I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We are in Denmark for another week or so and I sure am getting used to this 4-5 hygges per day type of relaxed lifestyle. It was nice to slow down the last few weeks. I also have been enjoying playing Lego with Baby T1.0. It certainly brought back some childhood memories for me.
Both kids had a rough time before Christmas. First Baby T1.0 threw up on the 23rd and Baby T2.0 threw up multiple time for about 3 hours the morning of the 24th. At first we thought the stomach bug (or whatever it was) was contained. So we celebrated Christmas on December 24 with a total of 13 people. Unfortunately, both Mrs. T and I started feeling sick the night of the 25th. Both of us threw up multiple times. Feeling weak and sick I slept for over 24 hours the next day. Let’s just say it was I could think of better ways to spend Christmas than laying in bed.
In comparison, our new years eve was quite tame. Since we are staying in a very small town (so small there’s no Google Street View available) about 1 hour west of Billund, there were no night clubs or house parties. There was simply nada. We had a fancy home-made dinner and watched other people firing fireworks (or as I call it, burning their money away) from afar.
Blog Improvements
The last little while I have been busy dealing with the technical side of the blog. Being an engineer, I was having tons of fun with the likes of Javascripts, CSS, caching tools, and other blog related tweaks. According to Google PageSpeed Insights, the website performance went from the high 50’s to mid 80’s. Hopefully that meant an increase of overall site load time.
I also worked on a few things to improve the overall look of the website.
The first change was spending money to purchase of a new theme called Redwood. The theme has been live for a few months now and I think the blog now has a much cleaner look.
One of the latest changes was the archives page. My original vision was to divide all the posted articles by month. But the best plugin I found was only able to divide articles by the different years.
This resulted in a poor layout and ugly looking archives page.
The new archives page is now much more organized and better looking. Thanks to Jeremy from Go Curry Cracker for pointing out a great plugin called Clean My Archives.
In addition to the new archives page, I have moved things around and used sub menu to make things look a bit more tidy. Home is added in the menu after I saw my in-laws struggling to find a way back to the main page (they didn’t know you could just click on the picture). I am still working on a few things being worked on in the background, so further changes are possible.
2017 and Beyond
2016 was a great year. We welcomed Baby T2.0 to the family, added over $45,000 to our dividend portfolio, netted over $12,500 in dividend income (final tally to come shortly), and traveled. I am sure 2017 will be even better. I have a few 2016 review posts lined up so stay tuned for those.
The biggest change for the new year is to finally reveal my identity. I have been blogging anonymously for about two and half years. While the name Tawcan was something that I invented, I have been using this name as my internet alias since the mid-90’s. So it wasn’t hard to find my identity by a quick Google search. In addition, I have mentioned on this blog about my photography business and cookbook business a few times. It was great discussing with other bloggers at Canadian Personal Finance Conference about blogging using full name back in November. This had changed my mind about blogging anonymously greatly. What made me decide to finally reveal my identity was being approached by a few writers on press opportunities. To gain more credibility and to build a stronger brand, it was time to start using my real name on this blog.
So feel free to head over to Start Here and About to learn a few more things about yours truly.
The Future
I am more than excited to write moving forward. The Danish vacation has allowed me to slow down and to write down tons of ideas. I believe that some of my best articles were written when I started focusing on my why’s of blogging and writing about what I think is important. I don’t want to just write about investment and stocks analysis. There are tons of people that can analyze stocks and talk about investment better than I can. I also don’t want to write for the sake of getting found on search engines (i.e. SEO optimized articles). What I can do is write valuable and inspiring articles that my readers will benefit and learn from. It’s simply too boring to only talk about money all the time, this is why I write philosophical articles from time to time. Since traveling is a bit part of for Mrs. T and I, I plan to start sharing some travel related articles in 2017.
Here’s to an excellent 2017 to everyone! Thank you to everyone for your support the last 2.5 years.
Blerg. So sorry about your Christmas illness! Your site looks great! Also, thanks for the tip on the archives plugin!
Thanks Maggie. At least we recovered relatively quickly.
Wow what a surprise! I can imagine deciding to “un” anonymize is a hard call but potentially a good move in the long run if you’re trying to grow your site or brand.
It was a hard decision but hopefully the right move in the long run. 🙂
Tawcan, could you eventually change the blog font to a straight type like Arial and a bit bigger size in pure black color of the blackest coal sort you can find (it is now grey colored and about 4mm high to read, and is not really fun to easily read with my reading glasses on or off), I read it on a 21″ screen and am a 50 years old fart with vision issues. I think I am not alone in appreciating easy lecture… Wish you a prosperous and healthy 2017 and beyond.
