Eek! I Started A New Gig!

Back in October one of our FIRE friends (hi, Robert!) lead me to a Twitter post about a writing gig that sounded up my alley.

I reached out not sure where it would lead to, but lo and behold, here we are.

As any long term reader knows, I do not make money from this blog.  I do not have ads up to bring in revenue.  I don’t make money from any podcasts and publications we are featured in.  The small bits I do make from affiliate payments from summits I take part in (Canadian Financial Summit, Women Can Money, etc) go towards the expenses to keep this blog up and running.  If I were to give myself a salary for this blog, it would be well under 5 cents an hour.  I could go work at McDonalds instead for an instant 300% raise.  I do this purely to connect with like minded folks.  It’s truly these connections that I’ve made over the years since starting this blog that have been priceless and keep me going over here.

So the idea of a paid part-time gig to write about what I’m already writing about over here sounded quite good.  I figured this is finally a way to be getting paid via my blog in a sense.  This blog has brought support and community – people like Robert – who put me in touch with this opportunity.

Now what I love about this blog is that people who are interested in this financial freedom sort of stuff have to come find this material themselves.  People who are truly interested have to seek out this blog (and of course other blogs/podcasts/books too) which focuses on personal finance content geared towards financial independence. My audience is like-minded folks, which is amazing.  We hardly ever get the negative comments saying we are going to run out of money in 10 years, we are depriving ourselves, what we are doing is not possible, etc.  Why?  Because again, you all get it.

Enter the new gig.

This new audience for this new gig is kinda the opposite.  I’m writing for a large platform who reaches over 6 million readers every week.  Yes, you read that right.  And we all know the FIRE community is MUCH smaller than this. Many of these readers likely have never heard of the concept of FIRE.  But that’s part of the beauty of this.  If I can get 1% of the readers on board with this new-to-them concept, it’s a win for me.  I know I’m about to enter the world of so many negative comments and the retirement police are ready to come after me with their pitch forks but I don’t care.  I’m focused on that 1%.

Ok Court, get to the point.  What’s the new gig?!

Drum roll…..

I’m now a freelance contributor for The Globe & Mail!

For those unaware, The Globe is Canada’s most widely read newspaper.  For any Americans reading, it’s essentially the equivalent of writing for the Wall Street Journal.

My focus is to write content on FIRE and parenting.

And my first article is out! For those with access to the Globe, check it out!

My First Globe Piece: The Evolution of FIRE

I’ve committed to one post a month for 6 months and we shall then see how it all is going.  Is the Globe finding value in what I send over?  Am I enjoying the behind the scenes work of editing, deadlines, etc?

My goal is to ensure this all stays enjoyable, hence why I’ve only committed to once a month.  Anything more at this points sounds like too much of a j-o-b which is not something I’m looking for at this point.

Now while this income is definitely a nice welcomed bonus, it is nowhere close to our annual spend for a year.  It won’t cover how much we spend on groceries each month.  We simply are viewing this as our “extra spending fund” to help force frugal ole Court to actually spend more money on little things like new restaurants in town, new camping supplies, tickets for a play, a new laptop, etc. Thanks MMM for this perfectly timed post which lines up with exactly how we are thinking about this extra income.

The hardest part for sure is going to be the word count.  Each file has to be 600, max 700, words.  It is going to be incredibly hard for me to keep articles this concise.

I’m hopeful that I can reel in 1% of the readers to shift their mindset.  As that is really what FIRE is all about.  Come to the dark side of spending less, earning more, understanding investing, and escaping the work-spend rat race that so many Canadians feel trapped in.

Any specific topics you think I should focus on?

And of course, anyone reading because they found me from The Globe, welcome to the FImily!

Freelance Update

Soooooo I wrote all of that out a few weeks ago in anticipation of this first file coming out.  And things have changed!

I’m now a freelance contributor for The Globe & Mail!

For those unaware, The Globe is Canada’s most widely read newspaper.  For any Americans reading, it’s essentially the equivalent of writing for the Wall Street Journal.

