When I started this blog in late 2009, which was predominantly aimed at holding me accountable, learning from others and sharing my journey to early retirement in the small hope it might help some others, even Mr Money Mustache hadn’t yet arrived on the scene. To my knowledge that didn’t occur until 2011.
Even at that point the UK FIRE blogger scene was still pretty quiet. Of course the great Monevator was running full steam ahead but at that time my feeling was that his site was more investing focused for which I must once again tip my hat and say a massive thanks for everything he has taught me. To my knowledge the UK FIRE blogs didn’t really start to ramp until around 2013 after which blogs like The FIRE Starter and Quietly Saving appeared who each continue to put their own unique and interesting spin on things. This has continued to the present day with new unique blogs like Young FI Guy, Ms Ziyou, Gentleman’s Family Finances and Fire v London all sharing something new regularly.
In more recent times UK FIRE has even started to go a little more mainstream. It seemed to start with that diabolical Channel 4 programme in mid-2017 and in more recent times we’ve seen multiple newspapers run articles. Even though I question some of the content I think this is fantastic as it gets the message out there which is something I’ve struggled to do.
In parallel to FIRE becoming more mainstream a different opportunity is however starting to emerge – monetisation. When it’s overt and spread amongst plenty of good content I have no issue with it. Hell, even I do and have done a bit of it to pay for hosting fees and the odd cup of coffee. Try wading through a US FIRE blog without seeing the words Personal Capital someday…
Where in my opinion (and it’s just my opinion) FIRE is changing for the worse is where the monetisation is much more subtle and maybe even not recognisable. I saw this demonstrated recently where a FIRE blog that I read occasionally wrote a pithy statement about a few FIRE themes without much context which I thought was a little flippant. I therefore left a respectful well reasoned comment about why I thought that was the case. Rather than the comment being allowed to stand or a reply being given my, in my opinion, well reasoned comment was moderated. Poking around the site a little more clearly my comment wasn’t on brand or on message.
As FIRE continues to grow in popularity I expect we’ll see more of this. I will no longer read that blog nor will I read any new blogs where I spot that occurring. It’s a shame really as the long standing FIRE community is a great place to learn and share.
Note: As always I welcome all good, bad and ugly comments but please don’t name and shame any such blogs. Any comments that do that will be deleted as I don’t need the grief of responding to lawyers letters.
