Track Net Worth, Cultivate a Bias for Action, and Learn the Truth about Imposter Syndrome: Interview with J. Money
July 9, 2021
By Matt Miner, MBA, CFP®
Yes, You Can Quit
Got a project, job, or client you may need to quit? Here’s how to make it happen. First, describe the best case scenario – maybe in a journal entry or a voice-memo. Then ask yourself, if that best-case scenario came to pass, would I be happy? Or would I still be miserable in this project or job? If the latter, create a plan to make a change and take the first step to put it in motion.
That’s how J. Money took action to quit podcasting with Paula Pant to focus on his other sites and his family. J.’s focus on digital minimalism led to the sale of BudgetsAreSexy.com, J.’s signature site, to Soapbox Financial Network and RockstarFinance.com, J.’s PF blog curation site, to ESI Money (who sold it again several months later). J. Money has a roundup of his content at JMoney.biz.
When J.’s not spending time with his family he consults in the personal finance blogging world and fintech space, and was generous to share an hour or so with me, after we went back and forth on Twitter about my decision to part with a favorite pair of Gustin jeans that were not longer decent to wear outside my bedroom. Given the start to this conversation, it was inevitable J. would make share is thoughts on life and money with Work Pants Finance.
J.’s interest in clothing finds expression over at his nascent merchandise site, PFSwagger.com where you can find hoodies, mugs, T’s and ballcaps. I’ll let you know when the LifeMeetsMoney.com dry-fit running shirts make it into his lineup!
Key Take-Aways
First, if work you’re doing makes you miserable, GET OUT, even if the decision costs you money.
Second, though J.’s had a high-level of success in the personal finance blogging world, he notes that 80% of his online startups fizzled.
Third, stubbornness and commitment are the keys to get things done when the going gets tough.
Fourth, net worth tracking is an important part of financial planning. When it comes to wealth, net worth is the number that matters.
Fifth, though J.’s been blogging for twelve years, he still feels like a newbie! This comment makes me think of some of the best training I received when I was still a corporate guy. I learned: It’s not about feeling good. It’s about being good. You may never (or at least not always) feel good about your public work - standing in front of a boardroom, presenting to large groups via video call, releasing podcasts and blog posts week after week - but however you feel, do good work and put it out there for others.
Sixth, J. recommends (and has put to work in his life) the principles espoused by Greg McKeown in Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. McKeown’s book deserves a place on your shelf if you’re looking to say No to things that don’t matter, and make real progress on your wildly important goals.
Seventh and finally, by focusing on the vital few things in his life, J freed up his schedule to include more time for activities like reading and taking naps!
Transcript
[00:00:00] Matt: Got a project, business, or job you think you need to quit? Describe the best-case scenario, maybe in a journal entry or a voice memo to yourself, then ask if that best-case scenario came to pass, would I be happy, or would I still be miserable in this project? If it's the latter, now is the time to make a plan for change.
Today's show features the career of my favorite pointy-haired, anonymous money blogger, who's also been called the Miley Cyrus of Finance. His prolific output and herculean efforts to serve the personal finance blog industry have served him well as he has bought and sold sites, created and sold sites, collaborated with other online people, and had his work featured in Forbes, Business Insider, The New York Times, Huffington Post, and elsewhere.
Hey, and welcome to the Work Pants Finance Podcast. I'm Matt Miner, your money guide. Work Pants Finance is the show for MBAs, entrepreneurs, and other professionals who want their financial plan to work as hard as they do.
Now, here's your money guide quick tip. It's in two parts. First, when it comes to creative work, cadence and consistency mixed with stubbornness are the recipe for success. Pick a time and a place every weekday at 5:00 AM in your office, set a specific goal, write 500 words, create a tracking mechanism. For example, the number of days in a row you've kept your habit, then introduce accountability in a mastermind group or with a mentor.
After that, go public with your commitment and a painful step you'll take if you don't follow through. A $1,000 donation to a political candidate you can't stand along with a note indicating it's the first of many to come, or a new favorite I heard on The Perfect RIA podcast with Matthew Jarvis and Micah Shilanski. Jarvis agreed to send a letter to his top 10 clients telling them they should work with his good friend, Micah, if Jarvis failed to follow through on a fee increase that he agreed was necessary.
All right. Your second money guide quick tip. Track your net worth monthly, or at least quarterly. When it comes to your wealth, net worth is the number that matters. Seeing it frequently will help you stay focused and thereby accelerate your progress toward your goals.
My guest today is J. Money. J. founded and sold budgetsaresexy.com and rockstarfinance.com. He's a former podcast co-host with Paula Pant. J. and I got together for this interview after a Twitter exchange featuring his shorts held together with safety pins, so it's fitting that he's also a finance fashionista at his new website pfswagger.com. There is no Work Pants Finance merchandise there yet, but you will be the first to know when it's available. Be sure to stick around to the end, where J. explains why to prioritize action over analysis, and tells us what makes him happy.