Hi Al,
Let me see what I can do in terms of font and bigger size. You could always zoom in to make the text a bit bigger. Appreciate you making this comment as I didn’t realize it was challenging to read the text. Here’s to a great 2017 to you too.
kid* …oops!
Haha good luck with you in 2017.
Awesome Job Tawcan. Your Christmas sounds exactly like ours last year! A bunch of throwing up and sickness thanks to the kiddos! We also welcomed our second kind in 2016, so we’ve go a lot in common! Keep it up and best of luck in 2017,
Congratulations on the reveal, I hope the changes are what you want them to be. You’ve had a great 2016 and you should be extremely proud of yourself of the growth that you’ve achieved (personal growth and financial). I can’t wait to see what’s in store in 2017 for the personal finance export from Vancouver 🙂
Tristan
Thanks Tristan. I too hope the changes will bring lots of good things. It took a while to finally decide my identity but I think it’s the right thing to do in the long run. 🙂
Happy new year Tawcan, or should we now call you Bob? It’s a gutsy move revealing your identity to the world on your website but I’m guessing you’ve put a lot of thought into it and are comfortable with it so good on ya. I’m looking forward to another year of your insightful articles.
Thanks Martin. I think I’m comfortable revealing my identity. There are a few things I’m willing to share but there are a few things I won’t share (i.e. like net worth). Here’s to a great 2017!
Hi Bob! HNY! Good luck with the public persona aspect of things. I’m actually really curious about how one handles self promotion and stuff like that going forward.
Sam
Happy new year Sam! Will keep you updated on handling self promotions and stuff like that going forward. 🙂
I like the new theme, very clean! I want to revamp our site a bit, but not having any engineering skills, I did exactly zero towards that on my time off over the holidays. Hahahaha
I like writing more about the why’s of blogging and our personal stories as opposed to “all about money”. If you haven’t noticed my writing had slowed way down towards the end of the year just from “PF burnout”. 🙂 I decided I need to focus more on “less but better” and write what I’m inspired about, not necessarily “money, money, money.”
Sorry to hear about the sick kids over the holidays. We’ve had a couple of those sick kid vacations and they are not too fun.
Happy 2017, enjoy the rest of your vacation!
There’s nothing wrong with relaxing and doing zero over the holidays. 🙂
Since there are so many blogs out there, I think you really need to create your own voice to create a niche and your own brand. Focusing more on less but better is a good idea. 🙂
It really was a fantastic year for you and your family Tawcan. I love how much money you were able to add to your dividend machine. And getting $12,500 on dividends is awesome. Bummer about the flu bug that hit your family. We had the same thing happen, luckily it was a few day after Christmas. I wish it would happen in about 10 hours. I need to go back to work after 2-weeks off. I could use a sick day 😉
Hi Investment Hunting,
2016 was a great year indeed, hope 2017 will be even better. The flu bug wasn’t fun but at least we are now recovered. 🙂
Congrats on coming out from behind your shroud of mystery…Bob! And the site looks great! All the best for 2017!
Thanks Jon, I appreciate that.
Excited to read about your journey and congrats on moving to the next level!
-TDM
Thanks The Dividend Mogul.
Great work on investing so much into your dividend portfolio and seeing great dividend results from it! I just pulled together my numbers for the year, and I wish my dividends were where yours are. Ahh, maybe next year 🙂
Thanks freedom40guy. Hoping to beat our numbers in 2017.
16 was a great year for you but it seems like 17 could be a lot better. I am excited to learn more about your journey in the new year. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks More Dividends. Here’s to a great 2017!
Good luck in ’17! And congrats on removing the anonymity, no easy feat when throwing your financial stats out there.
Thanks TJ, definitely wasn’t an easy decision.
Well, Hi Bob! You look different than how I envisioned you, but it’s all good!
I love what you’ve done with the place too! Looks mighty professional! I especially like that dividends menu. I might steal that idea. Is that OK? You and I are among the few personal finance bloggers who focus on and believe in the power of dividends.
Keep up the good work! Happy New Year!
Haha I hope the picture wasn’t too much of a shock lol. No worries stealing the dividend menu idea. More dividend investors the better right.
Happy New Year and good luck in 2017! I’m planning to revamp my site too. It’s been a while since I did that. I’m not looking forward to it, though. It’s a lot of work…
Hi Joe,
I look forward seeing your revamped site.