Whelp friends, we hit 5 Million page views earlier this month! How awesome is that? :) That’s almost a million for each year I’ve been blogging – pretty sick stuff (we’ve also had over 1,850 articles published and over 50,000 comments! CRAZY!!). I can kinda get now when people say “the first million is always the hardest,” haha… it’s true at least in the blogging world!

With all these changes in my life lately, I’ve also been asking myself what the future will/should hold in terms of this blog. When you’ve been around the block for a few years certain questions start bubbling up, and at some point you have to listen to them. Things like, “Is this blog still doing what it was meant to do?” “Are people getting anything from it still?” “Am *I* getting anything from it still?” “Should I spend more time growing it or less?” And on and on…

Now I don’t know the answers to all of them, but I can tell you I’m not ready to stop just yet regardless of the answers :) I do still enjoy rambling on to you folks, and I love confusing people when I tell them I blog full-time for a living, haha… And I DO think it’s still doing what it was supposed to back in the day – which is:

To start conversations about money in an open and friendly environment.

It may not have been that way at first (I was just trying to keep myself busy at work instead of getting on MySpace 24/7! Which tells you how long I’ve been blogging for, haha..), but over the years that’s what I’ve turned its mission to. Chatting about the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to our personal finances. Or rather, MY personal finances. I forget there was a time when I thought it was taboo to spill it all out in the open ;) It’s much more fun aired out!

I also have to point out that after all these years the level of haters here still remains at an incredibly low level. Almost non-existent even, which is a tribute to YOU guys and shows y’all have some good respect for your fellow financial neighbor. I’m amazed at all the blogs I go to where people are bashing each other left and right, and I’m just SO thankful we don’t have any of that nastiness here on this site. We may get heated at times and disagree (which is great!! We love passion and perspectives!) but rarely do I have to go in and delete someone’s nonsense.

SO THANKS  TO ALL OF YOU FOR BEING SO COURTEOUS AND NICE!!! There’s no way I’d still be blogging if I had to deal with jokers all day and night. You guys really are the best, I mean it.

In fact, here… Let dig up my old prize for people I used to hand out back in 2008. These were fun to make when I had like a billion extra hours every week to play ;) Here you go:

Click the picture or download it, and then print! Extra brownie points for snapping a picture of it on your wall or fridge or somewhere else cool :) It’s the little things in life that turn me on, haha…

So I think things will stay business as usual here for the most part, but I do want to figure out a way to add even MORE ways to get the convos flowing better. Perhaps by adding a forum of some sort on the site? Or some other doodad where we can all get to learn from each other more and share ideas? I know the point of blogs is usually to get one person’s perspective on stuff, but I feel like adding an extra level on that to continue the conversations would be even sexier. Maybe a more secretive place where we can share that’s even more private? (cue evil laugh) I dunno…

What do you think about that? Would you participate if we started some sort of forum here? I’m going to research it more and see what I can come up with… In the meantime, keep on sharing your thoughts in the comments as they really are the heart of this whole operation here. I’m just the guy who kicks it off and helps you waste a little time at work ;) You know, instead of getting on MySpace.

On a side note, this site now qualifies as the longest job I’ve ever held in my entire life. Pretty wild.

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[Awesome t-shirt pic by Rochelle, just rochelle]

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