RTW Featured In Making A Difference On Canadian Budget Binder

This week I am being featured in the Making A Difference section of the Canadian Budget Binder blog. This section features a personal finance blogger each week to help with networking of finance bloggers. I know that I have found a number of interesting and informative new blogs from the MAD feature on CBB and hope you do too. If you found me from MAD say hi in the comments below, if not, why not have a read over on the CBB site!

I have also put the text below:

Who are you?

My name is Tom. I live in Australia and work in operational risk for a large financial institution down here. After paying off my house I found I missed having a goal for the money I earned. Rather than just starting to spend it, I decided to aim for what lots of others have: Financial Independence. To help myself and others I thought I would document the journey so I started the Remember To Water blog.

The name Remember To Water came from my gardening ability, or lack thereof. I never remembered to water my indoor plants. This led to year after year of failing to keep the plants alive until I eventually gave up. Everyone’s financial life is like an indoor plant (and eventually a whole garden). It needs to be cared for, nurtured, and be checked on from time to time. Thankfully I find finances easier to maintain than indoor plants. This is probably because finance is a topic that I love.

What is your blog about?

My blog is about personal finance, but more specifically I have three goals for my blog:

1. I wanted to keep a history of my thoughts and actions over time. Putting them online means that I (and others) can hold myself accountable for the plans and goals I set. It will be a record over time of my path towards financial independence and allow me to “put my money where my mouth is”.
2. I wanted to share what I have, and will, learn along the way, with others. I have learnt a lot from a number of blogs over the years and want to not only give back but be a more active member of the community. I also love having other people challenge my thoughts – especially if it causes me to rethink and improve my position on a topic. There is nothing better than an active community for providing that sounding board. I am a fan of continuous learning/improvement, but if you don’t change your thoughts and behaviours based on those learnings, you are missing the point.
3. A distant but equally motivating third reason is to see if I can attract enough readers to allow me to pay for the website hosting. I would love it if I could pay for the bills my blog creates.

How do you hope to make a difference to the readers who visit and subscribe to your posts?

You may be able to tell that I like things in threes, and again I have three main things that I hope readers will be able to get from my site and my posts.

1. I hope that my readers will find the content both interesting and informative. With everything I write I try and make sure that it is at least one of those, and preferably both. If a reader both enjoys reading what I write and gets practical learnings they can take away from it, I count that as a big win.
2. In my work I have a knack for turning complex topics into easy to understand information. It is not always easy using only text and images, but it is definitely how I hope to make a difference. Over the coming years I intend to build up a library of easy to understand information about personal finance. If people find that useful, that is a second win.
3. Finally I would like to help promote financial discussion and community, with a slight bent towards Australia (given that is where I live). I hope to be part of a group of like minded people who share ideas, thoughts and plans. Over time those plans will both come to fruition, and potentially fail. Both of those moments are best shared with others. To help each other through the losses and celebrate the wins.

Well that is all from me, time to go make some Sweet and Sour Meatballs with Pineapple. A word of warning however, if you partner likes pineapple as much as mine add extra, or you may end up with just sweet and sour meatballs.

I am on twitter if anyone wants to ask me any questions, otherwise leave me a comment – I would love to get to know some more people.