Today's episode is Track Net Worth, Cultivate a Bias for Action, and Learn the Truth About Imposter Syndrome. My interview with J. Money. You can read more at workpantsfinance.com/27.
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[00:03:26] Matt: J. Money, it's a pleasure to have you on the show with me today. Thank you so much for joining the Work Pants Finance podcast.
[00:03:31] J. Money: Yes, man. I like talking about life and money, so this is perfect [laughs]. Bro, I like living and I like money.
[00:03:37] Matt: [laughs] Well, you're on just the right show for both of those things. Now, all my guests have interesting lives, and you definitely fit that description. I wonder if you could just take a minute and tell us a little bit of your history and what you're doing today with jmoney.biz and any other projects you've got going on?
[00:03:51] J. Money: Oh, yes, sure. I went to school for actually graphic design and media arts type of thing. After college, I went into customer service, which is totally random, and one day went looking for a two-bedroom place to rent with my fiancé at the time, got lost, ended up buying a house 48 hours later, no money down, no budget. An even Steven with money. I wasn't horrible, but I wasn't great at it, not obviously with buying the house without anything.
I went online, did the search, budgeting, and figure it out. I came across the personal finance world and people just being so real with their money and sharing their money and sharing net worth. I'd never seen real-life numbers from anyone before. That really excited me and really got me to stop and pay attention. That was about 12 years ago. After a couple of months of reading, I said, "Oh, I could blog my thoughts away," and I just started typing and sharing.
Again, no degree in any of this stuff, my background was design. I think people just resonated with just abnormal person talking about money. I curse, and talk about drinking beer and saving money, and it was a lot of fun, and before I knew it, there was an audience. I figured out how to make money, I became a full-time blogger, I had some other sites along the way, and then just recently, I ended up selling all my sites. I'm still in the financial world, but it's been a fun, career, life-changing, friend-changing, everything, just because of people that have shared their story online. It's been exciting.
[00:05:19] Matt: It's such a big change too. I guess I'd like to ask, how did you come to that decision to sell all of your sites at this point?
[00:05:26] J. Money: It was a roller coaster, you go through something really exciting. I wasn't learning, I got stagnant a little bit, and then I started having kids. The kids really change your life and change your perspective on things. I realized I was a little bit a workaholic and I did not want to be if, so I've slowly been paring down. I got into minimalism, and that was my final challenge, can you detach from your babies online? What happens? Do you just go away? Does your brand go away? I did, and obviously, I'm still here talking, so I didn't disappear all the way. [laughs] It's a combination of minimalism, and then also kids and not wanting to work as hardcore.
[00:06:04] Matt: Yes. Not enough to just clean out the garage, you had to clean out your domains as well. That's really different.
[00:06:13] J. Money: Yes, it's really interesting too. I know your show is about life and money, but the life part of it really, when I started blogging, it was all about money. I just wanted a million dollars. I wanted to say, "I'm a millionaire." That'd be awesome. You could do all this cool stuff with money. Over the years, I realized the money is important, but the reason you want a lot of money is to have a better lifestyle. I started focusing on the lifestyle first as the money was growing, and so I started living a more enjoyable life as the years went by.
When I became a millionaire a couple of years ago, a year ago I guess, my life hasn't changed, which is really crazy, because I already was paying attention to the lifestyle. It's interesting starting and then ending where I was blogging.
[00:06:57] Matt: J., I ran into your work as soon as I dipped my toe into personal finance waters in early 2015.
[00:07:03] J. Money: Oh, cool.
[00:07:03] Matt: Yes, it was cool. I think I first heard you on the Mad Fientist podcast. I wasn't really a subscriber to the work that you and Paula were doing. The personal finance blog and podcast industry is changing really fast. I wonder how you reflect as someone who's been not only a creator in this space, but also a curator of other content in the space, on the state of the industry now, and where you see this as headed?
[00:07:30] J. Money: I think things have changed. I'll tell you the thing that hasn't changed is that it's real life people sharing stories and tips, and being transparent. When I started, there were people sharing net worth and over the years, a lot more people are doing that. It became more acceptable, and a lot of people resonate from seeing real-life numbers.
At the end of the day, it's still all real people and typically not businesses and companies behind these blogs, which I like. I do think, unfortunately, once people caught on to the fact you could make money blogging, there's a lot more people starting blogs for money. Which is fine, I'm not against it, obviously, I made money and I sold my site, so I'm very much into business and entrepreneurship, but I think the blogs that really resonate the best are those that are actually in it for either to hold themselves accountable or to share our community. They do happen to make money, but their number one priority is people and sharing and tips.
The way you write for a person is different typically than the way you write to grow a business and to make money. You say things differently, your perspective's differently because you're going after something different. I think over the 12 years being in the industry, that's been the biggest change of seeing a lot more people jump in. You'll notice, I ran a site called Rockstar Finance, where I would read 150, 200-- I should say skim, I didn't read all of them. Every single day, about 200 articles would show up in the personal finance world from all around the world.
