FREE NEWSLETTER
I’M RELUCTANT TO ADMIT that HumbleDollar is run using smoke and mirrors. But if someone said that, I’d be hard-pressed to disagree.
I’ve long believed that the principles of sound money management are pretty timeless. What you should be doing with your money this year isn’t a whole lot different from what you should have been doing last year, and the year before that, and the year before that.
This notion is baked into how much of the site operates. Ignore the Forum and the latest articles, and consider the two other key elements of the homepage, the Get Educated and Second Look sections. Both these parts of the site run on autopilot, or close to it, and it’s a key reason I’m hoping the site can continue to thrive after I succumb to cancer.
By setting up much of the homepage to run on autopilot, it’s freed me up in recent years to focus on editing and writing articles, while also continuing to add ever-greater depth to other parts of the site. One result: I like to think HumbleDollar offers a richness of content that’s found on few other personal-finance websites.
Second Look. At any given time, this section offers a selection of five articles that were first published at least 30 days earlier. Some of these articles go back as far as 2014, when I was blogging at JonathanClements.com, before HumbleDollar’s year-end 2016 launch. The five articles displayed are automatically refreshed every two hours. Over the past decade, HumbleDollar has published more than 3,500 articles and blog posts.
Get Educated. In this section, you’ll find features dubbed Act, Humans, Manifesto, Money Guide, Think and Truths. All these features are published on an annual cycle, as is the punchy one- or two-sentence insight that appears at the top of the homepage.
I like to think that, if folks peruse the Get Educated section every day for a year, they’ll get a great personal-finance education—and, if they keep reading the section year after year, they’ll be reminded of some of the key financial insights that we often forget amid the turmoil of the financial markets and everyday life.
One issue with all this: Some of these pieces need revising each year depending on, say, the latest tax thresholds or retirement account contribution limits. In the months ahead, I’ll endeavor to make the site more timeless and hence reduce the need for such updating. Still, I worry that, after my death, parts of the site will become outdated if, say, we get major changes in Social Security, Medicare or the tax law.
This is especially an issue with the site’s money guide. My hope: In the years after I shuffle off this mortal coil, readers will use the comment section below each money guide section to offer updates. In addition, I’m working with folks at another website, with an eye to having them periodically update HumbleDollar’s money guide.
Jonathan Clements is the founder and editor of HumbleDollar. Follow him on X @ClementsMoney and on Facebook, and check out his earlier articles.
Want to receive our weekly newsletter? Sign up now. How about our daily alert about the site's latest posts? Join the list.
I appreciate the “stable” of writers Jonathan has assembled for this page. I would love to see the page keep going with new material from those writers, plus adding some new ones from time to time. Yes I know, I’m talking about a succession plan, but why not?
Writers — new and old — are free to post articles to the Forum. That’s why I launched that feature in June, after I got my cancer diagnosis.
Regarding Second Look: The five articles displayed are automatically refreshed every two hours.
That explains why I keep seeing a rotation of the articles. I might see 3 that I want to read and after reading one and I go back to the list, the others are replaced. So, I’ve learned to open each one in a separate window.
Where to see Second Look? I don’t see a link at top,of page
Second Look is toward the bottom of each day’s set of articles and has its own heading. Scroll down and you’ll find it.
I’m a fan of Second Look since I am a relative latecomer to the HD community. I’ve noticed that some articles seem to appear more frequently in that section than others. I’m wondering if every previous article (except for the monthly ‘Top Hits’ lists) is in the population, or are there some that are not assigned to any of the five Second Look categories? Also, I’m thinking that one or two of those categories may have significantly less articles assigned, which could explain the (presumably) differing frequencies at which articles appear.
All articles are assigned to a category, but some categories no doubt have more articles than others. Still, as an engineer (here’s looking at you, Ken) would note, just because the order that articles appear is random doesn’t preclude the chance that some articles will make repeat appearances within a short time frame.
Agreed, I had no statistical analysis to back up my casual observation, which is why I couched my statements with ‘seem’ and ‘presumably’. Thanks for the look under the hood.
Jonathan, thank you for your efforts on this, and especially your ideas on how to keep certain matters updated. HD is the single best financial resource I’ve ever come across, and I hope it remains so for a long time.
Good to learn all this “behind the curtain” stuff, Jonathan!. I had wondered about the selection process for previous articles, and had also wondered whether my computer/browser or I was doing something “wrong” when going back late to try to reread some of the second look items, and then not being able to find them. Thanks for your efforts with Humble Dollar!
Jonathan, thanks for addressing some items that had been on my mind. I had wondered how you had time to choose all those archived articles! And thanks for thinking ahead. I had noticed that “Today’s Valuations” in the market section had converted to self-serve a little while back. The site remains vibrant, with a noticeable influx of new folks in the Forum section.