Millennial Money Acquired by The Motley Fool

This is the most exciting and bittersweet post I’ve ever written.

You know I’m always open with you. Even though I don’t know many of you I feel like I do, I’ve always felt close to you.

It’s a beautiful fall day here. I’m sitting on my front porch watching the leaves fall and listening to the crickets come alive in the late afternoon light. The sun flickers through the trees. The reds, yellows, and greens are doing their thing. The air is crisp, but not too crisp.

It’s another season of change, the only real certainty in life.

Just recently Millennial Money turned five years old.

I’m writing this email on the same computer I wrote the first Millennial Money post on in 2015. I remember the moment vividly. I was both excited and scared, kind of how I feel now.

Not knowing what will happen has always excited me. In fact, the uncertainty of life is what makes me feel alive.

I have a big announcement to make, but let me first reflect for a moment on what a journey it’s been.

Over the past five years on Millennial Money

• Over 2 million words have been written on the site, almost 1 million by me personally!
• I estimate I’ve spent over 7,000 hours working on the site, or almost 4 hours every day for 5 years (that’s a lot of life energy!)
• Many millions of visitors visit the site every year from over 150 countries learning how to make, save, and invest money to build a life they love
• I’ve received over 32,000 reader emails (increasingly ones in Japanese, Chinese, Turkish, and many other languages that I have to translate!)
• Readers have sent me everything from blueberry pies (my fave!) to custom t-shirts, wood carvings, drawings, books, toy VW vans, and even a 60-bottle wine fridge!
• I went from knowing nothing about blogging to making over a million dollars doing it
• I’ve done over 500 media interviews and been on over 100 podcasts

…and the list goes on…

I’m incredibly proud of the site and this community that spans around the globe.

But….

Last year, what has been my mission turned into a legitimate growing business, with all the increasing responsibilities that businesses require.

As traffic continued to grow, so did the complexities, and demands. I realized that in order to continue spreading this mission with the world and to get to the next level I couldn’t do it on my own.

So I hired 1, then 2, then 7 people in total to help me run the site. We are spread across 5 times zones. But even that was not enough.

As Millennial Money has grown the sites it competes with have gotten bigger. Many of them have hundreds and hundreds of employees all working full time to make their websites better.

As I’ve said before I love building things, but I’m not great a managing them. A few months ago, I realized that I needed A LOT of help.

I needed to find someone with scale. Someone who could take Millennial Money and this mission to the next level.

So after a long decision process and a lot of reflection, and many hours of conversations I found the perfect partner. Alright, enough build up already.

Millennial Money has been acquired by The Motley Fool.

Founded in 1993, The Motley Fool is one of the biggest personal finance brands in the U.S. and our missions align. They have been writing about using money to build a life you love since I was in 1^st grade!

In fact, a Motley Fool forum is actually where the term FIRE (financial independence retire early) was coined back in the 90’s.

Another crazy fact, their office is only 7 miles from the home I grew up in. I’ve ridden my bike past their headquarters many times.

They are great people. I don’t say that lightly. I’ve spent many hours getting to know their teams and they’re great. While their website currently focuses mostly on stock investing, recommend holding investments for the long term.

Most of their content is focused on growing money, so Millennial Money’s focus on making and saving more money to reach financial independence is a natural fit. Of all the big personal finance brands I think they’re the perfect partner to take Millennial Money to the next level.

Here’s what this means moving forward.

I’ll still be here, writing these emails, working on new posts, helping with the strategy of the site, and keep recording podcasts.

Not much will change and in fact, Millennial Money will undoubtedly get better and more expansive, with more tools and trackers and even some new courses….but I’m not going to give away all the exciting news just yet.

I’m excited to find such a passionate partner who believe in this mission. We did so much with a team of 7, I can’t even imagine what the site can do with a team of over 450 people!

I’m not giving up on this mission. I’m doubling down.

To go deeper into building and selling Millennial Money, my decision to sell, what this means for the site, and to hear from The Motley Fool about how this aligns with their mission check out the new podcast episode.

Thank you for reading, your support, and making Millennial Money so special for me. Wishing you much success and peace on your journey.