Starting an early retirement blog

[instantluck]

ER/FI is a long, difficult journey. I think a motivating tool would be a blog. It seems like a lot of work though. Does anyone have any insight?

Also, I notice that on a lot of personal finance blogs the writer includes financial figures. As a reader, I think this is cool because you can really follow along on their journey. MMM does this and fifighter as well. Are there any drawbacks to doing this? One concern of mine is offline friends. I'd love to share it with them but I'm not sure if them knowing my networth would be a good thing.

[mickeyj]

I would create a persona for the blog and discuss it with offline friends from a 3rd party perspective. I wouldn't be comfortable letting my friends know my networth.

[matchewed]

It depends on what you think you'll get out of it. If you're just looking to express some ideas, thoughts, and emotions on your journey well the journals are below and a notebook is cheap. If you're looking to interact with people the journals are below. If you're looking to build your own community you may need a new approach to FI as that market is fairly saturated IMO.

As for the anonymity aspect, well that depends on how open you are today as a person. Would you go up to your friends and tell them verbally your net worth? If no then you probably should take care to not do that electronically. Would you put a sign up outside of your house showing your expenses and income? If no then you should probably not post it. Starting a blog is exposing a portion of yourself to the world. People can find out who you are, keep that in mind.

:)

[velocistar237]

I think a motivating tool would be a blog.

I find these forums pretty motivating. You would get a lot more interaction here for a lot less effort than on your own blog.

When my wife was describing MMM to someone, she mostly talked about how surprised she was that people lay out all their financial information online and ask for advice. I hadn't really thought of that as a major element, but I guess she does. I think that if you knew almost anything about me, you could piece together most of that data anyway, and the remaining details are pretty unimportant.