Finance Blogs

12 Personal Finance Blogs Income Reports

Published

2 days ago

January 31, 2025

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The personal finance niche is lucrative mainly because of the high ad revenues and affiliate commissions. There are also many lucrative sub-niches within the personal finance niche including credit cards, stock trading, or insurance.

A personal finance blog can help you make an income if you have a passion for teaching others how to manage their money.

The top bloggers in this niche can earn over a million dollars a year through ad revenue, affiliate commissions, and selling products and services. This is 20 times more than what an average American earns in a year.

While these incomes are not typical, they show what is possible with hard work and dedication.

Examples of successful personal finance blogs

In this article, you will see 13 examples of personal finance bloggers who are making a full-time or part-time income from blogging. The article includes short bios of personal finance bloggers, earnings per month, blog traffic, monetization methods, profitability, and blog age.

The information comes from income reports from personal finance bloggers. The featured income reports cover a period from 2016 to 2021.

Quick insights from personal finance blogs

Here are some quick insights from the income reports:

Personal finance bloggers on this list mostly made money from affiliate marketing and selling their own products.
Some of the popular personal finance niches included retire-early (FIRE), investing, and personal finance for retirees.
The highest-earning personal finance blogger on this list (Michelle Schroeder-Gardner) made $139,233 in one month.

If you are interested in starting a blog but don’t know how to start, check out the article below. It will take you step-by-step through the process of starting a blog.

How to start a blog the right way

Personal Finance Blogs Income and Traffic Reports

Let us explore the personal finance blogs traffic and earnings reports in detail.

1. Making Sense of Cents

Making Sense of Cents is a personal finance and lifestyle blog started by Michelle Schroeder-Gardner. She started her blog to keep track of her progress in clearing a $38,000 student loan debt. Making Sense of Cents is one of the better-known blogging success stories and has been featured by various mainstream media outlets such as Forbes, Business Insider, and Oprah. The success of her blog has enabled her to travel full-time with her husband.

Monthly income: $139,233 (January 2017 income report)
Monthly traffic: 790,000 Pageviews
RPM: $176
Income sources: Ad Revenue (2.4%), Affiliate Income (50.2%), Sponsorship (12.2%), Products (35.2%)
Profitability: 94.2%
Blog age at the time of the report: 5 years (Started in 2012)

2. Believe in a Budget

Believe in a Budget is a personal finance blog that was started by Kristin Larsen. She was able to quit her job as an interior architect and designer after only 10 months of blogging. In her third year of blogging, she made $290,000. She made most of her money in 2018 from selling courses on her blog

Monthly income: $109,879 (April 2018 income report)
Monthly traffic: 200,000 Pageviews
RPM: $549
Income sources: Ad Revenue (0.9%), Affiliate Income (7.8%), Products (91.3%)
Profitability: 93.6%
Blog age at the time of the report: 3.3 years (Started in 2015)

3. DollarSprout

DollarSprout was started by two Virginia Tech alumni, Jeff Proctor and Ben Huber. Before launching DollarSprout, Jeff worked in private wealth management while Ben worked as a clinical administrator for a regional hospital network. DollarSprout aims to help readers maximize their earning potential, whether that’s through finding a side hustle, moving up in their career, or building passive income streams. They made most of their income in 2018 from affiliate marketing.

Monthly income: $104,097 (December 2018 income report)
Monthly traffic: 742,077 Pageviews
RPM: $140
Income sources: Ad Revenue (1%), Affiliate Income (98.3%), Products (0.7%)
Profitability: 81.7%
Blog age at the time of the report: 3.7 years (Started in 2015)

4. Busy Budgeter

The Busy Budgeter was started by Rosemarie Groner. Rosemarie spent 10 years as a state trooper before quitting her job to start a home day-care business so that she could stay home with her son. She started her blog to help people budget and save money so that they could enjoy a simpler life. Most of her income in 2017 came from selling products (workbooks and cheat sheets).

