Author Topic: Personal Finance Bloggers: Do you link your blog to your real identity?  (Read 2178 times)

monstermonster

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I know a number of folks on this forum are personal finance bloggers, at varying degrees of readership, and I was wondering of those that publish (either in the "journals" section or on their own website) how many use their real identities?

I have a relatively active personal website that's strongly tied to a bunch of my projects- including a personal finance art project where I took a picture of everything I spent money on for a year- and in 2016, I plan to start publishing weekly (I've been building up a backlog of articles for 6 months) about FIRE, budgeting, living frugally, travel hacking. I'm trying to decide if it might be better to talk about finances on a blog that isn't tied strongly to my personal/professional website. I plan to publish my monthly expenses and earnings. I've been starting to get teaching gigs for personal finance as a side-hustle and it seems like linking it to myself could be good for that, but maybe bad for my perceived professionalism? Thoughts?

If you blog anonymously, why did you choose to do that?
If you blog tied to your personal life, why did you choose that?

tomorrowsomewherenew

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Re: Personal Finance Bloggers: Do you link your blog to your real identity?
« Reply #1 on: December 02, 2015, 12:32:03 PM »
I just started a blog, and I did not tie it to my actual identity. I strongly suspect that people would treat me differently if they knew the sum of money we had. I also think a good number of people might actually expect me to give them some of it, and I don't want to be bothered with annoying requests.

arebelspy

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Re: Personal Finance Bloggers: Do you link your blog to your real identity?
« Reply #2 on: December 02, 2015, 12:44:36 PM »
It depends on your goals for the blog (and type of blog), and your personal comfort level.

I wouldn't blog anonymously, I don't see the point (for me).  But the blog I'd be starting would be to share about my life. So anonymous defeats the purpose.
I am a former teacher who accumulated a bunch of real estate, retired at 29, spent some time traveling the world full time and am now settled with three kids.
If you want to know more about me, this Business Insider profile tells the story pretty well.
I (rarely) blog at AdventuringAlong.com. Check out the Now page to see what I'm up to currently.

Jeddy

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Re: Personal Finance Bloggers: Do you link your blog to your real identity?
« Reply #3 on: December 02, 2015, 01:39:52 PM »
Our blog touches on a variety of subjects, one of which is a more frugal lifestyle/cutting costs - none of which matters whether you know it's ME and read the blog posts or think it's John Q and read the blog posts.

My wife and I write based on our life and ourselves - pretending to be someone else (changing names, changing location, etc.) would just inhibit our ability to write as ourselves. Your mileage may vary though