A look back at the top posts of 2021 on this site, including both my favorites and the ones readers viewed most.
Like most people who are engaging with the pandemic, 2021 felt both swift and eternal. It’s hard to really know what to make of it, to be honest.
But on the money coaching front, I’ve had a very busy and productive year.
I released some new products, including a free course, “Your 5 Day Money Reset”, and a free quiz, “What Is Your Money Attachment Style?” I was also interviewed on some podcasts and made my first conference presentation in two years.
And, as always, I managed to go another year without missing a week in posting.
That’s right, 52 weeks, 52 blog posts. And I’d like to highlight some of them here.
So just like we do every year, in this post, you’ll find the top five most read posts of 2021, as well as my own top five favorite posts.
It’s like a top 10 list, but sliced in two.
Table of Contents
Your top 5
Here are the posts that either resonated the most with readers, or happened to get picked up on some lucky algorithm. (I can never tell with these things.) As always, I take these rankings from Google Analytics, as measured from December to December.
5. Why it’s time to stop your scarcity mindset—Not to get all woo, but a scarcity mindset closes off the mind, retreats you inside yourself, and isolates you from others. It may even be responsible for much of what ails our world. And if that wasn’t bad enough, it can lead you to be poorer and be a cause of systemic racism, which isn’t woo at all.
4. The American Rescue Plan diffuses a student loan tax bomb—I’m often loath to offer too much coverage of current events, but I recognize that when things are happening fast, you want to get up-to-date information. This was my attempt to cover a very little-talked about provision in the code that makes student loan forgiveness tax free. (I also made a video about this.)
3. You need a budget, but do you need You Need A Budget?— After years of being asked to review You Need A Budget, I finally got around to it. (I also made a video of this too, exploring the application for the first time while on camera.)
2. What is your Money Attachment Style?—You have an attachment style in your relationships. You have a relationship to money. Therefore, you have a Money Attachment Style too. (Take the quiz to learn yours!)
1. Going for my AFC® certification: one year later—For the past eighteen months as of this writing, I’ve been working toward my Accredited Financial Counselor® certification. This post is a little behind-the-scenes, but I think there isn’t a lot of information out there on the actual process of getting certified, which is why this post got so much traction. Also, if you’re one of those people who requires that their practitioners have letters after their name, be patient, I’m almost there.
My top 5
I also want to highlight the posts that I’m most proud of, or that encapsulate my work most effectively. If you want to see what I was about this year in a nutshell, these are the posts to read.
1. How to make more money—While I’ve never been a fan of how much people focus on “how to make more money” relative to other important financial questions, let’s face it, sometimes you do just want to make more money. Through a very straightforward step-by-step process, I show you how.
2. How a children’s TV show taught me about compound interest—Want to know the power of compound interest and why it’s so hard to envision properly? You can find out when you take $0.01 and double it every day for a month. You’ll never look at compound interest (or a child’s allowance) the same ever again. Plus, you’ll wish you did this with your parents.
3. What do you love to spend money on?—As a money coach, it’s easy to get a reputation as the Fun Police, but to me, it’s exactly the opposite. In fact, I want you to spend more on the things you love! But that means spending less on everything else. By focusing on the positive, you can bolster your spirits for doing the work when it feels hard.
4. How to travel debt free—Travel was built in to this site from the very beginning (see this post from 2012), and while both my focus and the pandemic has meant that there is less travel-related content these days, people are still traveling, and I want to make sure that you can travel as much as you want and never come home with debt.
5. How to manage pistotikophobia: Fear of your credit score—I love neologisms, and while “ex-velleitier” will always have a special place in my heart, I think the new crown goes to “pistotikophobia”, or “fear of your credit score”. And we need to talk about it, because it’s as irrational as many other phobias and we need to move to a place where you don’t worry about your credit score anymore.
Looking ahead
I have no idea what’s in store this coming year.
If all goes well, I’ll finish my AFC® certification and will finally have those coveted letters after my own name. I plan to continue growing my private practice and work with more individuals and groups. I hope to have a bigger Instagram following.
But with this pandemic, and people’s fatigue at dealing with it leading (ironically) to its extension, I might be staying inside for another year.
Thank heavens I have my community, at worst only a Zoom call away. And I have all of you, dear readers, who have supported me for almost a decade in my journey to help those who feel ignored by the traditional financial world to thrive with money. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you.
Stay safe, stay connected, and I’ll see you once the calendar flips. The work continues!
