Bloggers

Who is the most dangerous blogger on the internet today? This is a serious question. Think about it for a while.

What characteristics would cause a blogger to become dangerous? To start, the blogger would need an audience to be dangerous. A blog with a modest, but fast growing, audience would have an increasing influence in our society.

Another characteristic might entail new ideas masked as truth. Imagine a blogger telling a story with a broad concept that intentionally excludes many of the facts. A grain of knowledge is a powerful tool to expand learning or it can be a recipe for disaster on a colossal scale.

The wealthy, well-connected and powerful have controlled the masses by colluding in secret meetings as long as civilization has existed. The powerful retain and expand their hold on governments and common folk as a result.

Power works best when it plans and executed from the darkness, far away from hidden eyes. Some secret societies have become well known. The Illuminati is now a household word, even if their actions are still closely guarded. Other groups are known, but details are completely missing.

The wealthy have a habit of meeting around the world. These gatherings are media events. News outlets are eager for any droppings they can publish. All the good stuff never leaves the room

You probably heard of some of these groups. People in finance are well aware of the meetings in Davos and Geneva every year. The Bilderberg Group is less known, but no less powerful.

The hardest part of writing a personal finance blog is finding fresh material. Most things have been said before and better. All the important points have been regurgitated onto the screen thousands of times before. If a PF blogger wants to make a difference she needs to find something to add to the already large heap of material available.

The trick to wealth is a very short story: save half your income, invest in index funds, avoid debt like the plague. Everything else is opinion. Everything else is nothing more than ways to spend less and learning to live on half your income without feeling cheated so you stay the course. The real trick is to get readers to apply the simple message.

Then the truth hits home. Even brilliant new ideas come crashing to earth as the blogger reads the PF universe. The new idea was said before and without a doubt, better. It is a sinking feeling when it happens. You pour your soul out onto the page only to discover weeks or months after publication another PF blogger already wrote the story. You feel like a hack.

Personal finance bloggers share several deep, dark secrets the public is unaware of. I have the honor of knowing many of these bloggers, some of them personally. When the door is closed and the public is a safe distance away we admit to our small, but select group the truths we all share. If the public knew what went on behind the closed doors of personal finance bloggers they might call the police or at least the mental hospital.

What personal finance bloggers go through to get their words published seems so easy until you know what goes on in their real life. The insecurities, dreams, and yes, even fears, are more profound than anyone outside the industry can imagine. If it were possible for me to pull your chair behind my desk and next to me so you could see what other bloggers really mean in their posts your jaw would flap in the wind. Knowing what I know, you would read The Wealthy Accountant and scream after every other sentence: BULLSHIT!