The State of Budget For Wealth

Hi there. It’s Long. Remember me?

Yeah, I know. It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything of real substance. I’ve only been updating the site with performance reports from the second iteration of the Roth IRA Contribution Timing Experiment. For all four of you that read the blog, I’m sorry.

Website Design & Redesign

I started the blog at the end of 2011, before responsive design became a priority. I didn’t know much about web design then, so I was using a stock theme that I purchased from Themeforest. Over time, I learned more about web design and began to customize the look and functionality of the blog, relying less on plug-ins and pre-made themes.

At one point, I briefly changed the theme of the blog to a responsive one, but wasn’t happy with it. I ended up changing it back to its original theme and added features to improve the functionality and user experience. Late last year, I added an email capture form to start building an email list, improved the visibility of the social sharing buttons, and included a “call to action” at the end of each post.

I really liked the improvements that I made to the original theme and was ready to stop worrying about the look of the site, and instead, start concentrating on writing again. However, web giants like Google have been calling for more mobile friendly web design. They’re pushing for publishers to make things easier to read from multiple devices, meaning a big push towards responsive design to accommodate the growing number of people consuming content from smartphones and tablets.

For this reason, I did some research into the major WordPress frameworks on which to base the design of Budget For Wealth. StudioPress happened to have a sale a week before Black Friday for their Pro-Plus All Theme Package. I jumped on the opportunity and learned how to develop my own child theme.

I really liked the minimalistic look of the original theme, so I basically made the Genesis based theme look the same. It’s just easier to read, is more streamlined (in terms of code), and most importantly, is responsive – with retina support.

Just Write

Now that I’ve completed tinkering around with the design and optimization of the website, it’s time to start focusing on content. Everyday, topics come up and ideas fire off in my head. I do nothing about them. I languish over them for a few days, the motivation expires, and the inspiration goes to waste. I have so much that I want to talk about, so many things related to money and improving our lives; I must make time to put them down in writing.

I’ve had a couple false starts before, but this year I plan on being more organized in my approach to blogging. I’ll be working hard to create valuable content and shedding the things that don’t matter. You should expect to see more video that will be hosted on my YouTube channel, largely mirroring what I write, and tutorials that will teach you how to complete basic financial transactions with software, financial websites, or connected apps.

I still won’t have any unnecessary pictures cluttering the site, as I strongly believe that if readers are serious about learning about financial matters, they probably won’t care if the site has, or doesn’t have, generic stock photography attached to the article. I know that images create a strong point of attraction for people to read, or click a link to, the article in the first place. I just don’t think images add enough value to the type of content that I write about to justify the cost (to acquire and host long-term).

As in the past, I also won’t participate much in social media, other than to alert readers of new material. Social media doesn’t cost much, if anything, but it’s a huge time sink. The cost versus benefit just doesn’t add up for me. This goes for link building as well. Reading fluffy “finance” articles and leaving comments to build links to my blog just got tedious. I still read a few select finance blogs from authors that I find genuine and innovative, but I’ve largely ignored the majority who have become more of content marketers than anything.

If you’re reading this, I hope you have found what I have written in the past and the new responsive website design useful. If you’re interested in receiving the blog posts by email, I highly encourage you to submit your email address using the form in the sidebar or the call to action box. You can expect to receive a newsletter in the future with actionable information that will help you with your finances or teach you skills to improve your income.

Thank you.

See you again soon.