My focus is to write content on FIRE and parenting. 

And my first article is out! For those with access to the Globe, check it out!

My First Globe Piece: The Evolution of FIRE

I’ve committed to one post a month for 6 months and we shall then see how it all is going.  Is the Globe finding value in what I send over?  Am I enjoying the behind the scenes work of editing, deadlines, etc?

I already quit!

Wait what?

Court, you’re announcing a new gig but before even publishing about it on your blog, you quit?

Yep. Sure did.

What Happened?

Welp, I really was excited for this opportunity.  I wanted to reach that 1% who could conceptualize this “secret society” of personal finance freaks who are looking to escape the rat race and live life on their own turns.

So I wrote the first piece, sent it over, and waited to hear back.

Now I knew upfront that there would be edits, but man I did not realize the extent of these edits!  It’s as if I provided some insight and then it got twisted, poked, and tweaked from every angle. There were 3 weeks of back and forth edits and the “first round” of edits still weren’t done yet.  If I knew how much additional time would be involved I would have asked for an hourly rate vs a fixed price per file!

By the time I decided to end it, it was becoming quite clear that my FIRE narrative was not matching theirs and I was no longer enjoying it. The best way to describe it is if I go back into my old working days – hopefully this analogy is relatable to some readers – they were looking for a subject matter expert (SME) but then constantly questioned their input.  What’s the point if finding an SME then??

I feel like that last bit is quite strong and I do not want to bad mouth the experience.  It was definitely worthwhile to see the behind the scenes look of how articles get created for a major publication but I quickly learned it is not for me.  It was way more disorganized than I was expecting and I simply could not see myself moving forward with it.

The Beauty of FI

But this is a prime example of the power of FI and FU money. While I really did wish I could capture 1% of their audience,  I quickly realized this isn’t the gig for me.  And that’s ok.  I was able to leave when I wanted.  The beauty of being FI is that we’re not in it for the money.  We don’t need it.  If something is no longer enjoyable, it’s getting the chopping block. Simple as that.

While I was chatting with Robert about this whole experience he provided this comment that I had to share with everyone reading (with his permission to steal it for the blog):

“It would be hilarious to me if they self-edited the rest of this article, with something at the end saying “and to demonstrate how much freedom FI people have, our leading contributor to this story was perfectly happy to walk away from this gig when our editing team made the task too laborious.  By achieving FIRE, you too can tell your boss to shove it”.”

Ha! Boom. Mic drop.

So yea, I “started” a gig and ended it shortly thereafter.  Net income earned: $0.

I definitely find myself enjoying the 1-on-1 aspect to the coaching gig I do and even though I don’t earn as much coaching as I would have with each writing file, it’s more enjoyable for me and thus the route I’ll continue to go down for now.

It also certainly helped seeing our Q1 2023 net worth up and seeing that what we “earned” from the market during the past 3 months would take more than 10 years of this gig to produce similar results… yet with 0 hours of effort required and no emails to respond to.

Am I crazy?  Would you have stuck it out a bit longer to see if it started to flow better over time?

Support This Blog

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We believe in stacking up life hacks to keep your enjoyment levels to the max without depleting your bank account.  Here are some ways to further educate yourself and save thousands of dollars over your lifetime by making some simple adjustments:

• Investing Newbies: Check out our free Investing 101 Series.
• How much are you paying for your phone plan?  Canadians, learn more about Public Mobile, and see how we are paying $3/mo for our cell phone plan.
• How much are you paying for internet?  Canadians, learn more about the various Independent Service Providers out there to see who services your area so you can lower your monthly bills.
• How much are you paying for home insurance?  We were able to reduce our rates by 25% by switching over to Square One Insurance.  If you live in BC, AB, SK, MB, and ON, check out Square One for your home insurance, landlord insurance, and/or tenant insurance.  Use this link to receive an extra $15 off your quote.  (Note that you must use this link to start the process to get the $15 off even if you prefer to pay over the phone.)

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