I got to see what people were sharing, what they weren't sharing, how they were sharing. I would say a good 60% of them were-- You could tell they're using the template in how to make money, and it was very robotic, and it was very boring because they weren't engaging. It was for a different reason. That's probably the biggest change, but again, thankfully, it's all normal people just trying-- A lot of people are just sharing tips and trying to help others and hold themselves accountable.
[00:09:22] Matt: It's been interesting though, because even as I look at blogs that I've read for a long time, even if they were initially launched not necessarily with an eye towards making money, there is now a playbook and you see people following it, regardless of whether that was their original intention or not. To me, it's interesting how all that's evolved.
[00:09:44] Matt: Yes. I'll say the lifespan of a blog is, I would say anywhere between one year and two years, and maybe more closer to one year. You get excited, and you get that rush, and you're sharing, and you're talking to people. That's my favorite time to read a blog is the first three months, because they're new and they're raw and they're real and they're not paying attention to all the businessy stuff. They're just blogging. Like what blogging used to be. It's a sharing of your thoughts, a diary. That was always the parts that I really liked reading the most.
Then as they get going it's like, "Well, what's the point of it?" Or you get burnt out or you don't have time. I think people say, "Hey, if I can make money then I'll keep going." Which again, totally fair. I think it's a matter of finding that balance of still having that community and making money, versus scrapping everything and just doing the money route or just shutting it down. It's really interesting to see over a couple of years.
[00:10:39] Matt: I appreciate your comments on the industry. I think you're as well positioned as anybody to make them, so thanks J. One of the really distinct things about you has been your decision to stay completely anonymous online. I appreciate you got together with me here today. I don't know you as anyone other than J. Money, even though I've met you in person at least briefly. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that decision. How you reflect on that and how you've been successful in maintaining that anonymity over such a long period of time?
[00:11:08] J. Money: I started it, in all transparency, just so I wanted to blog while I was working and I didn't want to get caught. Ironically, I wanted to share more. I wanted to share the good and bad parts of the career that I was in. I wanted to share my financial numbers and not have to worry about who's going to see it. In the beginning that's what it was. Also, I didn't know that-- I thought I'd be doing it for a couple of months. I had no idea I'd be doing it this many years later.
Being able to divulge more because I was anonymous, I feel like people really resonated with, and I was more real because I wasn't holding back. Then as the years went on and this became my full-time job, I started having kids and I realized I wanted to protect my kids and my family from all of the online negativity or crazy people out there, I guess I should say. If I had death threats, I've had people threaten to kill parts of my family. It's really crazy.
Again, I'm talking about budgeting, and it's not the craziest topics, but all of those has helped me over the years be thankful that I did be anonymous. I'll say this too. In the beginning, 12 years ago, most of the media didn't take you seriously if you were anonymous. I had to battle like, "Hey, I'm just another person. My real name isn't J. Money obviously, but I'm still me." A lot of the media like Forbes and some of these other, New York Times, they wouldn't cover me. Over the years and especially now, bloggers are now slash journalists. It's this mixture now whereas before it was very separate.
It's funny, about six or seven years into it, I had a full feature spread in Forbes and they labeled me J. Money, and I'm like, "Wow, this is so cool," because years ago that would've never happened. Back then there was a bigger problem with it. Now it's a lot more, so many people are doing it.
[00:12:56] Matt: I hope that I don't experience any of those negative things as a fairly public blogger so far. My show is not nearly as big as your podcast was in 2016 when you got started with Paula and this was a much more a new medium. I wanted to insert here, Steve Stewart, would you insert a sentence or two of audio here to introduce yourself and to say hi to my audience, because I think this is a good place for it.
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[00:13:21] Steve: Sure Matt, you're the boss. This is Steve Stewart. I am that guy who does things for Paula and for J., and now apparently for Matt Miner. Hey, J. Miss you buddy.
[00:13:34] Matt: J., I wanted to ask, how do you look back on your podcasting work? Are you glad you moved away from that medium back in 2016?
[00:13:42] J. Money: First, hi Steve. I haven't talked to you in years. [laughs] Podcasting came out years ago. I don't know, 10 or 15 or even 20 years ago, and then it disappeared. Then a handful of years ago, it came back again and everyone in the financial space was doing it. I don't listen to podcasts. First is, I don't understand it all the way. I get it, but I just don't consume it. It was never a priority. Then over the years, I was like, "Ah," and you see all your friends hustling and doing all this stuff. I thought, "You know what, maybe I should try it and see." I just needed to know if I would enjoy it. Not even if I was good or it would take off, I just need to know personally if I like it.
That's how a lot of my entrepreneurship and online stuff is. If I'm not enjoying it no matter what, I just won't continue. I just burn out. Then talking to Paula Pant from Afford Anything, she has always wanted to start a podcast. We naturally said, "Oh, let's start one together." We had fun and I don't know, we recorded 26 or 27 episodes. Some that I really enjoyed, some that I didn't, but I think turned out okay. It was crazy. It was the only time probably that I quit something that was exploding out of the gate.
