The Backstory
Ever since I read the book, The One Thing, I have been determined to pay my self first with my time. I have found a way to work on things that matter to me, regardless of how much “free time” I have. I decided that the most important thing for me to do right now is to work towards becoming financially free. This will allow me to pursue greater dreams that aren’t bound by money. With that ultimate goal in mind, I have set up some weekly activities to get me there. One of these activities is blogging.
After I started Terra's doll-designer website, I made this website. Then I started making websites for other people. Things just started picking up. I got interested in earning passive income online, so I started another website, YoungInvesting.net.
Young Investing springs from a passion I have to read and write about whatever I learn. I think that passion dies when you neglect to share it or pay attention to it.
Over the past year I have read countless books and articles on personal finance, especially investing. When it comes to saving and investing your money, nothing is more important than when you start. Compound interest gets its magical power from time. The difference between starting when you are 20 and starting when you are 21 is thousands of dollars. After realizing how important it was to start investing my money while I am young, I wanted to share that knowledge with other people.
The most simple type of investing is also the most powerful. A consistent contribution to a low-expense index fund is the smartest way to invest your money passively. It only takes 1 hour to set up, and it can be the difference between retiring when your are 50 and retiring when you are 65.
This whole site is dedicated to teaching young people how to invest in their future, whether it be with their money, time, or talents.
How I Made it
Until I am a master web developer, I will continue to user WordPress for my sites. It is very convenient, customizable, widely used, and widely supported.
For Young Investing, I used the Harmony Theme from Elegant Themes.
There were a few tweaks that I made to the theme. For example, I changed the top header to be smaller and include a custom logo. I removed their footer and added my own. Also, for some reason the Divi Builder (from Elegant Themes) doesn’t play well with this theme. It removes many of the custom styles that I set up, so I have set up some css classes that apply to all of my posts.
Plugins
Surprisingly, finding and configuring the plugins took more time than anything else.
I send out weekly emails of the newest posts with MailChimp because it’s the only free email provider that I could find (up to 2500 subscribers or so). MailChimp lets you customize your weekly newsletters as much as you want, which I really like.
I use Bloom for email opt-ins under each post.
I use Monarch for social media following.
I use Disqus for comments.
I use this plugin for displaying images in my rss feed.
I use both Ninja Forms and SumoMe to make contact forms.
Update: I accidentally let hosting and domain registrar payments lapse so this site isn't up anymore, but I expect a reboot in the future.