Monthly income: $86,439 (January 2017 income report)
Monthly traffic: 505,239 Pageviews
RPM: $171
Income sources: Ad Revenue (5.5%), Affiliate Income (22.3%), Sponsorship (4.2%), Products (68%)
Profitability: 76.9%
Blog age at the time of the report: 2.3 years (Started in 2014)

5. Millennial Money Man

Millennial Money Man is a personal finance blog started by Bobby Hoyt, a former high school band director. He was inspired to start blogging about personal finance after paying off a $40,000 debt in 18 months. In 2018, he made most of his money from selling courses on Facebook ads and blogging.

Monthly income: $53,212 (July 2018 income report)
Monthly traffic: 178,934 Pageviews
RPM: $279
Income sources: Ad Revenue (1.9%), Affiliate Income (4.7%), Products (80.6%), Services (12.8%)
Profitability: 87.1%
Blog age at the time of the report: 3.5 years (Started in 2015)

6. The Savvy Couple

The Savvy Couple was started by Kelan and Brittany Kline in 2016. In three years, they were able to pay off $25,000 in student loans and grow The Savvy Couple into a multi-six figure online business. The blog has enabled them to quit their full-time jobs and accumulate a net worth of over $200,000 by age 29.

Monthly income: $43,547 (May 2019 income report)
Monthly traffic: 250,000 Pageviews
RPM: $174
Income sources: Ad Revenue (11.6%), Affiliate Income (8.6%), Sponsorship (77.5%), Products (2.3%)
Profitability: 91.1%
Blog age at the time of the report: 2.8 years (Started in 2016)

7. Caroline Vencil

Caroline Vencil is a personal finance blog started by Caroline Vencil in 2015 to share strategies she and her husband used to enable them to live on a $17,000 a year income for four years. In just three years of blogging, she was able to make more in one month than they used to make a year.

Monthly income: $25,871 (November 2018 income report)
Monthly traffic: n/a
RPM: n/a
Income sources: Ad Revenue (7.3%), Affiliate Income (37.8%), Products (54.9%)
Profitability: 88.6%
Blog age at the time of the report: 3.3 years (Started in 2015)

8. Finsavvy Panda

Finsavvy Panda was started by Ling Tran from Toronto, Canada, to document her financial journey as well as make some extra money. After her first year of blogging, she was consistently earning $10,000 a month. In 2020, she was making over $20,000 a month after only 3 years of blogging.

Monthly income: $22,343 (November 2020 income report)
Monthly traffic: n/a
RPM: n/a
Income sources: Ad Revenue (22.7%), Affiliate Income (68%), Products (9.3%)
Profitability: 93.2%
Blog age at the time of the report: 3.3 years (Started in 2017)

9. The Money Ninja

The Money Ninja was started by John Pham from Boston, MA (US). A son of Vietnamese immigrants, John has made over a million dollars outside of his real job. He uses his blog to show readers how to make more money, save it better, and spend it more wisely. The Money Ninja made over 99% of its income in 2020 from affiliate marketing, which explains the exceptionally high RPM.

Monthly income: $10,385 (Jan-March 2020 income average)[ 3-month total $31,040.48]
Monthly traffic: 47,594 Pageviews [3-month traffic]
RPM: $655
Income sources: Ad Revenue (0.5%), Affiliate Income (99.5%)
Profitability: n/a
Blog age at the time of the report: 4.2 years (Started in 2015)

10. Stock Millionaires

Stock Millionaires is a niche blog that was started by Russell and Maleah Barbour to review stock trading and investing educational products. Within 3 years of blogging, the blog was making over $7k with only 10,000 Pageviews.

Monthly income: $7,233 (February 2018 income report)
Monthly traffic: 10,000 Pageviews
RPM: $723
Income sources: Affiliate Income (100%)
Profitability: n/a
Blog age at the time of the report: 3.2 years (Started in 2015)

11. Freedom in a Budget

Freedom in a Budget is a personal finance and lifestyle blog started by Kelly Anne Smith from South Florida (US) as a side hustle. Kelly and her husband used the income from their blog to pay off debt, pay for their wedding, buy a new car and save for a down payment for their first home.

