of our reflecting naturally occurs around the holidays as the year comes to a close, so it’s nice to look back on a year from one June 24 to another.

With that–how was your Impersonal year?