I review the best posts of 2025, including the posts you clicked on the most and the ones I liked the best.
This year, like every year, I published one blog post for every week of the year. I’ve posted every Monday since November 2012, which explains how I recently logged my 1,000th blog post on this site.
You’d think I’d be out of ideas, but hardly.
Blogging is the core of what grew into Empathic Finance, which now is primarily a financial coaching business where I work with individuals, couples, and people of all relationship styles from all over the world.
I continue to blog because I want everyone to have access to my content, client or not. And you have access to quite a lot; just click the search button up top and type something in and you’ll see.
So as the year is at an end, let’s look back at some of the most notable posts of 2025.
I divide this list into two parts:
- The blog posts that my readers (that’s you) have clicked on and shared the most (as determined by Google Analytics)
- The ones I’m most proud of
I think that between the two lists, you get a good sense of what I’m about here.
So let’s see the highlights of 2025.
Table of Contents
Top ranked posts
These are the most-viewed blog posts for 2025, as determined by Google Analytics.
#5 Buy Now, Pay Later is coming for your burritos
Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) couldn’t have come at a worse time in our economy, providing yet another way for people to buy things that they can’t afford and get into real financial trouble. Things tipped into farce with the announcement of a partnership between Klarna and DoorDash, allowing people to use BNPL on their food orders. Allowing people to split a $40 burrito food order into four monthly payments is clearly not the sign of a healthy economy.
#4 Everything you need to know about locking your credit card
While some people are wanting to put DoorDash orders on a monthly payment, others are looking to lock their credit cards down. You don’t need to cancel a credit card to prevent it from being used; you just need to lock it. And as I never grow tired of saying: you can’t get into credit card debt if you don’t use credit cards. Here’s how to lock it down. (Technically this is December 2024, but I think it counts here.)
#3 Why food banks shouldn’t exist
I promise I wasn’t trying to be provocative with this post. I was simply pointing out that in a just, equitable, society, we wouldn’t have to rely on optional generosity from select members of the population to keep people from starving. If only there was some kind of way to spread our maximal abundance around. Hmm.
#2 How much should you spend on lunch?
I don’t totally know why this post ranked so highly this year. Maybe because the price of food is so much on people’s minds? Either way, here’s a good rule of thumb to use when deciding what is your daily lunch budget.
#1 What to do with your money during a coup
The most clicked-on post of the year isn’t surprising at all. We’re in the midst of a giant takeover of the administrative state by grifters, con artists, and would-be authoritarians. It’s normal to fear that they are going to crash the economy. This post is a primer on what you can do right now to be the best steward of your money.
My favorite posts
Here are the blog posts I published this year that I’m most proud of.
#1 Getting rid of the penny: A case for change
I’ve always been fascinated by coins and their increasing lack of utility. The U.S. finally stopped minting the penny this year after years of it not making sense. I argue that we should go much further.
#2 “Help! I can’t pay my bills!”
As more people experience financial hardship in a crashing economy, this phrase becomes more and more common. In this post, I go through the exact steps you need to take to get through this scary and challenging situation.
#3 Memories of Burning Man: What happens when you try to go money-free
A story about the one time I went to Burning Man. Burning Man is supposed to be a commerce-free event, and yet my friends and I spent thousands of dollars. The reason why is interesting, but it’s more interesting to think about why you’d want to go money-free in the first place.
#4 4 reasons to love to Consumer Financial Protection Board (CFPB)
Why would anyone want to dismantle an organization whose aim is to fight fraud, graft, and corruption? Unless, of course, the people trying to dismantle it want to engage in fraud, graft, and corruption. The CFPB is a wonderful organization that helps each and every one of us, and while its homepage doesn’t 404 anymore like it did when I originally wrote this post, it’s still an organization run by people who want to destroy it, which is heartbreaking.
#5 What are your three financial goals?
Sometimes, the simplest idea is the best. This is an activity that I’ve done with all of my financial coaching clients for years, but have never explicitly shared it on my blog until now.
What’s ahead for next year
What will the next year bring? Some change, of course. I’m looking into sharing my work in a slightly different form, the details of which I’ll leave for another time. I of course hope to grow my coaching business and help more people. Now more than ever, I feel like this work is needed.
But some things I don’t plan to change, like how I’ll post a new article every Monday, each week, without fail.
Thank you for being here. Stick around, and we’ll make next year better than this one.
