Whoever Said Starting was the Hardest Part…Lied

Hi, I’m Kelby…and I’m a chronic starter, but non-finisher of stuff.

Thinking back, my first recollection of starting something and not finishing it was at four years old when I played football for the local little league football team: the Oak Cliff Seahawks. I still remember the day when my mother parked the car in the lot near the practice field and made me walk out to tell the coach (by myself) why I would no longer be a part of the team.

I turned in my gear the next day and didn’t recall much of that entire experience until I sat down today to write out this post.

That moment was the start of what has been a common theme that has followed me through to, well, today.

To be fair, there are a handful of important things that I have seen through to completion. There’s my college degree, although we won’t talk about exactly how long that took. Then there’s the relationship with my wife — happily married for 6+ years and together since 2005. And finally, quitting my corporate job to start a business a little over two years ago.

But despite those pat-yourself-on-the-back worthy moments, I’ve still been in the terrible habit of starting, but not finishing things.

Most recently, this website.

The last post I added to this site was over a year and a half ago — and to be honest, I didn’t even write that. Sadly, the last post that I personally contributed to the site was in September 2016!

I know, I know…

Truthfully, I was just trying to keep my head above water with running a new business and thought that hiring writers and allowing guest posts was a way to let me focus on my work and keep the blog content a-coming. That turned out to be a bad idea, not because the writing was bad, but because it removed me from the creative process.

Those of you that know me personally, know that this little blog (which started as a creative outlet) was the only reason I was able to quit my corporate job and start a business. I’ll save you the boring details, but the short version is that a financial advisor saw my content and asked if they paid me, would I write content for them.

One advisor led to two, seven, twelve, and eventually, I had a side hustle that was paying me more than my day job.  

So I quit!

But somewhere along the way, I got caught up in doing client work and lost sight of what made this whole self-employment thing exciting to begin with — which was creating content for the Frugalennial (now Frugalennials, but more on that in a minute).

Although a bit on the older end of the spectrum, I am a Frugal Millennial and this website is an extension of me. I’ve never considered myself to be an authority on all-things personal finance or some frugal-living-guru, but what I sought to create in my little spot on the web was a place to talk about what my family is doing to dig out of debt and live full lives on less, and hopefully relate to other millennial families looking to do the same.

Long story long, I’m ready to get back to doing that!

To help with my habitual start/non-finish problem, I’ve enlisted my wife to join the site as a collaborator/person-to-keep-me-on-track-so-I-don’t-fall-off-the-face-of-the-earth-for-over-a-year-again.

For all of you eagle-eyed readers, that’s the reason that the site URL and graphics changed from The Frugalennial to The Frugalennials. At her suggestion, we’ve even added a few new blog post categories, so you can expect to see posts (and videos) from both of us over the next few weeks/months/years on everything from parenting and personal finance to frugal beauty tips and DIY.

Truth be told, my wife was always cheering me on and providing a sounding board when I needed it, now she’s decided to take a more hands-on approach and I couldn’t be more excited to see what our powers combined (*I really hope you read that in the Captain Planet voice) will mean for the future of this website!

In the comments below, I’ll ask that you do two things. First, please give my wife Veronica a hearty welcome. And second, let us know what you’d like to see on the site going forward. Like I said before, this site isn’t occupying space on the internet so we can act like experts on all things frugal+millennial…it’s to share our journey with others like us, and hopefully have them (you all) do the same.