However, one cannot simply assume that the writer of the blog gets all that income. There are a huge number of possible scenarios here. One of them is indeed that the blog owner keeps all the income. But there are others as well, such as:

* There’s a whole team of folks who run the blog, all of whom receive some share of the pie.

* The blog author doesn’t own the blog, and is paid as a regular employee.

* The blog generates income, but it’s all donated to charity.

* The blog author owns only a share of the blog and splits revenue with the silent partners.

And so on.

There are literally *dozens* of different permutations here. I can’t tell you which one applies to me (although I’ve mentioned it to Jacob), but I can tell you that I don’t receive all of the income from GRS. Not even close. (I’m not complaining about this; it’s a choice I made, and I think it was a good one.)

Jacob, I’m not sure where I mentioned saving $5,000 for a car. I *do* write about the things I’m saving for all the time, but I also try to stress over and over and over again that boosting my income has been the single most important step I’ve taken toward finding financial freedom. No matter how many times I say this, and no matter how strongly I word my message, there are some people who don’t grasp what I’m saying though. But it’s true. Yes, I’ve been frugal. Yes, I’ve saved money. Yes, I practice what I preach. But what’s allowing me to travel around the world? Boosting my income.

In short: I haven’t hidden the fact that my income has increased, but I haven’t been able to talk about it in plain terms. And when I try to write about it, nobody seems to pick up on what I’m saying.

Also, I think FS is right that some GRS readers might be turned off if they realized how much revenue the blog generated. It’s a strange thing. People talk about wanting others to succeed, but Americans have this bizarre love/hate relationship with wealth. They want themselves to become wealthy, but sometimes they resent when others manage to do so themselves. I’m not saying that’s what would happen here, but it’s possible.

As for the move at GRS from me writing 100% of the content to only writing about 20%, well, that has nothing to do with the income and everything to do with burnout. I’ve been doing this for five years (and more!). Although I love my community and I love the job, I feel like I’ve said all I can. I’ve brought in fresh voices so that GRS can continue to provide inspiration to people and so that the community can continue to grow and help each other. I wish I had the inclination and ability to write about money forever, but I don’t. Instead, it’s time for me to move on to other ventures — like my travel blog.

Or it’s because the value they can get in the market for their skills > the price they have to pay for others to do work for them.

This is important to realize. If your spending X numbers per week in “retirement” doing things you could pay others to do (and aren’t things you would do for enjoyment) then you’re not really “retired” for those hours, right?

Conceivably you could just forego the money system all together and live off the grid and be “retired.” Just about any intelligent able-bodied person could do that in less than a year. But you would probably be working quite a bit more than most workaholics and almost certainly have to deal with a great amount of all around unpleasantness. You wouldn’t be retired in a real sense in that case.

Examples:
http://www.incomediary.com/top-earning-blogs/
http://samswebguide.com/2010/03/07/30-top-earning-blogs/

Therefore, calculating my overall SWR before age 60 would not make much sense if I included my IRA because the IRA’s growth and reinvested earnings would not be available to cover my current expenses. That being said, my SWR using only the taxable investments portion of my portfolio was still between 3% and 4%.

Currently, I am running a surplus between the taxable investments’ earnings and my current expenses, reinvesting any surplus. However, if I at some point begin running a deficit in my mid-to-late 50s that is okay because the important thing is to make it to age 60.

Most of my taxable investments are in bonds but a slight majority of my IRA is in stocks, giving me a split AA.

The key to a good ER plan is to wisely plan your expenses from the ground up, not to base it off your current (work) income. Tweaking that plan, as I have done a few times in my nearly 3 years of ER, has been the most important thing I have done, more important than tweaking my investments (taxable and IRA) to try to boost my current income and IRA holdings.

P.S. I an an INTJ.

Also, interesting side conversation with FS; like you, I was under the impression that Trent and JD, while making a solid living by blogging, were earning MAYBE $100,000 a year, not two or three times that amount easily. Still, as FS notes, the math doesn’t lie.

http://www.flexibleretirementplanner.com

It’s a free calculator that uses Monte Carlo sampling to estimate your chances of retiring at a certain age. You can enter your various forms of investments and the savings rates, investment distribution, retirement age, and spending level during retirement.

That’s a big statement, but here’s what I mean… I find the “experiences” are more exciting and usually more engaged when I look to do things (like travel to Argentina for a month) on a cheaper budget.

- Chris Dunn

With that said, each one of us wants to retire early. By retiring early, it does not necessarily mean doing nothing but travel and vacation for the rest of your life (but heck, that would be easy to do). But it simply means being free of financial worries of where the next payment for the bills would come.

I think he’d lose a lot of readers of the readers found out he’s making $200-250,000+/year now.

This is partly the reason why there are more guest posts. His lawyer and him are very smart.

Math doesn’t lie indeed!

Let’s say only 20,000 out of JD’s 70,000 subs visit his site each day. That’s $1,500/month in CPM ad revenue at $2.5, with only ONE ad, and each sub showing only 1 page impression.

Trent and JD are easily making more than $100,000/yr from their site, and probably closer to $250,000. They just have to come across as poorer, so they can relate to their masses of followers who are in debt.

The math doesn’t lie.