Both of our audiences combined. We started out with an audience, which is nice, two of them. We were ranking on the charts. I forget when I left how many hundreds of thousands of downloads, it was pretty big. At the end of the day, it didn't feel like me. I felt, not like a poser, but I don't know. Every time I thought a podcast or going to like a podcast conference, I was just like, "Ah, I just feel like I'm a fake or it's not me."
Ultimately, I started getting anxiety every time Paula would reach out to interview or we get on the show together, and I just started not wanting to go. She was really great. I said, "Hey, I think you should continue on if you want to. Obviously, do whatever you want. It's your show now." I think she was a little relieved because I was not doing everything like the way she wanted to, because we both had our own personalities.
She's still going, she's amazing. She's millions of downloads now. To answer your question, I'm glad I did it. I had to figure it out. I figured out it wasn't for me. It was cool to go out when things were exploding and not because it was failing. [laughs] That was neat.
[00:15:57] Matt: Always good to leave them wanting more.
[00:15:59] J. Money: Yes. It's interesting too because I remember someone saying, "Yes, but everything's going so big." I kept thinking, and this is what I do with all projects now. I think what's the best-case scenario? I thought, "A million people are downloading and I'm making a million dollars a month or whatever podcasting. Would you still do it?" The answer was, "No, I would still get anxious and anxiety, and that wasn't worth it." I think if you can ask yourself in a perfect world, is that what you want? If you don't want that and that's your perfect world, then obviously you need to change things.
[00:16:29] Matt: I think that's a great life lesson. If you wouldn't do it even under the most ideal circumstances then yes, probably makes a whole lot of sense to quit that and move on to something that fits you better. Moving on to things that fit you better, you've been super successful as an entrepreneur. You've sold multiple businesses. You've written about that in various places.
As I was getting ready for this interview I noticed that one of your most prominent webpages on your current site is about your failures and probably the different times about imposter syndrome. I just wonder if you could talk about this juxtaposition between excellent business results that you've had in this space and as an early blogger, and then your feelings about this that you write about pretty publicly.
[00:17:10] J. Money: The imposter syndrome is basically, you just feel like you're not good at something even though you're successful and people, they tell you're good. I'm told that I'm a good blogger and entrepreneur but still inside I'm like, "Oh, I still feel that new person." I've been blogging for 12 years but I still feel like, as crazy as it sounds, that I'm brand new at it and that I'm just starting. I don't know where that comes from but musicians, actors, you hear from all of these celebrities, everyone feels this, not all the time, but during certain stages.
I have my up and down days. That's something that I do struggle with. Even coming on the show I was like, "Maybe I don't have anything to say. I don't know what I'm going to talk about on this show. What have I done?" I have a bad memory too, which is horrible for stuff like this. When you're asked questions it's easy for me to answer because I have the answers in my brain.
When I come onto a show I'm like, "I don't know if I have enough info to give." Then your imposter syndrome comes in. Failure, that's something interesting and I'm glad you brought it up because a lot of people, even podcast hosts and friends and media, they forget. I don't know what it is, but they just don't ever talk about failures. I was on a podcast a couple of weeks ago and they were saying, "Oh, you sold this and this." They're telling me all these great things.
I'm like, "Oh, you make me sound like really awesome. This is great, but you're forgetting all the times I've failed." Out of the two successful sites that I've sold, I probably had about eight or nine others that you'd never heard about that failed or I stopped for whatever reason. I think the failures are really important. Also especially if you start out. The very first thing I ever did was Budgets Are Sexy. That was the blog that I'm most known for. I was one for one being successful. Then all of a sudden it's like, "Hey, not everything you start is going to be awesome." It's good to keep that in mind as you go that you are going to fail, and that's okay because everyone else is failing.
[00:19:01] Matt: I think that's so important. The further you get in anything or the earlier the success that you have, it can be hard to cope with that. I recall when I was in grad school and was surrounded by people who were so bright asking the question, "What am I doing here?" The answer is always, "Well, you're here for a reason," but it's also great to be around so many people from whom you can learn so much. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts on that.
[00:19:25] J. Money: Cool, congrats on grad school. That's hard to do. [laughs] Hard to get in, and I assume you finished. I don't know if you did, but I'm going to assume.
[00:19:32] Matt: I did.
[00:19:33] J. Money: Okay, congratulations [laughs].
[00:19:34] Matt: I did finish. It's a few years back now. What do you feel like it takes to launch a successful blog in 2020? I guess you've touched on this a little bit up till now. Contrary to what you said with regard to feeling like blogs are best in the first year or two or that's the lifespan of a blog, I feel like the advantages of incumbency in this industry are huge. Maybe you see that differently, because I feel like it's really hard to get noticed. The marketplace is really much more crowded.
[00:20:04] J. Money: Well, it's funny. In 2008, I thought that same thing. I looked at blogs, I'm like, "Why am I going to start a blog? There's already a hundred financial blogs out there." Now it's funny because I asked this question and we're how many years later? Remember, the turnaround of blogs, it's only again, a year or two years. Even if there's a thousand blogs back then, there's only 10 of them that are still surviving after all these years. When I was curating at Rockstar Finance, I think we were tracking about 1,500 blogs, and that was about five years ago. Every week I had to delete feeds because they were all going stagnant or dying.
