Strong Money Website Update

As mentioned in my weekly newsletter, the Strong Money site has undergone a transformation of sorts.

So I’d like to take a minute to let you know what’s new, so you can get a feel for the site.  But I’ll also share why I decided to update the site.

As for what’s staying the same, two things…

1–  The top notch content, of course 😉

2–  The purpose of this blog:  To help my fellow Aussies realise the massive opportunity we have available to us.  To create satisfying lives full of freedom, by learning to master our finances, improve our mindset and build passive income from investments.

Why the makeover?

Since 2017, Strong Money has been a classic blog page with a simple ongoing list of articles.  And while I’m a sucker for simplicity, people who are new to the site are left to fend for themselves.

When you’ve got a ton of content and no way of figuring out what to do first, it’s a bit overwhelming.  I hate the thought of people coming here and then feeling lost, confused or deflated and thinking that there’s “too much to learn.”

So if I wanted this site to be as useful as it could be, something needed to change.  There are tons of things that could’ve made better.  And since I’ve got ZERO clue on how to do that, I decided to outsource this help.

OK, so that’s the why behind it.  Here’s what the Strong Money site now has that it didn’t used to…

New Pages

Let’s start with the Start Here section.

What is FIRE?  Here, I define what financial independence is all about, the benefits, and a few other things.

Dave’s FI Journey.  This outlines my personal experience to FI, along with a fun infographic and summary of milestones along the way.

Popular Articles/Podcasts.  Takes you to the content library and shows you everything that I’ve tagged as the most popular.

Beginners Content.  I spent a lot of time working on this area, because it probably goes overlooked and newbies can easily feel overwhelmed and not know where to start.

The beginners page has two sections:  Getting Started Saving and Getting Started Investing.

Getting Started Saving

This section has a curated list of content focused on saving, mindset and how to manage our money better.

There’s also a FAQ section where I answer the most common questions around personal finance and saving for FI.

And finally, there’s a special ebook you can download called How to Supercharge Your Savings Rate, which runs through my best 10 ideas for ramping up your savings.

Getting Started Investing

Similar to above, this page has a library of beginner-friendly content on how to invest for financial independence.  There’s a FAQ section with my answers to the always-asked investing questions.

In addition, I created a special beginners article on how to buy shares for the first time.

It breaks everything down step by step with screenshots to make it easier, and I also explain how the share registries work and what else you have to do after you’ve bought your shares.

And newbies can also shortcut their learning curve with a downloadable ebook that outlines my 10 principles to follow when investing for FI.

The Content Library

If you hit ‘All Content’, you’ll come to the content library.  It’s now much easier to find what you’re looking for.

The content is listed in order just like before.  But now you can also hit the ‘Topics’ tab and choose what kind of content you’d like to check out based on the various tags…

Podcast.  Article.  Investing.  Popular.  Beginner.  Saving.  Mindset.  And so on.

You can always use the Search bar to type in something specific you might be looking for too.

Third-party ads are gone

I decided to stop using the ad network I was signed up to.  This means a few things…

Now the only banners or ‘ads’ you see are actually referral stuff.  Meaning, things I genuinely like and endorse.  I can’t control what comes up with outside ads, which isn’t great.

So, now if you see a banner somewhere on the site, you’ll know it’s something that has my tick of approval.  This is now a principle I’m going to follow.

While this means the blog misses some income, I feel better about this going forward.  I’m trying to make the whole site more helpful, so this change aligns with that theme.

Another big benefit is also that the site and reading experience will be much better with less distractions.

I actually have a reasonable tolerance for website ads when I’m reading, but this tolerance is reducing over time.  A cleaner reading experience is something that I feel better about (we’re all about feelings today aren’t we? lol).

Other stuff…

There are lots of little things (too many to mention really).  But the About page and Resources page have both been updated.  The Resources page now lists a few more things I like, including some recommended books and a few useful tools like calculators.

Podcast Transcripts.  For future podcast episodes, a transcript will be available on the page.  The transcripts will be far from perfect, given it’s created by speech recognition software, but it’s workable.

Similar content.  At the end of most posts, you’ll see some featured content below, giving you the option to check out other stuff that may be related if you liked what you just read.

Final thoughts

There are lots of other changes too obviously, but those are the main things.  If you notice anything not working properly, please let me know.

I understand that not everyone will be happy about the change – that’s just the way it goes.  But I do think that, on average, the site is much more helpful than before and it’s a better experience too.

I appreciate all your support over the last couple of years, and I look forward to bringing you more quality content going forward.  Thanks for reading (and listening!).