Wealth Informatics : Looking ahead with an eye on rear view mirror

A very happy New Year to everyone! Before anything else, I would like to thank you all for reading Wealth Informatics. Without you I wouldn’t have got past the first month. Thank you for reading, commenting, sharing! Thank you for being there for me!

By now, everyone is probably energized and ready to take on the world with new goals. Personally, I have a long list of things I would like to check off in 2012, with very little time.  I understand that you are giving me your most valuable resource, your time and so I will ensure that your time here isn’t wasted in the least. So, I figured I will start the New Year by writing about what you can expect from Wealth Informatics.

To better serve my readers, I conducted a survey around Thanksgiving. Fortunately, what I would like to write and what my readers want align fairly well. And many of you gave me some excellent ideas for future posts, Thanks!!! I also got a lot of constructive criticism and I am incorporating every single piece of advice I got.

What kinds of topics will I be covering in 2012?

1. Psychology of money : We all know personal finance can be summed in one sentence - Spend less than you earn and save the rest. We all know this and yet we still struggle. Why? Because the human mind is not rational. Advertisers know this and take advantage of it. The only way to do ourselves justice is to know how we think.
2. Analysis/Personal finance calculators : I am analytical by nature. Solid numbers backed by research speak to me more than hearsay. I plan on providing a lot of calculators, mostly in Excel so that you have complete control.
3. How can you get the best value for your money : A complete guide to whatever topic I am covering.  Sometimes it might be the right questions to ask or sometimes it might be a system to save money. If there is a way that I have found to improve my finances, I will share it with you. I take pride in providing the most useful resources and I promise to continue to do that.
4. Resources : News that affect our personal finance drastically, book & product reviews and if there are any great deal/free resources that will be useful to the reader. Now, posts from this category will mostly be scheduled on a Sunday. This is because reviews are not something you will find interesting or will be put to use immediately. It’s not something I’d need to write about all the time, but that info would be there for when you choose to do research.

In essence, I envision Wealth Informatics as a place to provide every possible tool to help you make informed decisions.

What will change in 2012?

Mostly, the presentation. I was expecting a lot of people to complain about the length of my posts. Most didn’t (to my surprise), but some did. Point taken. But I do have a lot of information to share, so I plan to accomplish both by doing 2 things

1. Reduce the amount of text. Instead, convey my points via infographics, statistics, numbers and action points.
2. Try to incorporate more links to other blogs instead of explaining everything in detail myself.

A word about the redesign

I guess by now, you would have figured out the reason for the slight redesign. It is much more a case of redefining rather than redesigning. I wanted to make what I write about really clear and easy for readers to find what they want. I hope this redesign is a step in that direction.

Posting schedule

I plan on posting 4 times a week (with my full time job, this is not a strict schedule but mostly a goal that I would like to accomplish). 3 out of that 4 will be on weekdays Monday, Wednesday & Friday. Those are the days I will cover the most important topics – analysis/personal finance calculators, psychology of money and how-to topics (money saving ideas, start investing, etc). Sunday will be a casual day with either a review of a book or a discussion about a new law or review of some other personal finance product (like Mint.com).

Who am I?

I had the pleasure of meeting one of my readers during the holidays.  She mentioned to me that she didn’t realize it was just a one author blog and she was not sure if it will be ok to contact me. Please contact me !!! I would love to hear from you. Questions, comments, criticism or even just to say hi, please do contact me.

I think with the lack of a lot of personal posts, I come off as a not very approachable person. I don’t write a lot of what is happening in my personal life because I think you would much rather use your time to read about how to improve yours instead of listening to how my day went. But again, point well taken. I will make my posts a little more personal, after all I am writing what I already tried, what worked for me and what failed for me. If you want to know more about me, here is my about me page.

Again, I would LOVE to hear from you. If you have a question that you want me to research for you or if you have a topic idea or if you just want to send me a link to another article you find interesting, I am just an email away wealth[dot]informatics[at]gmail[dot]com or if you are an email subscriber, just click reply.

Thank you for reading this! Wish you a very very happy New Year!

Here is a little infographics starting with the top 5 sites that sent the most referral traffic. Thanks!