About - The Saving Side

Heya, welcome to The Savings Side!

I’m Mr. Anonymous. And this story is about how The Savings Side came to be.

I’ve built over 10 blogs in the last decade. In almost all niches – finance, travel, food, home decor, crafts & fashion. Most failed outright. Some grew to $500 per month (and then failed as I got busy other things in life). So, I’m not new to blogging. But I’ve not been quite successful either. Let’s see if things work out this time!
My ultimate goal is to build TSS to a 6-figure blog ($100K per year). That’s $8333 per month – the goalsheet KPI (corporate lingo for my corporate bros) I’ll be chasing. I’ll publish monthly income reports every month & review how I’m doing against the goal.
This blog is all about radical transparency & pretty much a public experiment in blogging. I’ll share every detail, including income & traffic reports, honestly & transparently (till I reach the goal). At $100K, I’ll cap the results (because then it becomes a privacy thing). I mean, first let me reach $100K, huh (overconfident me!).
I’m quite shy & introverted – so I’ll be building this blog anonymously. Every blog I’ve built before was anonymous. I understand people resonate more with real people & public faces, but I fall into the other category, where showing my face & doing things publicly is so incredibly difficult (the typical introvert). Moreover, I’ll be sharing income reports & all details publicly – so better to be safe than sorry. And I don’t want that kind of visibility of my income to my inner circle as well. Rest assured – I’ll be real & 100% genuine (no BS), but not public.
No AI content. I understand it’s a bit of a weird & inefficient decision, but that’s the decision. AI has become so normalized and efficient that almost the entire internet now runs on AI content. My plan at the beginning was to use AI. I did as well. I was telling my stories to ChatGPT & asking it to give a publish-ready blog post. Only took 1-2 hours to publish a 2000-word post. But then, after reading through them, it felt artificial to me. The stories were mine, but it felt as if I did not tell them. I mean, ChatGPT might be a 100X better storyteller, but it’s not me. Even if my content is not perfect, it’s okay for me if I’m the storyteller. Because I can tell it the way I want, in my tone. And the people who resonate with this type of storytelling – that’s my real audience. The ones who follow ChatGPT are never really following me; they’re following a specific tone they’re accustomed to. So yeah, this will be a 100% human written blog – no AI stories here! It’s a USP as well – a small human world amongst the vast AI universe of today’s content.
Earlier, every time I built a blog, the objective was to make money at the earliest. At the earliest – to rephrase. I was in a rush against time. Now, it’s an experiment for me. There were periods when I used to spend several hours a day writing content. There were times I had freelancers working for me. TSS is going to be a 1-man operation – completely me, part-time (ie, whenever I get time), zero rush project. I want to see if an honest, helpful blog built in public can scale to $100K per year – I genuinely do. I’ll give my best as well. But I’ll have to ensure it doesn’t come at the cost of enjoying my life or doing well in my job. Because I have a FIRE plan of my own, which depends on my job. This is just an experimental project I’ll pursue in my free time, which, if it works out, is great, but no regrets if it doesn’t also. I’ll take it that way.
I genuinely enjoy blogging & writing from the heart. I’ve tried making videos, freelancing, trading, and a whole lot of stuff, trying to make money. Nothing worked (apart from getting a well-paying 9-7 job). But I realised that there are two things I enjoy – writing & personal finance. I also realised that I’m an experimenter at heart. Every time one of my projects fails, I take a pause for a few months, and that itch to try the next thing becomes uncontrollable. It’s okay because I really enjoy and cherish the time I spend testing things. I learn a ton as well from these failures. So, it’s a net positive habit overall (I hope). Since I enjoy writing, personal finance, business, have experimented with so many personal finance and business ideas over the last decade, officially have an MBA & corporate managerial insights into business & money – I thought my next project should be a personal finance & business blog – and hence The Savings Side!
I’ve never built in public. There are a ton of success stories of publicly built blogs, but every blog I started was privately managed. To a point, that leads to some level of laziness, low ownership, low analysis, etc. When you have to publish an income report, you’re bound to look at all the data points. If not, I’ll just coast through writing alone. And that’s why I wanted to try a publicly built blog this time – to keep myself accountable for results (apart from writing).
