My 2022 Financial Literacy Year in Review

This post is mostly for me. I want to continue my efforts helping others with financial literacy, so I thought (publicly) documenting my efforts in 2022 might help me continue in 2023.

I divide my efforts into two parts: Fisch Financial (where you are now), which is free (note the .org), and Fisch Learning, where I make (a small amount of) money off my efforts (note the .com).

2022 Fisch Financial

• 43 Blog Posts (although 11 of those were just announcing new TL;DR books, so really 32 educational posts).
  That’s an average of about one every 11 days, which I feel pretty good about. There are so many excellent financial blogs out there that I don’t feel the need to post all the time or have some internal “quota” I’m trying to meet. Instead, I just try to post things that are particularly relevant to educators or to highlight something new and particularly relevant that folks who don’t religiously read financial blogs might benefit from knowing about.
  
  
• 22 Financial Education “Clients“
  I helped 22 financial “clients” learn more about financial literacy in general, and their own finances in particular. To be clear, this is not financial advice, but financial education. I try to help them learn more about financial topics and their own financial situation, and then discuss with and encourage them to use that newfound knowledge to perhaps make some adjustments.
  
  
• 3 Facebook Groups
  I was reasonably active on three Facebook groups around financial topics for educators: Teacher Money Matters, 403bwise, and Teacher Moolah.
  
  
• “Graded” Thousands of School District 403b Plans
  I helped out Dan Otter and Scott Dauenhauer with their School District Plan Rating Project by grading thousands of school districts on their 403b plan offerings.
  

2022 Fisch Learning

• Published 13 Books
  Published 13 more books, many with co-authors, in the TL;DR Financial Literacy Series. That’s about one per month, so pretty pleased with that. We’re up to 21 total and have 3 more in process at the moment.
  
  
• Sold 836 Books
  Sold 836 total books in the TL;DR Financial Literacy Series. (There are some additional readers as anyone with Kindle Unlimited can read for free.) That’s a little more than two per day. While I’m hopeful that they are helpful to everyone who reads them, I mentally figure about 25% of those have a real impact. If that’s (roughly) the case, then I’m (we’re) really helping someone about once every other day, or a little over 200 people over the course of the year. I’m hopeful that in 2023, helped by the additional total number of books published), that perhaps we’ll get to an average of three sales per day.
  
  
• Taught 92 Educators a Financial Literacy Course
  This year I began teaching a financial literacy course for Colorado educators, where they can learn more about financial literacy in general and the pension plan we have in Colorado, and earn credit toward recertification and/or salary advancement. I’m teaching it again in 2023 (at least first semester, and perhaps summer and fall as well).
  

So, overall, I feel reasonably good about this effort. I’m still trying to come up with ways to “scale” this and get the word out to more people. I would particularly like to figure out how to get the books into more people’s hands, not to get the (small) royalties but to have a bigger impact. If anyone reading this has any ideas, or an audience they might want to promote to, please let me know.