Northern Expenditure’s 100th Post!

We’ve made it. 100 episodes. That’s over four seasons if we were a standard American sitcom! And that means… it’s time for a clip show! That’s right. Here’s where we would put together a moving and hilarious series of vignettes of us laughing together and crying together. Unfortunately, in blog form, this is the best I can do to capture our collective experience:

The Numbers

• 100 posts published
• 84,241 words published
• $0 – money earned on the blog*
• $11,330 – Amount we’ve paid down our mortgage since the beginning of the blog
• $6,830 – Amount our investments have increased since starting the blog (thanks market corrections!).
• $18,130 – Total amount closer to our goal than we were 99 posts ago!

Longest 3 Posts (each just over 1500 words):

• How to Navigate Finances in Marriage
• Align Your Budget: Financial Date Night
• Liebster Award

Best Posts to Get to Know the Banks Family: 

• The About Series: The Banks!
• Northern Expenditure Retirement Soundbite – Only 115 words (with an awesome recording of our voices!)
• Introducing… Penny!
• Merry Christmas from the Banks

Most Popular Posts:

• Alaska Pays Us: What is the PFD? (the very first post on the blog!)
• Caught With Your Shirt Off? Own it!
• How We Turned Unemployment Into a Game. And Won!
• The Story of My 33% Raise
• The Fill-the-Bucket List – Have you participated yet?

Some of My Favorite Posts:

• The Power of Compounding – I rewrote Mr.T’s retirement newsletter. It was fun!
• Life Asset Allocation
• Keepin’ it Real: Kiddos
• “That Looks Like a Lot of Work.”
• The Bell on the Fishing Pole: Living in the Present

The Only Post Where Mr. T Chimed In:

• The Best, Easy Salmon Recipe

All the Plan Updates in One Place! See How Far We’ve Come!

• June 2015
• July 2015
• August 2015
• September 2015
• October 2015
• November 2015
• December 2015
• January 2016

This blog has been a journey. I don’t know what I expected when I began, but it’s definitely not this. We’ve made some amazing blogger friends (shout-out to Our Next Life and Alyssa at Generation YRA for being our top blog commenters!). We’ve realized how much we’re capable of financially, and we’re excited to see where we go from here. Northern Expenditure isn’t the best blog on the web. I can point you to several personal finance blogs that are more entertaining, more intellectual, better written, and more inspiring. But this is our little corner and I’ve grown to love it. This is us, in blog form. Our journey will continue and I’m glad to have you along for the ride. Thanks.**

What do you love about our corner of the internet? Which posts have been your favorites? What would you like to hear more about?

*There have been a couple Amazon purchases through my affiliate button on the side, but not enough to cash out). Making money was not a focus of this blog and will probably continue to not be a focus though I will continue to place affiliate links because I have no opposition to earning money. 🙂

**Anyone crying yet? No? I guess the lack of emotionally manipulative music really cramped this clip show (also, do you remember when music playing on blogs was a thing? terrible idea).