I’ve also benefited & learnt a lot from publicly built blogs. Most blogs that genuinely inspired me were honest & transparent about what they do. The authors published income reports, talked about their strategies, what worked, what failed, their traffic, etc. TSS is my way of doing the same. It’s a public demonstration of whether a small, human-written blog can compete and emerge in a world of AI. If so, even if it motivates and helps one person to start something profitable, I’ll find it a worthwhile project. Even if it fails, writing is something I enjoy. It’s kinda like a vent-out for me. So, nothing to lose. And everything to gain!
Like most people, I’m also on my journey towards financial independence. I started from $22K in debt & became debt-free. Now, I’m on my way to FIRE (hopefully in another 10 years!). I know it’s a long dream – but hey, everything compounds with time (and time is the single biggest wonder in the world!). I’m also not that millionaire coach teaching you how to be successful. I’m that friend who has tried many things & failed, finally ended up in a regular job, not giving up & still trying out things in his free time, and telling you stories of the same. I’m a regular Joe (who’s mostly a failure). So, beware before you listen to me. People say listen to highly successful people, but I’m mostly the opposite. Knowing this, I’ll also focus on my stories and learnings over the journey. I have no intention of coaching people to make millions, but to help people avoid the mistakes I made, the mistakes I see my friends making, and what I learn as I go through this journey.
Even though I humbly said I’m a regular Joe, I have some mini-accomplishments here and there😁(time for self-praise). I’ve been top of my class in school, an engineer, an MBA, an ex-software engineer, a corporate manager, a dreamer & an aspiring financially free man someday (self-praise over). I’ve done decently in the traditional life path, but have been a disappointing failure in my side hustle life. TSS is a new strategy to see if I can succeed in the other world as well – hence the no-AI, writing from heart, publicly-built approach that’s different from what I’ve tried before. Einstein once famously said that insanity is doing the same thing over & over again and expecting different results – so I’ll try something different this time!
Like most people who work in corporate, I’m also not doing it because I take immense satisfaction from what I do (hardly 10% people do), but because it pays the bill. I’m still a failure in life in many ways – I’m doing something I don’t really enjoy to the core, to make money, and spending the years where I have good health – all hoping to be free someday (if I survive till then!). Isn’t that what slaves once dreamed of? To be free? Is corporate the updated version of slavery? Or is it just that I’m not courageous enough to try something of my own? Or is it that I was unlucky that I come from a lower-middle-class family & do not have any generational wealth to simply chill in life? I don’t know!
I really enjoy the topics of philosophy, psychology, science, and money. I’ve recently started focusing on my health as well – because with all that’s happening in my life, I’ve come to the realisation that wealth without health is meaningless! My father’s treatment cost us ~$50K & wiped out his life savings – that’s the cost of health.
TSS will not be just about money, personal finance, and business; over time, I see it emerging into the topics of life, meaning, productivity, health, and self-development. Essentially, something about being a complete, well-equipped human. What the schools do not teach us, but we should be knowing – health education, financial education, self-development, self-awareness, etc. But hey, these are all long-term dreams. Who knows if this blog lasts a year, for that matter! (but I don’t wanna be a nihilist either, let’s see!)
The day I achieve my FIRE goal, and if this blog still exists, I’ll reveal myself – that’s the plan!
I also dream of starting a podcast one day, something similar to “The Diary of a CEO”, but of shorter duration; his videos are damn long. I really enjoy Steven’s content & style of presentation. Maybe post FIRE – dreams never end, huh!

Yeah, that’s mostly about me, The Savings Side & what I plan to build. A heartfelt thank you if you’ve made it till this sentence; it likely means you resonated with my story. If so, I have many more to tell, & let’s get started on this journey together!