The Pinay Investor Is Back: Updates on Blogging, Finances, and New Morning Habits this 2020

Back to Blogging

I hate to admit it but it’s been almost 2 years since I updated this blog. I’ve been too focused on my other “unbranded” blogs that I had temporarily taken my original brand as Pinay Investor for granted.

But this 2020, I am committed to publishing more content on this blog and relive my advocacy to teach personal finance to Filipinos, especially, to my fellow moms.

Most of the content that I will share here are based on my own experiences and I hope you can join me as I start this exciting journey to financial freedom.

Just to give you a short background, I started this Pinay Investor blog in July 2014. I was a new mom then and I just resigned from my corporate job to focus on parenting. I chose to start a blog about Personal Finance because at that time I was very interested in investing in the stock market and I thought it would be a great idea to share my learning experiences to others who are also considering to save and invest their money.

I started sharing my investment experiences at www.pinayinvestor.com. After 6 months of blogging, I realized that I could monetize my blog so I tried applying for Google Adsense. For some reasons, I couldn’t get the blog to be monetized so I decided to create a new blog under this new domain, ThePinayInvestor.com. I also started a YouTube Channel under the same brand.

I tried to publish new content on this blog, but because I had so many other blogs, I lost focus on this brand. I lost page views on my website, I lost followers on my FB page, and I lost revenues from Google Adsense and sponsors.

After praying about my goals this year, I decided to focus on this blog and grow my brand as “The Pinay Investor: Your friend in Faith, Family, and Finances”

(What do you think of my brand and my new tagline? Do you have any other suggestions? 🙂 Feel free to post it in the comment section.)

Like what you have read in the tagline, I will focus on teaching about:

• Faith
• Finances
• Family
• And maybe a little bit about Fitness and Friends

I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I trust God that something good is going to come out of this.

Faith, Family, and Finances

I have so many things to share about my faith, family, and finances, but I’ll reserve that for a more detailed post in the future.

Just to give you a short background about me and my family, I’m a stay-at-home mom to my 6-year old daughter Macey, and a wife to my loving husband, John. Macey currently attends Kindergarten and we are currently in search for a school where she can attend grade school near Cubao area. If you know of a good school, please let us know at the comment section. 🙂

John and I both work from home. He works as an IT Engineer for a US-based client and I do website publishing and content marketing, in short, blogging. 🙂

In terms of our finances, we have tried different systems but what work for us right now is we split our bills and finances. He’s in charge of our house payment, food, and groceries, and I’m in charge of our car mortgage and utility bills.

We individually give our tithes to the church, we give monthly allowance to our parents, and we pay for our personal expenses and hobbies from our personal budget.

In terms of faith, I’ll share more about tithing and how it helped us grow in faith and finances, and my bible-based views and insights about money and wealth as we go along.

My New Morning Habits

In January of this year, I reflected on how I performed during the previous year in different aspects of my life (personal, financial, and spiritual) and what I want to achieve this new year.

I have been praying for breakthroughs and I tried working on different projects at the start of the year, but God told me (through the scriptures and other resources) that if I want to have breakthroughs in my life, I first need to make positive changes in my habits. I need to be prepared physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

I didn’t know what to do but as I kept praying and reading the bible, God led me to verses and mentors who inspired me to do what I needed to do to get started.

And finally on January 28, 2020, I made the decision to start my new morning habits which includes:

• waking up at 5:00 AM
• praying and meditating
• walking to the park and exercising
• listening to motivational teachings
• reading the bible and devotion
• writing or journaling
• reading a book
• writing and reading my goals

And I did all these consistently in 21 days.

The first week was the most challenging.  There were days I just wanted to turn off my alarm clock and go back to sleep. But something (or someone) more powerful was telling me to just keep going. So I kept going…

Prior to this, I used to wake up at 7 AM and I always find myself in a hurry and stressed while preparing Macey for school.

Her class starts at 8 AM and we usually get there late.

When I know that we’re getting late, I easily get irritated and mad at Macey for being slow even if I know that part of the problem was me and my very poor time management skills.

During the first two weeks into this morning habit, I was still having a hard time waking up because I still sleep late the night before.

On the third week, I made the decision to start sleeping earlier at night so that it would be easier for me to wake up earlier in the morning. When I did this, I was able to easily adjust my waking time from 5:30 AM to 5:00 AM and I now have more time for myself in the morning.

On the fourth week, my body clock has already adjusted to my waking time. I don’t even need to set an alarm anymore because I wake up just before the alarm goes on.

After one month of  consistently following this morning habit,

• I am more dependent on God and I feel more at peace about everything
• I got inspired to start working on my goals after listening to motivational teachings
• I have finished reading 3 books and learned new strategies which I can apply in my work
• I’m not sure if I have already lost weight but I felt lighter, better and more energetic now
• I’m more disciplined with my time, I’m more organized, and I get more things done now
• And… Macey had never been late to school again

I’m happy and grateful of what I’ve accomplished so far after I made the decision to change my morning habit.

According to my mentor, it takes 21 days to form a habit. And that was my initial goal: to follow this morning habit in 21 days only.

It has been 35 days since I started and I just can’t stop doing it. Why would I stop now when I’m already seeing positive changes and results out of these new habits?

As long as I can, I will continue to follow these habits and make adjustments and improvements if necessary.

If you want to experience positive changes in your life, I encourage you to wake up earlier and change your morning habits. You’ll never know how it will change you until you make the decision to change your habit.

What to Expect in My Next Posts

Since I haven’t published a personal blog post in the last 2 years, I just kept writing whatever came to my mind. 🙂 Sorry if the topics are a bit disorganized. I’m just starting to get my feet wet again in blogging. I hope you learned a thing or two from this post and expect to hear more from me moving forward.

Thank you and I appreciate your time reading my blog post.

Actually, I don’t know if this post has reached you. Can you post a comment below if you have read this? 🙂 Please feel free to post anything in the comment section and I promise to reply as soon as I read your comment. 🙂