The top posts of the year on Empathic Finance, including both my favorites and the ones readers viewed most.
At the beginning of this year, I made a big change to this site.
After six years of blogging on a wide range of topics, not just personal finance but also technology and urban planning, I decided to relaunch the site as Empathic Finance, with a closer focus on emotion-focused financial literacy and healing.
I chose this mainly because this was the topic that I kept coming back to here, the one where I was the most passionate.
So I relaunched my financial coaching practice, and I also cut down to posting once a week, to allow for that and other projects.
But I’m still just as dedicated to this site as ever, helping you heal your relationship to money, and unblocking yourself from your goals.
So with the year ending, I wanted to take my yearly look back at some of the blog highlights.
In the past, I would devote one post to my top 10 favorite posts, and another to the top 10 most visited posts by you.
But since I’m only blogging once a week, I’m combining these this year to a single post and two “Top 5” lists. High Fidelity-style, if you will.
Table of Contents
My top 5 posts
First, let’s start with my favorite posts of the year. These I believe best encapsulate the ideas I hold most strongly and the work I encourage you to do.
1. How could you make $100,000?—For many of you, making $100,000 might seem impossible, a fantasy. But that is a mental construction, not a determined fact. One thing I love doing with my clients is challenging them to think about how they could make $100,000 if they absolutely had to. When you force yourself to consider the impossible, it’s amazing how possible it can become.
2. How your decisions change when you have more money—Prices have a feeling associated with them, and the feeling can change based on your financial situation. You may think taking a helicopter to the airport is the epitome of excess, but then again, I used to think that about much less lavish options.
3. Would your future self say it’s too late now?—Stop saying it’s too late for you. If you’re reading this, it’s not.
4. Your feelings when you learn about other people’s financial decisions—Listen to what your gut is telling you when you rush to judgment on someone else. There is a lesson for you right there.
5. Why you need to work with a digital fiduciary—As a financial coach, the idea of a being a “fiduciary” is ingrained in me. That means that I won’t suggest any financial course of action for you that contains a benefit for me, but it also means that I won’t do affiliate marketing online either. Even online, you need to seek out people you can trust.
Your top 5 posts
These are the posts that got the most traction this year online. Some of these are surprising to me, but that’s the way it always seems to work!
5. How to learn your money story—This might be one of the most crucial posts I’ve written in a long while. Your money story affects every other financial decision you make, and it is imperative to understand it if you ever wish to change it.
4. You can save more (and not have it hurt)—It’s not always true that it would be difficult to save more money. You may not even notice it. But you’ll definitely notice the savings.
3. Welcome, Unlikely Radicals!—My announcement of relaunch of this site. A lot of you wanted to come take a look!
2. Book review: Everyday Millionaires—My review of Chris Hogan’s latest book got a lot of traction. Though I’m happy to say that much of my original critique is now moot, as they have since released the data used to compile the analyses in the book.) Three cheers for transparency!
1. My debit card got hacked!—They tell you not to put your everyday spending on a credit card, because “what if you get hacked?” Well, I did, and it was no big deal.
Looking back and ahead
It’s nice to look back at the work that I’ve done over the year. I hope you’re doing the same in your life right now.
I’m excited to keep this site going into its seventh year. As long as people are struggling with money and their beliefs around it, I’ll still have plenty of work to do.
Stay with me, it’s going to keep getting better.