Monthly income: $5,046 (May 2021 income report)
Monthly traffic: n/a
RPM: n/a
Income sources: Ad Revenue (34.5%), Affiliate Income (54.4%), Products (8.4%), Services [Coaching] (1.8%), Other [Donations] (0.9%)
Profitability: n/a
Blog age at the time of the report: 4.7 years (Started in 2016)

12. The Practical Saver

The Practical Saver was started by Allan Liwanag, a Maryland (US) based analyst to share ideas on paying off debts, budgeting, and making money. He managed to earn over $5k a month in just 8 months of blogging, with the majority of his income coming from affiliate marketing and sponsorships.

Monthly income: $5,243 (September 2016 income report)
Monthly traffic: 174,882 Pageviews
RPM: $30
Income sources: Ad Revenue (15%), Affiliate Income (52.8%), Sponsorship (32.2%)
Profitability: n/a
Blog age at the time of the report: 8 months (Started in 2016)

13. The Money Habit

The Money Habit was started by J.P. Livingston, an anonymous personal finance blogger who retired at the age of 28 with 2.25 million dollars. In 2017, J.P was able to make $62,326 blogging only 5 hours a week. In 2017, she made over 96% of her income from affiliate marketing.

Monthly income: $5,139 (Average for 2017)
Monthly traffic: 100,000 Pageviews (Average for 2017)
RPM: $52
Income sources: Ad Revenue (3.5%), Affiliate Income (96.5%)
Profitability: n/a
Blog age at the time of the report: 1.4 years (Started in 2016)

Final Thoughts

The personal finance niche is highly lucrative as can be seen from the high RPMs. However, it is also quite competitive and you will be going against big sites in this space.

If you are passionate about personal finance, you can start a blog in this niche. To reduce your competition, choose a less competitive sub-niche or focus on a particular audience (for example, personal finance for retirees).

With a bit of strategic planning, you can make good money blogging about personal finance.

You can easily start a blog these days even if you lack the technical skills. If you intend to make money from your blog, you need to set it up correctly from the start.

Finance Blogs

Ernest Hemingway Biography

Published

18 hours ago

February 1, 2025

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Ernest Hemingway (Full name: Ernest Miller Hemingway), was an American author best known for novels and short stories. He is considered one of the most influential writers in American literature. Hemingway received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1953 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.

He was born on 21 July, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois, U.S. His father was a physician and his mother a musician.

At 17, he began his career as a cub-reporter for the Kansas City Star before volunteering as an ambulance driver for the American Red Cross at the Italian front during World War 1. A few days before his 19^th birthday, he was seriously wounded during a mortar attack. Despite his injuries, he helped evacuate Italian soldiers. He was awarded the Italian Silver Medal of Military Valor for his bravery.

After his return to the United States, he got married to his first wife, Hadley Richardson, in 1921 two months after his 22 birthday. They moved to Paris a few months later after Hemingway was hired as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star.

He began his writing career in Paris and in 1926; he published his first novel The Sun Also Rises. From mid-1920s to the mid-1950s, he produced most of his work including classics such as A Farewell to Arms (1929), For Whom the Bells Toll (1940), and The Old Man and the Sea (1952).

Hemingway published ten novels/novellas, nine short-story collections, and four nonfiction works. At least ten of his published worked were published posthumously.

On a trip to Africa in 1954, Hemingway was survived a plane crash over the Belgian Congo but he suffered injuries from which he never fully recovered. He died on 2 July, 1961 at the age of 61 after taking his life with a shotgun.

Hemingway’s influenced many fiction writers in the 20^th century and his understated style of writing was widely imitated. If you want to know more about him, read his memoir A Moveable Feast (1964) which chronicles his early life as a struggling journalist and writer in Paris in the 1920s.

