I sat down this weekend and realised that today is actually the 10th Birthday of this little blog. How on earth did that happen?
I have no idea what made me sit down one day and decide to set up a blog – I mean, don’t get me wrong, I had my reasons for wanting some sort of platform to record our family’s journey but a blog? I didn’t even read blogs myself at the time so I genuinely can’t remember what made me set one up and decide to share our lives online with anyone who cared to read.
I can’t tell you how pleased I am that I did though because blogging has genuinely changed our lives.
I’ve met some amazing people through blogging, some of whom have become genuine real-life friends who I couldn’t be without and as a family, we’ve had some amazing experiences that we never would have had otherwise.
When I sat down to write my first blog post 10 years ago today, we’d just moved into our current home and the kids were 4 and 6 so not even both in full-time school at that point. Money was super tight and luxuries like holidays were unimaginable at that point and we started our frugal journey because I wanted to be able to afford to reduce my hours at work so I could spend more time with the kids.
We succeeded and I was so lucky to be able to work only while they were at school at a job that I loved, giving me plenty of time to spend with the kids as they grew up. I could collect them from school and take them for ice cream or head off to the park or soft play for an hour or so rather than have to put them in an after-school club or have someone else look after them. Absolutely no judgement on those who can’t do that but if you read why I blog, you’ll understand that my goal was to spend as much time as possible with the kids after losing my brother and my Mum within a year.
We’ve given the kids so many wonderful memories over the years this blog has definitely achieved my goal of recording it all. I love how lots of you feel like you know them as I’ve been sharing stories about them for so long – the emails I get sometimes from lovely readers bring tears to my eyes. Last year, when Master Frugal was really poorly, the messages of support that we got were overwhelming and really brought it home that people genuinely care.
The kids are obviously older now and generally aren’t as open to having their photos shared online and they’d rather I didn’t share stories about them these days which is absolutely fine but has gradually changed the feel of the blog over the last few years.
It’s not just our family life that’s changed though, our financial situation is massively different these days too. We’ve had setbacks over the years and it took us longer than we’d hoped to pay all of our debts thanks to those setbacks but we made it and these days, we’re a lot better with money and have more disposable income than we’ve had in the past.
We’re still not quite there though as we do love nice things and every now and again, we do have an impulse splurge. The difference is that these days the spending isn’t on a credit card and won’t take us years to pay back – even when it’s an impulse buy, we still know that we can afford it if that makes sense.
We managed to be properly grown up last year and build up an Emergency Fund but I decided life was too short for that when Master Frugal was really poorly last year and booked a holiday to New York for us with that money which I didn’t regret as we had some great times there but I do wish I hadn’t used the emergency fund for it as we’re back to the start with that. 😉
The point that I’m trying to make is that even though we’re still not perfect with money, we have come a long way and we don’t have the same need to count every penny. We can afford little treats here and there but I always feel a bit odd about sharing them on here because they might be things that other people might not be able to afford.
I’ve been struggling a little bit lately to figure out where I want to go with blogging and I think the main reason is that my life has changed so much since I started out. I’m not sure exactly what I plan to do but I have a few ideas for some small changes that I can make that I think will fit perfectly with our current lifestyle but not change the theme or style of the blog much at all.
I’m not going to change too much though so I hope you stick around because I’m grateful for every single comment, every single page view and to everyone who has taken the time to reach out over the years.
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