FINANCIAL FRESHMAN #052
TL;DR → This post marks the one year anniversary of Financial Freshman. Going forward, expect Financial Freshman to become more personalized, provide personal finance resources, and continue publishing content on a regular cadence.
Happy One Year!
Can you believe that this is blog post number 52? For the last year, we’ve gathered here to learn more about personal finance every single Sunday. And we haven’t missed a single one.
This post is a little bit more like a diary entry, but I wanted to start by saying thank you. It’s been incredibly rewarding to see a growing viewership over this last year, and to know that college students in several states (and countries?) are tuning in to learn something new.
I wanted this week to serve as a “state of the union” of sorts, so let’s talk about the road behind us, as well as what lies ahead.
Reflections
Across one year of writing, we’ve covered a wide array of topics together. There’s been posts about student loans, Roth IRAs, investing strategies, and HSAs…just to name a few. The best part? 100% of these posts have been written and published with the college student and recent graduate in mind. No prior knowledge is necessary, no fancy jargon is used, and there’s no judgement for seeking answers to “simple” questions. If you don’t understand some specific personal finance topic, what better time to learn than right now?
Diving deeper into our year of writing…
Which post has been your most popular?
Without question, VTSAX Explained: A Beginner’s Guide to Index Funds. Seeing the popularity of this post reaffirmed my mission of this site—take something complex, and make it simple and approachable. You may know from personal finance media that investing in index funds is a good idea, but most of us likely never learned why.
Which post are you most proud of?
I’ll pick a few, and mention the Tackling Taxes series that was published back in March. Filing my income taxes used to be this ambiguous, daunting exercise. Compiling hundreds of frequently asked questions into a five-part introductory series on taxes was fun to work through, and well-received.
If you could tell a recent graduate to read one of your posts, which would you recommend?
I would choose The Foundational Budget: Mastering the 50:30:20 Rule. When you graduate, following a budget transitions from being a “nice to have” to an outright necessity. If the world of budgeting apps is daunting (and ironically, expensive) then start with a pen, paper, and your 50:30:20.
If you could tell a current student to read one of your posts, which would you recommend?
Most definitely The Job Offer Iceberg. You are making the investment in your higher education to make yourself more employable, and you have to understand the offer competitiveness goes far beyond just salary or hourly wage. Making this realization before you have to make an employment decision is something I wish for every student.
Next Steps
Reflections aside, I have some big plans for Financial Freshman. In no particular order, the goals in the next year are to…
- Continue publishing high-quality content. There may be a point in the future where the work to maintain the other parts of the site makes weekly publishing too challenging, but we’re not there yet. As of right now, I have a backlog of 104 (that’s a real number) blog post ideas that I’ve started to outline. I want this website to become a repository of all things personal finance, and that will take far more than 52 posts to accomplish.
- Define and build helpful resources. Whether that’s a comprehensive guide to student loan repayment options, a downloadable budget template, or a calculator that helps you understand how much you can afford to spend on your first home, Financial Freshman will have the resources to help.
- Personalize the experience. What if you got a job offer and you want to know how competitive it is? What if you’re about to graduate and you want a check-in on your personal finance preparedness? This website will become the space to take a quick assessment, and understand where you stand today. For areas in finance that you may be lacking, we can connect you with that exact blog post that will fill the void.
- Continue to grow our LinkedIn community. Blog posts are sometimes long, I get it. Be sure to subscribe to our LinkedIn page if you are interested in some shorter-form personal finance content. We post trivia questions, finance quotes, and link to blog posts you may have missed. If you’re a LinkedIn user, please check out our page!
Final Thoughts
Thank you for reading, and thank you for your continued support. As always, feel free to contact me with any feedback or content suggestions you may have. I’m thankful for the last year of writing, and looking forward to our continued growth for the next year and beyond!