Finance Blogs

Neil Gaiman Biography

Published

18 hours ago

February 1, 2025

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Neil Gaiman (Full name: Neil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman) is a best-selling English author best known for his fantasy novel (American Gods) and graphic novel series (The Sandman) and young adult novel (Coraline).

His body of work spans several media including novels, comics, graphic novels, non-fiction, TV and films.

Neil Gaiman was born on 10th November 1960 in Hampshire, England. He currently resides in the US, having moved there in 1992. He began his writing career in journalism in the 1980s but he quit journalism in 1987 to concentrate on writing. He wrote his first book, a Duran Duran biography, in 1984. His breakthrough, however, came when he started writing comic books, specifically the Sandman, a graphic novel series.

He has won numerous awards for his books including four Hugo and two Nebula awards. Some of the most awarded books include The Graveyard Book (Newberry and Carnegie Medals, Hugo and Locus Awards), Coraline (Hugo, Nebula and Bram Stoker Awards) and American Gods (Nebula, Hugo, Locus and Bram Stoker Awards)

Gaiman has also written or co-written screen plays for several popular movies (Coraline, Beowulf, Mirrormask) and TV series (American Gods, Good Omens, Beowulf, Babylon 5, Doctor Who).

Coraline, an animated feature film based on his book, was nominated for numerous awards including the Academy Awards, Golden Globe and BAFTA awards. It grossed over $124 million worldwide to make it the third highest-grossing stop-motion film of all time.

Neil Gaiman is also a prolific blogger. He established his blog in 2001 which now receives over a million regular readers. You can read his blog at his official website.

If you want to learn how to write from Neil Gaiman, check out his writing course on MasterClass. Learn more about MasterClass courses here.

Finance Blogs

Anais Nin Biography

Published

18 hours ago

February 1, 2025

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Anais Nin (Full name: Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell) is best known as a diarist and novelist. She is most famous for her published diaries The Diary of Anaïs Nin. In addition to her diary, she has written several erotic works, short stories, and critical essays.

Anais was born on February 21, 1903, in Neuilly, France to Cuban parents. Her father, Joaquín Nin, was a composer and her mother, Rosa Culmell, was a classically trained singer.

She moved to America with her mother and her brothers after her parents separated when she was two. She started keeping a diary when she was eleven and continued writing in her diary throughout her life.

When she was 20, she got married to a banker, Hugh Guiler, and they moved to Paris settled into a typical married lifestyle. During this time, she wrote an analysis of D. H. Lawrence’s controversial novels.

In 1931, she met writer Henry Miller and this marked a turning point in her life. She developed a creative collaboration and a strong personal relationship with him. Miller, whose works were banned in the US for being pornographic, encouraged her to publish her work.

After 10 years in Europe, she and her husband were forced to leave for America in 1939 at the outbreak of the Second World War. In America, she struggled to have her work commercially published before finally deciding to self-publish her work.

After years of struggling to find significance in the literary world, Anais shot to fame in 1966 at the age of 63 with the publication of the first installment of her diary, The Diary of Anaïs Nin. A total of seven volumes of her diary have been published.

The diaries record her thoughts and feelings about various events in her life including extra-marital affairs with high profile men like the writer Henry Miller, psychoanalyst Otto Rank, and Marxist Gonzalo Moré. She also writes about an incestuous relationship with her father, abortion, and a bigamous marriage to a young actor 16 years her junior.

Anais Nin died of cervical cancer on January 14, 1977, in Los Angeles, California, U.S at the age of 73.

During her lifetime, she was quite a controversial figure because she wrote, without shame, on issues that were considered taboo. However, with the rise of the women’s movement in the 1960s and 70s, she gained fame as a feminist icon. She regularly gave lectures at various universities and was given various awards including being elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1974.

In recent times, her quotes have become popular on the internet and social media and she has been transformed into an inspirational figure in self-help circles. Her quotes reveal her philosophical side and her approach to dealing with a difficult life.