One of the things I have done this past December is cut down on the amount of Personal Finance blogs/Substacks, videos and podcasts that I consume. At the end of the day, most of the content out there is just splitting hairs for nerds or a rehashing of the same advice. I still enjoy it but honestly, I am well past the point where I GAF* about whether or not, for example, people should buy XEQT or VEQT and save cents on the dollar when we live in a world where most people struggle to even save $100. That isn’t the bottleneck for most people, the basics are. This isn’t shade to those creators – some people love those debates and love reading and writing about them. But I am done with the made-up hand-wringing of nothingburger questions.

Part of this is because we’ve made it: we’ve achieved our goals and quite frankly this content hasn’t been enjoyable for a while, so I am going to just stop. It used to be that I enjoyed reading that content because it felt nice to read people’s individual struggles when I was going through my own. But the other part is that the core tenets of personal finance haven’t changed in a really long time. Sure, the methodology and access to investments has changed but the basics of how to manage money has not really moved the needle since OG DJ Chuck D said, “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty-pound ought and six, result misery.”

Another part of this is that I am just so sick and tired of the constant ads, amazon affiliate links, pop-ups and course offerings shilled by every website. Again, no shade to those creators at ALL: the bills must be paid and somewhere along the way we have collectively decided that user-hostile websites & affiliate links was the way we would pay for content. I actually prefer when creators write books because it feels satisfying to hold a book in my hot little hands (I have also bought books for my kindle, so that works, too). I think I just enjoy having all of the info in one place, offline. But it’s become off-putting when I hit a website where it’s pop-ups and ads skewing the window and there are so many affiliate links, calls to action and mediocre course offerings/coaching** that consists of someone just editing a mish mash of content you can find for free online and giving it a fancy new name, “It’s not a budget! We hates budgets, don’t we Precious! It’s Personal Accountability Tool!”

PSYCH! It’s actually a budget!

This is also just discussing people who I actually do give out good advice – established, intelligent folks who give advice that I may not agree with but is generally well thought out and competent. On the flip side, we have these TikTok Finluencers who have the most unhinged hot takes (enragement is engagement!) whose existence I generally try and ignore.

Finally, as I mentioned earlier: I am spending more time in the meat space. What happens when you achieve your goals? As it turns out, for me, the answer is to live a bigger life learning new things, doing more art, hanging out with more friends and trying new things. I no longer HAVE to sit in front of a computer for work so I don’t have the need to take short breaks to read posts or to listen to podcasts while I work. I think I kept up with a lot of websites and podcasts because it was good to have a few things in my back pocket to keep my brain busy when I was stuck in place. Then I just didn’t cull when I retired.

I eventually did start to scale back the content I was mainlining and worked on my social media use as well. Now, I have nothing but facebook now (marketplace and local communities keep me hooked and it’s just basically an address book now) which I only access by desktop.

I suspect I should write up what I believe are the core tenets of personal finance. So maybe that will be next. Or maybe my absolute frustration with Substack and the complete lack of viable business models for content. Or maybe authenticity vs. income.

Oh, and if you’ve read this far – Happy New Year!

*Give a fuck – shout out to my Oldhomies
**As an aside, I know a disproportionate amount of people who lost their jobs and became life coaches