There is a lot of people coming in still, and there's a lot of people leaving as well. I think as far as being successful, I know what worked for me and my whole goal was just to have fun with money. I always say my writing with money is fluffy, like a dessert. It's not the meat and potatoes. I'm not going to tell you we're detailed detail in every single area of finance, but what I tried to do was talk about all different topics in finance, but gets you interested in it and then you go on your own and go to the other blogs that do master it. I enjoy talking normally about money. Again, how it affected my life. When I didn't have kids, I'd go out to bars and clubs and I would spend money.
I talked about that, and that's usually not something that people talk about when they're trying to budget better. I was trying to have fun and I was having fun, and I think people resonate with that. I also try to be funny as much as I can and with writing, you have a lot of time. That's another actually, difference between podcasting and blogging. When you're blogging, you have all the time in the world to write how you want, insert jokes. In podcasts, you have that time, and then it's done or you say something stupid, you're like, "No, I want to go back and edit," and you can't. Being fun, being entertaining, if you can, the more real you can be online, if you share numbers, people really like that.
Share failures. People love failures even more because it makes them feel like they're not alone. It's more fun to read failure sometimes than successes. I think that combination has helped. Then I think as far as the content itself, I set a schedule. In the 12 years, I'd never missed one day. The first six or seven years was, "I'm going to write one blog post every single day, Monday through Friday." They're not long, they're four or five paragraphs, they're not novels. Sticking to that schedule and not missing it is the only way that I kept going, because you miss one day or two, and then you give yourself permission to miss more. That's very, very hard to recover from.
That to me is the way-- and I was just really stubborn. It'd be midnight and I'd forgot to write my posts early on and I'm like, "No, out of bed, write something, just keep the habit going and don't break it."
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[00:22:50] Matt: Today's show is lovingly brought to you by me, Matt Miner, founder and host of the Work Pants Finance Podcast. If you're enjoying the show, please head over to iTunes and leave a rating and review there.
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[00:23:05] Matt: Through this pandemic, I've been super interested in cultivating habits and have spent a bunch of time with James Clear and Charles Duhigg's book on habits, but I even think back to our really early days of budgeting as a family. J., you don't know, although many of my listeners do, that I went to grad school at Duke and we came out with a quarter million dollars in total debt. My entrée to this personal finance stuff was paying off that big business school debt, now about 10 years ago. When we were doing this stuff super hardcore, we would put a certain amount of money in the budget category for groceries at the beginning of the month.
We'd put it in there on the 1st, and we'd replenish it on the 15th. If we left for the grocery store without the envelope of cash that was supposed to pay for the groceries, we would go back to the house. We had three kids at that point who were super small. You don't have to do that very often before you remember to do it in the future, but also it's not just about the budget category, it's about putting the energy behind following through on the commitment that you've made to yourself or to your family, and I think that commitment part is huge. Stubbornness and commitment is a big piece of success for most people who are successful.
[00:24:22] J. Money: When you did that cash envelope-- I've never done that. I've always wanted to but I don't think I have the patience for it. I think I would just whip out my credit card if it was me. Did you keep credit cards in your wallet or did you not, which had to force you to also go back to get the cash, or did you have that temptation?
[00:24:37] Matt: We had debit cards in the wallet. We actually didn't have credit cards at that point at all, but yes, we had just decided that that was how we were going to do it for that budget category. Just like you decided you were going to write a blog post five days a week.
[00:24:50] J. Money: Yes, there you go.
[00:24:52] Matt: J., I'd like to ask you how you see the personal finance blogging industry changing right now, as we look at it.
[00:24:58] J. Money: Oh, that's an interesting question. This goes back to, we were talking about FinCon earlier. FinCon, which is a conference for now, I guess, financial influencers and creators, it's weird. I don't know what you call, I guess--
[00:25:13] Matt: Do you think they'll still let me come?
[00:25:15] J. Money: Yes, in a podcast. No, but that finished my point that look, 10 years ago, the very first one, it was just bloggers. It was like a financial conference for financial bloggers. That's it. Then as the years happened, podcasting came out. That was the second biggest group. Now you have Instagram and TikTok and Pinterest and all these social media platforms.
Again, because I pay attention to the blogging scene, it seems like there are less bloggers overall because now people are spread out across the different platforms. I don't know what will change with blogging specifically, except that a lot of people that used to be bloggers that had some success, or enjoyed it, they're now paying more attention and more time and energy on these other platforms.
It's interesting as a curator, how do you capture all the different things that people are saying all over when it was so much easier just to pay attention to blogs? There are pros and cons to the different ones too. I don't know, it's really interesting seeing it now as it was again, 10 years ago when it was just blogging. To answer your question, yes, you are allowed at FinCon because podcasts is the second biggest group there.
