Do you follow your passion? (and about the MIA)

I have been pretty much missing in action in term of my blog here.  Obviously for a reason.  The reason is related to the question on the title, "Do you follow your passion?"

That is the question that has been popping on my head lately. I started this blog just a few month back because I love the topic of personal finance. I am passionate about paving the way through secured retirement and whenever I can, I will try to talk my colleague at work to work on paving their way to financial freedom. I will talk to them about investments, ignoring all the buzz and noise and focus on their long term goal. Remind them to invest in index fund and balance it with bonds. Inform them about Roth IRA and its advantage compared to IRA for most of the people I know, but yet and them same time suggest them to read through it carefully since everyone has a different tax situation. I am suggest people with kids to look at 529 plans.

BUT, is my passion writing about personal finance topic? There are a lot of great personal finance blogger out there. Some of my favorites are J.D. Roth @ Get Rich Slowly, Free Money Finance, and Five Cent Nickel. For blog focus mainly on investment, I regularly follow Mike Piper @ Oblivious Investor. For Christian personal finance, I actually like Provident Planning, more than Christian PF. But that is simply because of one reason, which I may be bias about. It is regarding faith based investing. I agree more with Paul William @ Provident Planning, while Christian PF regularly featured Jay Peroni from Faith Based Investing, which believe in stock picking. However, beside that, both blogs are great. There are obviously other writers such as ManVsDebt and The Simple Dollar, however personally for me, the topics written by those writers gets boring to me since it is more resolved around how to live frugally and not as much about investing, the topic that I am more interested in. Again, that doesn't mean those blogs are not great, it is just my preference.

I start thinking about this question since I have another great passion of mine, photography. I realized that I can't focus on two side things, writing on personal finance and at the same time pursue my photography passion, along with my work and spending time with my beautiful wife and two young daughters.

What has push me lately to think more about this? I would contribute it to Zack Arias, an Atlanta based photographer. Earlier this year, I found out about his video, posted below.



As a photographer, it give me hope. Everyone starts as a beginner. And lately, Zack has been putting a Call to Action. It is to encourage people to go out there and serve people with cameras. I have been pushed. Zack's uses GOYA previous - Get Off Your Arse. It is one thing I want to pursue. I find a lot more excitement doing my photography and writing for my personal finance blog. So with this, I will bid adieu for this blog. It is better to stop right now while I don't have a lot of readers and this blog is still in infancy, rather than wait to realize this after I have reach certain level of readers on this blog.

Does it mean that I will never update this blog? I won't say never. If I find something great to write, I will. I know a lot of readers have stumbled to my blog while researching 529 plans. For that reasons, I will not close this blog too. However, I will put more focus on my photography, instead of my personal finance blog. I will also update my blogroll to include some blog that I think is great and more align with what I believe would help people more. If I don't add other blogs, it doesn't mean those blog are not great, but I put those that it my opinion would serve people better.

Since I have been focusing on my photography starting from two weeks ago, I have been doing several projects and have opportunity for other projects. So far, all of them has been a free project, not a money making project. But I love it. I find enjoyment out of it. I am learning more and continue to improve my skills.

Of course as a personal finance geek, please don't get yourself into financial trouble just to follow your passion. But make every effort to follow your passion and dream and yet and the same time, keep your finance in order. You may have to put your passion until you are more financial secure. I am in a more financially secure state, no debt, not even a mortgage since we paid off our mortgage.

Now the question is back to you. Do you follow your passion, even if it means that you will have to sacrifice something?