What’s been popular in 2024? I mean which of my posts on this blog have been popular. Gotta keep it specific, otherwise, go find a more global list in Google.

This blog has been active since November 2008. I’d recently retired, moved to Whidbey Island, bought a house which was my first true home, and was convinced by friends that I should write a book about personal finance because I had retired at 38 years old, and could explain stocks reasonably well. One of my neighbors was Vicki Robin, author of Your Money or Your Life. She agreed, and offered to do a joint launch if I finished in time. Dream. Invest. Live. was born. And then the market crashed, Apple abandoned the software for hosting my blog, I lost access to the blog’s first 200 posts, and started over in September 2010 as I walked across Scotland, which became a different book and blog, Walking Thinking Drinking Across Scotland. 

The Great Recession had begun (which I consider the Second Great Depression). My stocks were hurt, but two rallied to drive my net worth up while others’ went down. AMSC & DNDN both were then the victims of white collar crime. Years later, the criminals were found guilty, but the value had been erased. That and a few other events that were, as friends put it, a perfect storm of bad luck, led me into more than a decade of watching my net worth plummet 98%, little income, and subsequent health issues. Being poor is painful. An attempt at being a realtor was interrupted by the pandemic. It was also interrupted by the fact that I have not been good at sales. It wasn’t until this year when the real estate market had recovered enough for me to sell my home, get out of debt, and back into investing in stocks. 

That’s much of the course of my roller-coaster ride through America’s wealth classes, so far. I’ve started writing that book, partly as a sequel to Dream. Invest. Live. The working title: From Middle-class to Millionaire to Mostly Mudding By. 

Evidently that book is on my mind because all I intended to do was provide an abstract to the list of popular posts in 2024. This prelude does, however, explain which posts were popular, particularly those from previous years. Each post was from a different perspective. At over 1,000 posts, that’s a lot of material. Congratulations to anyone who has read them all. (Anyone?) That’s appropriate as it has become obvious to me that one thing I can provide is a variety of perspectives on some perpetual topics. Watch this blog, and one of my new blogs, TomTheWriter.com, for details and progress. 

But, what did you and other readers find most worth reading?

Over the lifetime (so far) of this blog, the ten most popular posts are:

• Wither Or Whether MVIS (2020)
• One Confused ObamaCare Applicant (2013)
• Trust Your Self (2021)
• A Bow To Drewslist (2012)
• Valuing MVIS Looking Back And Forward (2021)
• An MVIS Rabbit Hole 20 Years Deep (2021)
• Micro Vision (2011)
• MicroVision MVIS Valuation Shift (2021)
• HoloLens2 And MicroVision (2019)
• MicroVision Before And After (2016)

The list hasn’t changed much from previous years. MVIS is still the hottest topic, even from posts that are years old. This blog appears to be tied to this one company despite a much broader range of topics that I’ve written about. If only MVIS would succeed…

In 2024, the most popular posts were a more current blend.

• A Tiny Experiment (2024)
• Fresh Idea – Dockside Tidal Power (2016)
• LLAP – One Company One Story (2023)
• Tiny House Choices (2024)
• My Money (And Almost My House) Lost In The Wire (2024)
• What Happened To WNDW (2023)
• Intuitive Machine Intuition (2024)
• Time To Buy But What (2024)
• Loving Living Leaving A Tourist Town (2024)
• For Want Of A Nut – A Zwilling Nut (2023)

What? No MVIS? Well, MVIS hasn’t done anything of note. I’m cheered and intrigued by my Dockside Tidal Power idea remaining popular after almost a decade. Is someone building it? I hope. I hope. The Tiny House interest has been strong enough that it has its own blog (https://www.mytinyexperiment.com/), which will also skew these traffic numbers by being elsewhere as it peels off. I’ve been told that the post about my money being Lost In The Wire was very open and appreciated as I survived a dramatic upset caused by overly secure security measures. Stocks came back, particularly LUNR. On a serious note, I tried to find the humor in being squeezed out of a tourist town. And then, a small topic that attracted lots of attention, Zwilling sent me a sweet set of kitchen poultry sheers as an example of smart customer service.

2025? It’s looking weird. But, we’re practiced at that. Stay tuned, and thanks for being here.