[00:26:26] Matt: PT has told me that I'm welcome, so I feel okay about that. I came to the financial advice business from the personal finance blogosphere because I perceive a gap at the human level between having information about good things to do, and then the confidence or sufficient time to make those things actually happen for a specific person or for a family. I just wanted to ask, what's your take on the interplay between excellent web content and personalized advice and help with implementation from someone who has credentials or a license to lose for giving bad advice?
[00:27:03] J. Money: Well, two things. One, I'll say, I'm a big proponent of actually taking action and doing stuff even if you're not perfect or you don't know all the way. I know a lot of people that consume and consume courses and books and articles, but they never do anything about it or they say they're going to, but it just takes them a year to do something really simple. I personally, if I had to choose between good content or doing something, I would always choose doing something because you learn fast and you're actually getting the ball rolling. Obviously, in a perfect world, you want to learn something and then test it out in the real world and then continue learning as you go.
As far as the credential stuff, I don't know, it's interesting. I have absolutely no credentials. I have no degree in finance. I have no MBA like nothing. I'm a normal person, which is good and bad. There's no one governing me so I could be saying lies and saying facts and the internet is the wild, wild west. There's no real rules as long as I'm not defrauding. There are obviously legal stuff, but anyway as a consumer, you just have to pay attention to how much you trust the person. I think that's really important. There are things that I've probably said that are wrong accidentally too. Always do your own research and homework, of course.
Then if you do have some sort of degree, or I know if you're a financial planner or a financial advisor, there's things you cannot say. You cannot legally give advice specifically online. I don't know all the rules because I'm not one, but I know that a lot of the financial planners that wanted to blog said it's a hindrance because I cannot say everything I want to say because there's laws and rules. I think that helps keep them a little bit safer and conservative, but then on the other hand, you don't get the real and the juicy.
[00:28:52] Matt: You've touched on it a little bit up till now, J. I wonder, what do you love about where you are today with your life, work, and money?
[00:28:58] J. Money: Oh, well, that's a nice question. I'm happy. I feel like I'm blessed, I feel like I got lucky. I call myself an accidental entrepreneur because I never started a blog thinking that it would go on to be my career and change my financial habits and even my friends, or even just the fact that someone wants to be on a podcast, that's crazy. That was never really what I thought was going to happen. What was interesting about it is starting something, again, going back to just doing it. I learned about business and I learned about marketing. I'm thankful and I enjoy the learning process, and I've realized that I don't need or want to seek fame or even money.
Before I used to do things for money. Now, because I've made enough money where I don't have to worry all the time-- I'm not financially independent yet, but I realized that my happiness lies in doing as I please during the day and not chasing money. I've turned down lots of money and I've turned down projects. The podcast could've made a lot of money and grown even bigger, but I realized over the years that it was lifestyle-based.
I'm happy with my lifestyle. I stopped working nights and weekends a few years back, which as an entrepreneur was challenging. That changed things too. I forced myself to rest. I magically got everything done on Friday and didn't have to wait till the weekend, because you force yourselves and money is good. Career, since I sold everything, I start projects every now and then for fun, but I'm in that limbo of seeing what's next and what's going to happen. This is a fun, interesting ride from start to where we are now, for sure.
[00:30:34] Matt: I love it. J., if someone wanted to be like you growing, you don't recommend it?
[00:30:39] J. Money: [laughs] It's just funny. Again, this is the weird things to hear when you didn't expect any of this, so yes.
[00:30:46] Matt: This is a show about learning from the experiences of other people and that's why you're on here. If someone wanted to be like you growing and selling an online business and curating content for an industry, what do you think that looks like in 2020? Then you've touched on this a little bit, but how do you see the role of social media specifically in this financial blogging industry broadly construed?
[00:31:07] J. Money: I think social media and blogging, what I like is it pretty much gives you the opportunity to create your own brand and your own resume. I was joking with my wife the other day that I haven't applied to a job in over a decade. All the projects or partnerships or consulting stuff that I do, they go to my stuff and they see it and then they say, "Oh, hey, would you like to work for us, or do you want to talk about a partnership?"
It's interesting, instead of you always having to chase or prove who you are to someone, your work and your online presence does it for you. There are things, obviously if you do something stupid and it goes viral, that's a hindrance. For the most part, being able to control what people see about you online, on social, or you are getting a normal 9:00 to 5:00 job and people are researching you, to show something that you've done creatively or if that helped the world, I think is very, very cool.
Before the internet or at least before I came in, in 2008, I didn't know that existed. It was just a different world, at least for me. Again, because it was all accidental, I just stumbled across it and I was like, "Wow." Like the world, I also realized too how businesses work more and even the online world. When you search something and all those topics that come up, people are getting millions of hits and millions of dollars every day if you type in certain keywords.
It's interesting how everything revolves around money a lot online, and sickening amounts of money. I guess similar to the real world, to play online, you learn a lot about yourself, about how the world works. I think all this is super important. Even if you don't have a blog, you still want to have some sort of presence or you can showcase whatever you want the world to see or an employer to see about you. I think is really important.
