Welcome to this post about our January 2021 Monthly Review!
Last month I stumbled upon Jeff Fang’s (The Financial Pupil) monthly review post. I thought it was a brilliant idea and want to start doing something similar here on Teen Financial Freedom.
We’ll start off by talking about any news, then some stats for the month, discuss any future plans, then also share how our team did personally throughout January.
Let’s get into it!
New Blog Posts
This month we made the decision to go back to posting 2 times a week. We did it from June-October, but went back to 1 post a week after that.
We started to accumulate a huge backlog of posts, so we decided to go back to 2 posts a week. Basically, we pushed back all of our new content to fill in gaps over the last 3 months. As a result, a lot more new content came out than normal.
So here’s the long list of the 22 blog posts we published this month:
- Money Habits of Millionaires
- How to Organize your Life
- Mistakes Teens Make with Money
- How to Boost your Confidence
- The Highest Paying Jobs in the U.S.
- Things Rich People Never Waste their Money on
- Common Traits of Millionaires
- 10 Ways Entrepreneurs Think Differently
- Traits of Successful Entrepreneurs
- What I’ve Learned From Over $2,500 in Online Sales
- Skills Every Entrepreneur Should Have
- How To Invest As A Teenager
- 10 Reasons to Start a Blog in 2021
- Our Reflections on 2020
- Blogging Case Study #2 – Teen Financial Freedom
- How To Be Productive in 2021 (Definitive Guide)
- How To Be Organized in 2021 (Definitive Guide)
- Digital vs. Analog Productivity System
- How to Build Self-discipline as a Teenager in 2021
- How to Set Financial Goals in 2021
- A Teen Entrepreneur’s Guide to Business Legal Structures
- How To Organize Email in 2021
Announcements
Weekly Roundup Newsletters
Terry has turned our newsletter into a weekly roundup of articles, videos, tools, and resources that he found that week. Definitely recommend that you check it out as he shares a lot of great stuff on there!
Monthly Review Posts
We’ll start writing monthly review posts (just like this one) for every month of the foreseeable future! The goal is to share with our audience what is going on behind the scenes.
Podcast
As mentioned in our Blogging Case Study #2 – Teen Financial Freedom, we are launching the Teen Financial Freedom Podcast in the coming months! Stay tuned for more information!
What We Worked On
Team Organization
A huge part of what we have worked on this month is getting organized as a team. We cleaned up our spreadsheet, started a team calendar, setup our Notion account, and streamlined our email process.
With a lot more going on now than ever, we needed to upgrade some of our processes to be prepared for what’s to come!
Website Redesign
I’m not sure if anyone noticed, but we did do a bit of a website redesign this month. It was nothing crazy, but a few small improvements here and there make a big difference!
Podcast
There’s a lot that needs to be setup for our podcast, so we’re working through that whole process. We’re doing a lot of troubleshooting, testing, and practicing to get ready for our launch!
January Statistics
January 2021 has been our best month in terms of traffic ever! Here’s a few noteworthy stats:
- 8,100 Users
- 25,000 Pageviews
- 580,000 Pinterest Impressions
- 174,000 Google Search Console Impressions
- 6,000 Google Search Console Clicks
These traffic numbers were pretty crazy for us. Our site is growing exponentially and we’re excited to see where 2021 takes us!
Personal Lives
Now that you know what’s going on with out site as a whole, let’s give you a brief update on our personal lives!
Jacob
January 2021 was by far the busiest, craziest, and most productive year of my life.
The month started off with my annual review where I review the previous year and set goals for the next. This was a week long process as there’s a lot of different things I like to do.
I was feeling pretty overwhelmed with everything that I had to do in January. But, at the same time I felt more mental clarity than ever because I knew what I had to do and when I had to do it.
I spent several days on ski trips at the start of the month which limited my productivity. However, once I was back I was ready to go.
A big reason for why this month was so crazy for me was because of college scholarships. I’m in the college application process, and currently working on applying to dozens of scholarships at the 6 schools I’m still considering. Luckily, I’m almost done and should be done by the time you are reading this post.
Two other big projects for me that I worked on was an automated financial system and our FBLA business plan competition. I wanted to consolidate, simplify, and automate my financial system so I have been opening new bank accounts and setting up recurring transfers (I’ll talk more about this in a future post). Our FBLA business plan was due this month so I spent a decent amount of time working on that.
I also went back to school this month and had a lot to do there as well as I hadn’t seen my teachers or friends in several months.
My freelancing work has seemed to take off again so I’ve had an increasing amount of work to do there.
As mentioned earlier, Teen Financial Freedom has had a very busy month working on team organization, the website, writing content, and planning for the podcast.
Finally, my custom t-shirt business is working on a fundraiser for a local charity so there’s been a fair amount of work going on there as well.
Needless to say, I’m happy that January 2021 is almost over. February should be a little less busy which I’m excited about.
Terry
My January has been a series of ups and downs! I entered 2021 exhausted because I pulled an all-nighter on New Years’ Eve, but at least it was fun. 🙂
On Jan. 11th I started my second semester of school and moved back into the dorms. I was supposed to have gotten a bunch of work done on a specific TFF project by then, but alas, I had not. On the bright side I got to see some friends that I hadn’t seen for about a year and a half, since they moved overseas. So that was really fun getting to see them again!
I’ve started to handle this blog’s emails, which has been interesting. I don’t know a lot about the process so it’s big learning experience for me, but I’m looking forward to figuring out how to provide high quality weekly emails to our subscribers. Jacob and I are also making great progress on our podcast, and we’re hoping to launch in the near future.
My biggest focus right now is trying to figure out how to consistently work on key projects in my life. I guess it’s a problem we all struggle with (procrastination), but as a perfectionist, it drives me crazy when I don’t understand why I procrastinate on things. Sigh. I feel like I have far more great ideas than the energy to pursue them all! 😆
Some of my goals for 2021 are:
- Pay off all college debt (I don’t want it to rack up)
- Finish the course I’m working on
- Train Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu at least twice a week
- Finish selling all my Warhammer items on eBay
Dani
Starting January, I held high hopes and plans for how the first month of the new year would turn out to be like. I told myself I was going to wake up at 7 a.m. every day, work out at least five times a week, start using google calendar, and plan out my week in my notebook. However, I was only consistent with two of the four things I listed. As soon as the first week of January ended, I realized that not everything is supposed to go as planned and that every second of my day cannot be planned out in advance.
Even with that whole turn-out, my hopes still remained high and I still had high expectations. Instead, I altered my goals a bit to make them easier for me to stay consistent. I don’t have to wake up at 7; I could get up at 7:30 a.m. I don’t have to work out five times a week; four days is more than enough. By making these two changes, for the remaining three weeks of January, I was super productive and efficient with my time.
I worked on one blog a week, managed all of the social media for TFF, got all my homework done before lunch, and had plenty of time to spend with my family. The last week of the month is usually the busiest for me, but approaching my tasks with a new plan has helped me complete them in a timely manner. Some things I’m proud of are not watching as much TV as before, organizing my week, and knowing my priorities.
While I was busy in January, I know that my workload is only going to increase in the following months. As each day goes by and we get closer and closer to February, I hope I can stay consistent with my goals and improve myself as each day passes. The only thing I would change for February would be to be more productive by batching my tasks together. Even though it is a shorter month, I’m hoping to achieve many things and crush even more goals!
The Takeaway
That’s it! Hope you guys enjoyed hearing about our month at Teen Financial Freedom. Stay tuned to see next month’s review as well! Otherwise, hope you all have a great February!
