When you think of Valentine’s Day do you think of prison breaks, outlaw weddings, and martyrdom? Of course not! It’s a day about love, affection, roses, and chocolate. And yet those are the themes of Saint Valentine’s life.

Saint Valentine was a Bishop with the fledgling Catholic Church in the ancient Roman Empire at a time when marriage among soldiers was outlawed because the Emperor believed married men would be less willing to fight and die in the Roman armies. Valentine conducted secret weddings for Christian soldiers, and if that wasn’t enough, he helped free imprisoned Christians from Imperial captivity where they were regularly beaten, tortured and fed to the lions.

When he was eventually caught himself, Valentine was thrown into one of the prisons he had helped so many others escape from. It was there at the first “valentine” was sent, a heartfelt farewell letter to his jailer’s daughter, the only person to show Valentine any kindness while imprisoned, right before he was taken away to his execution.

He signed that letter “From your Valentine“.

Such a bittersweet story, but a lesson in the power of love and commitment. In honor of Valentines Day, I started this blog 1 year ago to teach financial literacy, write about how to grow your money and talk about exciting travel locations for yourself and for all your loved ones.

Reflecting back on one year of blogging

Today marks the one-year anniversary of Dividend Cake. In one whole year, I’ve given 3 financial education classes to the kids, wrote about travel locations, collected dividend income for myself, my mom and my kids and started my journey towards FIRE. And I also got married in South-America. Those are some big moves! Blog-wise, I’ve written more than 75 posts and tens of thousands of words. Today, I’m looking back at everything that’s happened on this blog in the past year, and what I’ve accomplished so far.

Teaching Financial Literacy

Financial literacy is a worldwide problem. Financial literacy of adults is low (33%). The numbers in Europe are not much better (52%). There is a huge difference between the Nordics (Denmark 71%) and East/Soutch of Europe (Italy 30% – Romania 22%). Many factors influence financial literacy : age, gender, salary, profession, education, education parents and family composition. In the Dutch speaking part of Belgium 12% of the teenagers does not succeed in the basic test of financial literacy !

In Belgium Prof. Dr. Kristof De Witte of university KU Leuven does research about financial literacy in Belgium. In October 2017 he organized a study day for schools about financial literacy. In his presentation he highlighted that 84% of future teachers in Belgium do not have enough financial knowledge and literacy.  That is quite alarming, isn’t it? So that is one of the reasons why I started this blog. The goal is to teach financial literacy and show parents, teenagers and anyone how to grow money using the stock market.

Preparing all the presentations for the kids took quite some time last year but I can say it was a lot of fun doing so. Here you find the links to the three classes

1. Kids Financial Education Lesson 1 : Budg€t Fun
2. Kids Financial Education Lesson 2 : Compound Interest
3. Kids Financial Education Lesson 3 : Your Financial Pyramid & Creating a Financial Plan

It can be challenging to engage your teenager in teaching financial literacy but invest time in doing so…you spend quality time together and money becomes more important in a teenagers’ life. In 2018 we will execute 5 financial education classes. Stay tuned this year to the blog to find out which topics we will cover…

Chosing exciting Travel Locations

2017 has been quite an exciting year for our travel. The kids have been first time to South-America attending the wedding and did pick Paris as the city trip location. We spend one week in Paris and our Summer vacation in France was an unforgettable experience with our visit to Puy du Fou. We ended the year with one week in Curaçao where we did a 30 minute dolphin swim encounter.

Read here our Travel the World Reports:

World Travel Report : Curaçao

Our Summer vacation : Fun & Relaxation

Must-See in Europe : Puy du Fou – an incredible experience

City Break Report : Experience Paris, the city of LOVE in France

2018 will be no different as I already booked our travel location for our summer vacation and also the city break location for the trip with my son has been chosen. Stay tuned on this blog to read more about it during the year…

Enjoy the world and relax by seeing and exploring new countries, cultures, cities, …talking with the local people. Tomorrow may be your last day, right? Who knows? My dad worked all his life….day in day out, weekends. When he was 1 year in retirement, he intended to enjoy life but one year later he passed away. Work SMART and make your money WORK FOR YOU ! Our dividend income during the year 2017 paid for all summer vacation expenses in France and the city break in Paris.

Invest in experiences instead of buying things. It is scientific proven that it will make your life so much happier !

What are the great things that have happened as a result of this blog?

I’ve met a lot of wonderful, like-minded bloggers with a passion similar to mine. This resulted in a face to face meeting in the Netherlands and connecting with FIRE people around the globe. At the same time, I’ve developed relationships with other investors who want to grow their money using the stock market. I joined different Facebook groups where investors share ideas about companies, the stock indexes in general and ways to grow your money.

Being part of a community has made me much more knowledgeable; I no longer feel like I’m being pushy and alone when I want to talk about money and investing my money in the stock market.

Writing about money and growing your money in Belgium is something weird as most Belgiums are very secret about their finances. Belgian people are very reserved by nature when talking about money. Let me say we want to break that ice a bit…..Also Belgian politicans have very little financial skills when you see how investor taxes grow each year for retail investors. Retail investors seem to be the NEW CASH COW for taxes for the government ! Well with this blog we will give A VOICE to the retail investor and PROTEST LOUD against any form of unfair investor taxes. The stock market transaction tax of 0,70 % of the invested amount (buy & sell) is the most unfair tax existing on this planet ! Look at below graph. I think we need LESS government and LESS TAXES and LESS EXPENSES ! Don’t you agree ?

Last but not least we can say that forcing myself to write posts about my financial goals and travel has had a great effect on my writing confidence and execution of my objectives.

I know not every post is a winner and my English is not perfect each time, but chasing perfection can be more harmful than helpful. Better to put my thoughts out there and receive feedback. Shoutout and big thank YOU to all my commenters out there who push to me to write better content!

Final Words

Overall, this has been a great blogging year. There have been challenges on this journey, but the satisfaction of actually working towards my long-term goals and seeing my results has kept me going. We hit more than 22.000 visitors in December last year and we crossed 375 Twitter followers. Our goal for 2018 is to grow our brand Dividend Cake and the following community.

Looking forward, there’s still so much I want to accomplish and I have plenty of ideas for the future. Blog-wise, it’s time for me to start ramping things up more. I’m working on ways to add more value to this personal finance space and be a reference website for people who want to grow their money, parents who want to teach their kids financial literacy or travellers looking for a location where they haven’t been yet.

Thanks for supporting me by reading the blog! Every pageview is still exciting to me. As long as people keep reading, I’ll keep writing. As always we end with a quote.

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