2009 Presidential Address & 2009 State of the Blog Address – All in the Same Day!

By Neal@Wealth Pilgrim on Sep 8, 2009 in About

Today, President Obama will address our nation’s children. He’ll be talking about “the importance of education; about the importance of staying in school; how we want to improve our education system and why it’s so important for the country.”

Since he’s handling K though 12, I figured I’d take this opportunity to talk to everyone else. Nobody get’s left behind on my watch!

But unlike our President, I’m not going to focus on the importance of education.

It’s been 7 months since I launched Wealth Pilgrim in earnest and it’s about time you received a “State of the Blog” address – so here goes.

First, I’d like to welcome all the new subscribers here at Wealth Pilgrim.

With your help, I’m almost half way to meeting my goal of 1,000 subscribers by February 2010 (I started February 2009 with 0 subscribers). I am very grateful for your emails and comments and that you check my feed, and visit here each day. Thank you.

What’s the core message?

I write both about my own personal experiences (going from homeless and broke to owning both a home and a business) and the experiences I’ve been exposed to as a result of the work I do as a CFP ®.

My life and professional experiences have helped form the core message of Wealth Pilgrim. They are:

1. No matter what, you can do a lot on your own to improve your financial situation starting today.

2. You don’t need to be wealthy to be happy.

3. It’s more important to do the right things than to have the right things.

I think most every post I’ve written is a variation on one (or more) of the above themes.

Who am I writing for?

I’m writing for you if money is just a stepping stone to things that are much more important like family, health, community and spirituality.

You might struggle with debt or overspending. Maybe you don’t know how to invest or you might live in a general state of fear as a result of your finances. You might be overlooking opportunities. You might be making the wrong financial decisions and as a result, you might be paying a high “quality of life” cost. You might want to change careers, open a business or buy a home and have real financial concerns about it.

To sum it all up, you might be the kind of person who just wants to make smart money decisions that help you have a better life.

If so, I’m writing for you. I’ll continue to offer suggestions that (I hope) make your life just a little bit easier and more peaceful.

However, if your primary concern is getting rich, G-d bless you – this isn’t the blog for you. My experience tells me that wealth for wealth’s sake just doesn’t have that much value. I’m not interested in that so I don’t write about it. Let’s go on.

What have I learned over the last 7 months?

I’m not proud of saying this but at first, I didn’t really expect to learn a lot by writing this blog.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

In preparing the posts, I did research and of course I learned that way. But by far, I’ve learned the most from you – your comments and emails.

I sit down to write a post – often at 5 AM – when I focus best. I usually spend a good few hours writing. I go over the posts a number of times and usually feel confident that I’ve covered all the important points.

But without exception, you make comments and point out different angles on what I’ve written about that always surprise me. Thanks for continuing my education.

I’ve also learned about community.

The personal finance blogging community is simply amazing. Almost every PF blogger than I’ve come in contact with has a unique voice with something intelligent and important to say. They care about the people they write for and they have been exceptionally helpful to me as a newbie blogger. Everyone pulls together and that’s really refreshing.( I wish I could say the same for the financial adviser world – but I can’t.)

What really surprised me was the attitude I found with the bigger bloggers like FreeMoneyFinance.com, GetRichSlowly.org, FiveCentNickel.com andFrugalDad.com. These are run by people who have taken a personal interest in helping me when they didn’t have to. I never expected this community to be so professional, open and helpful. Thanks everyone.

I’ve made some good friends. Just look at my blog roll to see who they are.

What are my goals?

My ultimate goal is to change the conversation people have with themselves and others about money. I’d like to see fewer people talking about having more money and more people talking about how to use money to have more life.

One way I hope to do that is by writing.

I love writing because it allows me to express myself, learn and (hopefully) be helpful to you.

Not everyone wants (or needs) a financial adviser so this blog helps me interact with more folks than I otherwise would. So I’ll continue writing posts. I may cut back on the number of weekly posts, but I will keep writing. I love it too much to stop.

As far as writing goes, I have written one book as you may know. I’ve also been fortunate enough to have been asked by Wiley & Sons to write another book and that is in the works. It’s a technical book written for accountants.

But I’ve also been working on another book with a well-respected author, John David Mann. John is an amazing writer best known for his work on The Go Giver – an international bestseller. I hope I’ll be able to share some good news on that project shortly.

My goal is to generate 30% of my current income through Wealth Pilgrim. In order to do that, I’ll be introducing information products that I’ll be selling here and through other affiliates. These will be pre-recorded and live personal finance coaching products from my own perspective which I think is very different from most other professionals.

I’d also like to begin doing some limited public speaking. You already know by now that I am a ham-bone and I love to get in front of an audience.

What I’m asking from you.

I’d like to ask you to do three things:

1. Continue visiting Wealth Pilgrim. Leave comments. Send emails. Let me know how I can improve.

2. Share the love. While my goal is 1000 subscribers by February 2010, wouldn’t it be fun if we could get there by 12/31/09? You can help by inviting 5 of your closest friends to check us out and sign up for free updates. Just send this link to them and suggest they check it out. I would really appreciate it.

3. Take 60 seconds to complete this survey. It asks only 9 questions and your answers will help me make Wealth Pilgrim more responsive to your needs. As an extra special bribe, if you do take the survey, I’ll send you a free special report I’ve written called, “How to make sure you don’t hire the next Bernie Madoff”.

I’ll also donate $1 for every survey completed to the American Cancer Society for the first 100 surveys taken and I’ll send one randomly drawn lucky winner a copy of my book, ”Why Smart People Lose A Fortune”.

If you do take the survey, just shoot me an email telling me so and I’ll send you the free report. (The honor system is alive and well at Wealth Pilgrim. )I’ll also put you into the drawing for the grand prize – a free copy of my book. My email is nfrankle AT pacbell DOT net. Replace the AT with @ and the DOT with. .

How this post can improve your financial life.

I think there are a number of ways you can apply what I’ve shared with you to your own situation. However, that’s the subject of another post entirely. We’ll leave it to another day to discuss that.

Thanks again for being part of the community. I look forward to a wonderful journey with you for years to come.

PS Please remember to take a minute to complete the survey and then invite a few friends to get free updates.

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