As the year winds down and thoughts turn to the year ahead, I thought I’d do a reflective post about this blog so far. I started on June 1st, 2014, so it technically hasn’t been a full year, but I thought it was appropriate to do a post about the top 10 posts on The Frugal Cottage this year.
10) The Ultimate Dream Part Two: Early Retirement. Early retirement and financial freedom go hand in hand, and this post sets our my aspirations (dreams?) for our future. Early retirement is a search that brings people to this site quite regularly, so it’s no surprise that this post sneaks into the top 10.
9) How To Make A Budget. Another one that people seem to search for on the internet, which in turn brings them in my direction. It makes me happy to think that people are beginning to think about budgeting and how to work their own family finances.
8) 2014 Goals. This was one of the first posts I wrote on here, so it’s not surprising this features on this list. Next week I’ll reflect on how this goals have gone (some better than others!) and be setting my new 2015 goals.
7) 10 Ways To Know You’re A Frugal Person. A somewhat tongue-in-cheek list of what makes a frugal person – do you agree with me? I certainly do most of these!
6) Why We’re (sort of) Paying Off Our Mortgage Early. Part of our early retirement dream includes being mortgage free, so this is a big part of the process for us. Although our priorities have shifted slightly during the year in terms of this goal, it still stands in its basic terms.
5) Learning To Enjoy The Simple Life. This is definitely a work in process for us, but learning to appreciate the smaller things in life, rather than trying to keep up with the pressures of society is paying off.
4) The Ultimate Dream. This was the first post outlining our early retirement dreams and this hasn’t changed. I don’t know if we’ll ever actually do this, but you have to try, right?
3) My Investment Strategy. This outlines my basic investing strategy, which I have yet to implement. I am still doing some reading on the subject and still feel relatively in the dark as to where to invest. This will definitely be a 2015 aim though, I think.
2) How Our Budget Works + A Free Budget Template! This has proved to be a popular post, with the budget template being opened multiple times. As always, our budget is a working process, so it will change over time.
1) 5 Easy Ways To Reduce Grocery Costs. This doesn’t come as a surprise that this is number 1 – mainly due to being shared by a few well-known bloggers. Quite a few of the searches that lead to this site is to do with grocery spends, so I hope this posts helps those who come here looking for help in reducing grocery costs.
So there you have it! The top 10 posts of 2014 from The Frugal Cottage.
Which one is your favourite?
Number five is my favorite. For many, myself included, learning to enjoy the simple life is a process and takes time. We all have a certain amount of conditioning to overcome when we try to simplify, because we’ve endured years of other influences that have attempted, with great success, to convince us we need lives of complexity to be happy. Once you’ve broken through that influence the real fun begins. The more our outer lives simplify the more room there is for inner complexity and it is here that we really begin to learn what it means to be human.
Here’s to hoping you travel further down that road in 2015.
The Stoic
I do plan to do more posts surrounding the simple life and what we’re doing specifically to help us down that path 🙂
Thank you letting me catch up with your articles. I like the last one, the 5 Easy Ways To Reduce Grocery Costs. You simply detailed smart plans in reducing grocery costs. I hope you could post more articles related to this next year ‘coz I am one of them who need some kind of this. Merry Christmas Frugal Cottage!
Is there anything in particular you struggle with in terms of grocery spends? I’ve got some more posts planned on this, including cheap recipes that we use regularly 🙂 Merry Christmas to you too!