I’ve done many things in my years, but never did I imagine blogging would become one of them.

Especially pertaining to finance! Sure I loved money (who doesn’t?) but writing? I’ve always thought of myself as more of a designer or a painter than one to pick up a pen or keyboard, but it works for me! Freakin’ love blogging now…

You should have seen the look on my dad’s face when I told him this blog made it on the homepage of MSN.com last week – he was like, “You? Write?” I told him it’s not like i’m pulling down Pulitzers over here, but it does pass as a form of writing. Even w/ all my abbreviations and slang, and improper use of words like “ditty” and “hooker”. It’s journalism at its finest ;)

So like my other fellow birthday bloggers, I thought I’d share a whole mess of stats from the past year. Here’s what we got:

• Current subscribers: 614
• Twitter subscribers: 494
  
• Total EVER page views: 145,455
• Total EVER visitors: 80,041
• AVERAGE monthly visits: 6,670
• AVERAGE monthly page views: 12,121
• Number of times I’ve referenced “bad boys”: 41
• Number of times I’ve talked about bananas: 7
• Number of times, on average, I check my stats: 790 (rounded down)

And here’s a cool collage from the different stat readers out there:

Of course, NONE of this is possible w/ out the best fans and readers in the world – YOU GUYS ROCK! I’m a much better person, both financially and personally, having you all around, and I seriously thank you from the bottom of my heart. I could really go on and on here, but I’ll leave it at that. No use in spoiling my fortune by crying and getting called out as a panzy ;)

I also gotta shout out all those bloggers sending traffic and support this way. Here are the all-time top 10 refferers to BudgetsAreSexy (minus google, stumbleupon, etc) along w/ the #’s:

1. My Money Blog (2,225)
2. Give Me Back My Five Bucks (1,661)
3. MSN Smart Spending (1,462)
4. Clever Dude (1,169)
5. Chicky Finance (1,154)
6. Bargain Briana (989)
7. Dinks Finance (936)
8. Single Guy Money (936)
9. Financial Ramblings (681)
10. Saving 4 Later (611)

And here are the all-time top 10 keywords to the site – unfiltered! Should be more interesting this way than just listing those PF terms ;)

1. budgets are sexy
2. sexy
3. average net worth
4. sexy.com
5. million dollar club finance blog
6. budgetsaresexy
7. starbucks
8. sexy com
9. average net worth in america
10. receipt

I’m sensing a theme here! Unfortunately “grow a pair” and “ninja” came in at #14 and #18 respectfully this time, while “Alexis Krosky” (whoever that is?) came in at #73. The internet really is a crazy wonderful world :)

Some other cool stats to follow are the countries people are reading this stuff from! Here are the top 5 countries hitting BudgetsAreSexy (Besides the U.S. which is by far in 1st place):

1. Canada
2. United Kingdom
3. Australia
4. Saudi Arabia
5. India

Sexy, right?! The other 138 countries are pretty cool too, but that’s for a whole ‘nother post. And lastly, here are the most popular articles by month – based on page views:

• February ’08: J. Money on Personal Finance, Life, and Sillyness
• March ’08: My very own sexy budget (recently updated)
• April ’08: My millionaire-to-do list! Ya gotta start somewhere
• May ’08: America’s net worth – where do you stack up?
• June ’08: Would you rather…take $500k now, or $1 million in ten years?
• July ’08: My 4 Favorite Pieces of Financial Advice E-V-E-R.
• August ’08: 3 Things you should always keep in your wallet/purse/clip.
• September ’08: Using your 401(k) as an Emergency Fund? Are you insane?!
• October ’08: Bananas and Hair Spray tought me everything on inflation.
• November ’08: What’s up with your pictures, J? Did you get them? Tell us!
• December ’08: Guess What??? We did it! We finally got our wedding pictures!
• January ’09: Where, oh where, does our $exy money go?!

That about wraps it up. HAPPY BIRTHDAY Budgetsaresexy.com! You are one of my all-time best friends, and I hope we have many a years left together. And THANK YOU AGAIN TO ALL WHO READ THIS!!! Now it’s time to party baby, you only turn 1 once!