One of the most common questions I get (especially when people ask for interviews which I almost always turn down) is why I started this blog and why I continue to do it. I think my reasons have changed over time, but can be summed up as follows:
- I like to help people
- I like to learn
- I like to make money
When I began blogging I wanted to understand more about how credit scores were calculated and what you could do to increase your score. I thought this would be relatively easy, but the more I dug into learning about it the more complex I found it (e.g multiple different credit scoring algorithms, multiple data sources etc etc). I didn’t find anybody that had this information in an easy to digest format so I decided to create it and then this blog grew organically from there (credit cards started offering free FICO scores, I didn’t like the biased information about secured credit cards etc).
I would be lying if I said I didn’t also want to make money from this blog, I love making money. That being said it’s not my prime motivator, I have an extremely well paid day job that is more than enough for my modest needs. A few days ago the American Express SPG cards were increased to 30,000 points and a reader let me know that they were successful getting 5,000 courtesy points even though they applied for the standard 25,000 point offer months ago.
I decided that was worth a post to let other readers know that they should attempt it. By my count that post helped people get around 50,500 SPG points (and that only includes the ones that commented, it’s probably more like 10x that number).
At the end of the day, I couldn’t really care less if you click on our links (and remember we don’t use affiliate links for credit cards or bank accounts) – as long as you find this site helpful I’m a happy blogger. The absolute best part for me is that I’m continually learning thanks to readers correcting my mistakes, discussing why they disagree with my opinion and also tipping me off to deals.
If you really think my main motivation is money, I’ll do a post soon about some of the lucrative opportunities I’ve declined due to them not aligning with my moral compass and what this blog is all about.
P.S I also want to thank all of the other bloggers and communities in this space that do this for the right reasons and do everything they can to give their readers the best information possible.
