ThinkOfThe.Money
Hello to the world from the ThinkOfThe.Money blog!
This is the first post of what will be many.
What is ThinkOfThe.Money / Think of the Money / TOTM?
TOTM is a UK personal finance and frugality blog. The name comes from a maxim that I try to remind myself of when I’m not enjoying work that much: “think of the money” to stay focused on long term goals and remember it’s all worth it in the end. I’ve been inspired by many such blogs myself over the years, most prominently by Mr Money Mustache. I’ll link to all of the ones I read over time.
Most of these frugality and FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) blogs seem to be based in the US and are focused on personal finance in America. A lot of what they write also applies to the UK, but I think we could do with a few more UK FIRE blogs as well.
Where I’m at personally
I debated for a while on how anonymous to make this blog, and how much personal detail to give. Monevator is a good example of a UK finance blog that has remained highly anonymous and that seems like quite a good idea. On the flipside, Blogs such as MMM and Financial Panther regularly give exact details of their lives and finances.
I do think this blog would benefit both myself and any readers it might get if it offered slightly more detail on some things. The plan I’ve settled on for now is not to reveal my name, any precise personal details or any exact financial figures here. I will, however, mention and link to my side projects and discuss my employment situation over time in general terms.
I’ve been in the software industry for all of my career since graduating from university about ten years ago. This has been a great industry to be in during that time, and I’m aware of how fortunate I’ve been because of that.
I also regularly experiment with various side projects, mostly because I love to spend time that way, but also to try and build some alternative sources of income.
My first “side project”, which I started during university, is a blog about East Asian Studies. The majority of content is from my time at university, but I do still add a new post now and then. It ticks along and produces a little bit of income each month from affiliate links to relevant language learning products. Perhaps due to being in there quite early, a lot of the posts on that blog rank quite well in Google. It’s still one of my favourite projects, even if it doesn’t produce much income compared to the time spent on it.
I also have a blog and resource website about learning Chinese. This site is much more focused, with concrete learning materials and resources to try and help people who are studying Mandarin. This one also produces a little bit of income each month, but again it’s very little considering the amount of time that I spend on the site.
Currently my best-earning side project is an online shop that sells 3D pop up cards. I run this with my wife, and it generates just about enough income to live on frugally, in theory. It’s fun to run, and it’s interesting to have a side business based on physical stock.
Moving on, I also have a blog about software development. This is mostly just a place to note down various random thoughts and notes related to software engineering, and it generates no income.
The last project worth mentioning right now is our wall art shop. This is still experimental, and the plan is to try and run a so-called drop shipping business where we don’t handle the physical stock ourselves. It’s been pretty slow so far in its early days, but we hope to gradually ramp it up over time.
I always have more projects and ideas in the pipeline (more than I can ever actually do), so I’ll be mentioning those and how they work out in future blog posts here.
Future content on TOTM
Other than sources of income, I also plan to write about low-key frugality, saving money, investing it. I also plan to try and make some fun little personal finance tools and make them available here on TOTM.
Thanks for reading!