[00:32:57] Matt: I love it. I'm pretty bummed to miss FinCon in 2020. As a year when I launched this new project, I was really looking forward to the conference. I am curious, where do you see missing FinCon in 2020 rating in the hierarchy of coronavirus disappointments that we've all experienced?
[00:33:13] J. Money: [laughs] It's really sad. As an online person, we don't see anyone in the real world, especially in 2020. FinCon, people from all over the world and all different areas and social media aspects come together. It's like a fun party with your friends. That definitely sucks, no doubt about it. In a weird way I'm glad it's canceled because I don't know if I would go if it wasn't canceled because now I have kids in the family. I try to make sure that I'm doing what's right for them, so even though selfishly I'd want to go, could I do that knowing if I did get sick out there and then bring it back-- The option is now off the table. I'm like, "Okay, great. I don't have to make the decision." Yes, it sucks just like lots of stuff this year, but we live another year and things go on. I think next year, hopefully if we get the virus under control and all that good stuff, everyone will be able to see each other again, which will be nice.
[00:34:09] Matt: I think that'll be good. I said earlier, this is a show about learning from the experiences of other people. I wonder, what's one piece of advice that you've benefited from in your life or that you'd like to share with my listeners today?
[00:34:21] J. Money: I'll give the financial one, since I've been talking about life a lot, [laughs] and that's to track your net worth. That was the number one thing I've done that really kept me on track. I started with budgeting, and then budgeting for me once I got on track and knew generally what was going on, I lost interest and I didn't find it as empowering. Whereas tracking your net worth every month, I could tell how well I was doing or not. Seeing that number and just taking the 10 minutes to log into my accounts, copy and paste the numbers into a spreadsheet, it forced me every month to pay attention and I enjoyed seeing that progress over the years.
Again, it's one number that tells you, it gives you a snapshot of how you're doing in that moment, which was very motivating for me. I've heard from other people too it's also motivating. For me, even if you don't want a budget or you don't care about finances as much, track your net worth. It takes 10 minutes a month, and maybe that'll jumpstart the way your brain works, the way you spend, different habits. It changed a lot of habits for me. That would probably be my number one financial tip.
[00:35:24] Matt: I love it. I'm going to camp out for a minute on tracking your net worth. That is probably my favorite personal finance task because it doesn't lie. It is what it is. One of the things that's also been interesting is as I transitioned away from corporate work and toward helping other people with their money, has been to be willing to watch that curve change, because it was a big change in my income to go from what I was doing in the corporate world to being an advisor.
On the other hand, my happiness curve is through the roof. I'm willing to see the slope of the net worth tracking alter over time as long as I'm trading it off against something that is even more important. Maybe that's not totally different than what you were sharing about how you've been thinking about money and family life and some things like that earlier in our conversation.
[00:36:23] J. Money: That's cool. I've heard that people-- If you manually track it, there's lots of apps that will track it for you, but--
[crosstalk]
[00:36:29] Matt: No, I'm a manual guy.
[00:36:31] J. Money: For us manual people, you can add stuff to it. I've heard people add happiness levels to their net worth or life events and then you can see what happens to your net worth after that life event happened. That's really interesting. You reminded me too with budgeting, it's still important of course, but it focuses on your earning and spending, your cashflow, but that's only one part of the whole general process.
It doesn't show you how your investments are doing or your savings, it's just your cashflow. Net worth, which I like, it has all the factors all into one. Even if you're working on your 250,000 of debt and you're paying off debt, that gets reflected every month. You see that number change and increase and vice versa. If you're focusing on investing and not paying attention to debt, your investing changes. It's nice that no matter what area of finance you're working on, it all gets reflected back into the net worth. I'm glad that you like it too.
[00:37:29] Matt: I appreciate you saying that. The theme of this show is learning from the experience of others. I've usually found that most interesting people are reading something interesting at any given time. I wonder J., if you have any go-to book recommendations for us in 2020?
[00:37:43] J. Money: My favorite book, I guess it's technically relating to business/life, but it's called Essentialism by Greg McKeown.
[00:37:52] Matt: I've read it.
[00:37:53] J. Money: Oh, great. Then you know. If you're into minimalism, it's also a little in there too. That book for me, it stopped me and said, what are you doing with your time and your energy and how can you focus it to pay attention to the most important stuff first and then get rid of all the stuff that you're just doing for the sake of doing it? I would just say I'm a really slow reader and I actually hadn't cracked open a physical book probably about 20 years before that book. That was about three years ago. When I stopped working nights and weekends because of this book got me to do that, and then I'd have time to read physical books, it really [laughs] opened up my life.
I actually started taking naps too. It's amazing when you don't work on the weekend, all of a sudden you do all these things. Like, "Oh, I forgot about that." [laughs] That book helped me focus more. You can take it in your career or you can focus in your life or money. You can take it however you want to take it, but that was a life-changing book for me, for sure.
[00:38:48] Matt: I love also your comment about freeing up white space in your life and then cool things just pop up, especially when you're living a fun family life like you are, and have resources to enjoy it. That's great.
