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How time flies! Five years ago this Sunday — Nov. 3, 2014 — the Financial Independence Hub [aka “The Hub”] was launched. From the start the idea was to publish a blog every business day, 52 weeks a year. Thanks to a wide variety of guest bloggers and other contributors, that has been achieved: as of this writing, the Hub had published almost 1,700 blogs.
For those curious, this link will take you to the very first Hub blog, which outlined the planned direction. From the get-go we tried to make a distinction between traditional full-stop Retirement and Findependence, which of course is the contraction for Financial Independence. The related book is Findependence Day (available in both Canadian and US editions).
Findependence is different from Retirement
Even some of the republished blogs the past week indicate how much the term Financial Independence has caught on, although sadly, the term Findependence less so. Just a few days ago, regular Hub contributor Mark Seed published a blog on Strive for Financial Independence not Early Retirement. (We’re working on getting him to use the term Findependence but Rome wasn’t built in a day!)
I wrote much the same thing soon after the Hub was launched in 2014: Why Financial Independence is a better term than Retirement.
I may as well take this opportunity to clarify a few things about how the Hub operates. First though, we’d like to thank our advertisers, some of which (like Vanguard) have been with us since almost the beginning. It’s that kind of support that means the Hub remains free to users, who by now realize that most Hub blogs publish around 9:10 am, with a daily digest going out around 10 am.
Where the Hub’s content comes from
Why daily content? I guess it goes back to my days as a newspaper reporter and columnist, when my personal motto was “A story a day keeps the editor away.” Of course, it wouldn’t be much of a Semi-Retirement if I had to write a blog for the Hub every day all by myself so from the get-go we were open to guest blogs. An early supporter was Robb (and Marie) Engen of Boomer & Echo: skip over to the Hub’s search function and you’ll find dozens of stories by them. And by the way, that search tool can be very useful in accessing any of the 1700 blogs or so that the Hub has published: they’re still there; you just have to retrieve them with the tool.
Also early in giving us permission to republish blogs were Patrick McKeough of The Successful Investor, Adrian Mastracci of KCM Wealth Management, Mike Drak, my co-author on Victory Lap Retirement, Billy and Akaisha Kaderli of RetireEarlyLifestyle.com and many more. Just this year we’ve added a few more excellent bloggers: Mark Seed of MyOwn Advisor, Michael Wiener of Michael James on Money, Dale Roberts of Cut the Crap Investing, Fritz Gilbert, the Plutus award winning blogger behind Retirement Manifesto and a few more I hope I’ve not forgotten.
I can hear critics questioning the rationale of this republishing approach: all I can say is that you can consider it sort of the Greatest Hits of Financial Independence, given that our goal has always been to be — as you can see in our slogan elsewhere on this site — North America’s Portal to Financial Independence. We are chiefly an aggregator, although there is also original content.
Yes, I try to write a blog most weeks, though as regular readers may realize, they tend to be “throws” — summaries of paid columns or blogs I’ve written elsewhere, including MoneySense.ca, the Financial Post, Motley Fool Canada, the Globe & Mail on occasion, and Money.ca. Think of it as a sort of one-stop-shopping for what I personally write, even as I retrench a bit as my Semi-Retirement unfolds. (I’ll be 67 in April). In a way, the outside revenue I get from writing for the mass media helps defray the Hub’s modest costs, and of course helps to promote the site to new readers.
Apart from republished blogs, the Hub also regularly tries to publish at least two pieces a week of fresh content written by a variety of other contributors: financial advisors and other investment professionals, occasionally marketers or firms representing a cross-section of the financial services industry.
The Hub’s 6 categories for the Human Financial Life Cycle
We try to publish a wide selection of topics corresponding to the human financial life cycle: if you’ve not noticed, take a look at the blue menu near the top of the site and you’ll see that our blogs are categorized in six sections. We start with young people (Millennials) who are just getting started in their financial lives. So we start with Debt and Frugality, followed by Family Formation and Housing: they will be interested in topics like real estate and buying their first home, mortgages, interest rates, credit cards etc. From almost the Hub’s inception, Zoocasa.com’s Penelope Graham has contributed excellent articles monthly on the real estate industry.
The third category is Building Wealth (Wealth Accumulation), which is the big sweet spot of the financial industry. This may of course last 20 to 40 years and is where you’ll find content on ETFs, mutual funds, robo-advisors, asset allocation, RRSPs and TFSAs and much more.
Fourth is Victory Lap, which is our term for Semi-Retirement. This content will appeal to those in their 50s or 60s who are approaching the traditional Retirement finishing line. This is where you’ll find a lot of content on Early Retirement and so-called FIRE: Financial Independence/Retire Early.
Fifth is Decumulate and Downsize, which is what many people in their 60s and 70s are probably preparing for or already engaged in: the content focuses on withdrawing income from Retirement portfolios, pensions, annuities and the like.
And finally Sixth is Longevity & Aging, for those preparing for their later golden years from their 70s to 100 and beyond.
Finally, a word about full disclosure. Generally, money does not change hands (either direction) for most Hub blogs which we identify as Special to the Financial Independence Hub. That means the reader can be assured the content was selected purely on its editorial merits. True, not every blog will be relevant to you in your particular stage of the financial life cycle but we try and mix up the content every week. If any one piece is not of interest, feel free to ignore it and hopefully the next day will present something a bit more relevant to your particular interests.
I also need to clarify that once in awhile a blog will be identified up front as “Sponsored Content,” which means a small fee may have been paid to help defray expenses (WordPress, Mailchimp, IT charges, ad sales: it all adds up!). Readers deserve to know if this is the case, which is why our policy is to disclose this. In a similar category is the term Sponsor Content, which means one of our advertisers has produced the content: it’s content from a sponsor, as opposed to content directly paid for.
Guidelines for new Guest Bloggers
A word to others who are interested in writing guest blogs for the Hub. All suggestions are welcome: if the content fits one of our six categories and the editorial content is good enough, odds are we would run the blog, although we always have a backlog and it can take weeks or even months before the piece appears. Many people ask for our guidelines and we say 600 to 700 words is ideal although obviously the web can accommodate any length (The blog you’re reading is twice that length!) We also need to illustrate each blog up front with a photo or infographic but in their absence we will go to one of our Image Banks, generally Deposit Photos. We also ask that all contributors use their real names and submit a bio and photo that will run at the end. Links to their own sites are welcome.
So that’s it for our 5th anniversary. No guarantees we’ll still be around for the 10th but God willing — and readers and advertisers — that’s the plan!
Readers who want to provide feedback on how the Hub can improve are as always welcome to post comments. And if you know someone who you think could benefit from the Hub, feel free to use our social media share buttons.
Jon congrats on 5 yrs. wow that flew by. A real accomplishment. Kudos kid. Carolyn