[00:39:04] J. Money: I will say that there are some weird parts too. When you have more time, all of a sudden you don't have the excuse like, "Oh, I'm too busy." You force yourself to figure out what to do with your time. I think for anyone chasing early retirement or at least financial independence, getting in the habit of figuring out what to do with your time now is probably better than pulling the trigger and then going all at once. All these little things, again going back to improving your lifestyle on the daily, even though you're not financially set up to do it full time, is super important.
[00:39:37] Matt: J., thank you so much for being on the show today. It's been just a blast to visit with you.
[00:39:42] J. Money: Thanks man, thanks for having me. It's fun.
[00:39:44] Matt: Is there any way that you would like people to follow up or can you take a minute and tell us anything about your current projects?
[00:39:49] J. Money: Oh, sure. All of my online resume and projects that I'm working on, you can see at jmoney.biz. Just the letter J, then money dot B-I-Z. A project that I just started recently, it's random, it's called pfswagger.com. Basically, it's a curation site on apparel and merchandise that other financial people start. Whether its shirts that say, "Invest," or hats, basically anything that I think is stylish relating to money where you can wear it and then broadcast it to people nonchalantly to, hopefully, they get to pay attention to their money, I'm a big fan of. It's also cool because it showcases small business owners and other bloggers out there trying to hustle a little bit. That's pfswagger.com.
[00:40:33] Matt: You didn't ask for this, but now I have to jump into the little Twitter conversation that we had. Is that what prompted you to post the picture of your jeans with the safety pins?
[00:40:43] J. Money: Oh, that's right. Yes, my frugal shorts? No, I'm frugal in nature so all my clothes have holes and stuff in it. Ironically, because of minimalism, I've stopped shopping a lot, particularly for clothes. Recently, I got into another project, The Motley Fool, who bought Budgets Are Sexy from me. I'm starting another project and they wanted me to work on some videos.
I realized that I have the same four outfits, the same shirts and shorts. All the other clothes I have have holes in them. I needed a new wardrobe, which minimalism killed because I stopped shopping. I started looking for stuff in our space with shirts and financial-related stuff. That's what got me down that path. Then I'm like, "Oh man, I have so many cool shirts and jackets and hats now. I should put it all in one spot in case anyone else wants a one place to go, one-stop shopping for being a financial nerd.
[00:41:38] Matt: Minimalism doesn't actually require that you go around with no clothes on, right?
[00:41:42] J. Money: No, no, no.
[00:41:44] Matt: At some point you can buy something.
[00:41:45] J. Money: Yes, I know. I'm probably not a good spokesperson for the minimalist movement. [laughs] It's just how it affected me. Then you have your favorite pair of shorts or shoes, they're your favorites, so no matter how ratty they are, to you they're awesome. Yes, my shorts that have 12 safety pins in there isn't going to win any fashion awards any time soon.
[00:42:06] Matt: I don't know, but it got a good Twitter conversation going. That was fun.
[00:42:09] J. Money: Yes, there you go. It was worth something.
[00:42:11] Matt: All right. Well, thanks again J.
[00:42:13] J. Money: All right. Thanks for having me, man.
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[00:42:16] Matt: J.'s story highlights the benefits that come from not only participating in an industry, but also seeking to serve that industry, as J. curated content specifically designed to support the personal finance blogging space. Here are a few key takeaways. First, if you're doing work that makes you miserable, get out, even if that work makes you money.
Second, though J. has had success, he notes that about 80% of his online startups fizzle. There's probably no reason for you to expect to do better. Third, stubbornness and commitment are the keys to getting things done when the going gets tough. Fourth, net worth tracking is an important part of financial planning. Personally, it's one of my favorite activities to do, both with clients and with my wife. Fifth and finally, by focusing on the vital few things in life, Jay freed up his schedule to include more time for activities like reading and taking naps. That's all for my conversation with J. Money.
Next week's show features Joshua Sheats of Radical Personal Finance. I interviewed Joshua about risk management broadly construed and we cover planning topics like emergency funds and the importance of disability insurance, as well as get a little bit into the realm of physical preparedness when we dissect lessons learned from the great toilet paper shortage of 2020 and other pandemic considerations. Until then, this is Matt Miner encouraging you to build a financial plan that works as hard as you do.
[music]
[00:43:49] Lucy: Matt Miner is a fee-only, fiduciary financial advisor and Founder & CEO of Miner Wealth Management, a North Carolina Registered Investment Advisor where Matt provides personalized, unconflicted, advice to clients for a fee. He’s also my dad, so please be nice when you talk to him! Matt is a Certified Financial Planner Professional and holds a Series 65 securities license. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Finance from Arizona State University, and his MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.
Work Pants Finance is Matt's financial media business where he talks about work, entrepreneurship, kids and money, taxes, investing, and other personal finance topics. WorkPantsFinance.com exists to share wisdom and provide general financial information. It is not financial, tax, or legal advice. You are an individual and probably need personal advice for your specific situation. You should consider building relationships with helpful, caring, and competent professionals who understand your unique context and can provide advice that is tailored to your needs.
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