I was a bit reluctant to write this post because I have tried over the years to keep Ceditalk from being a personal blog. But then I realised that some of my favourite bloggers were people who shared bits of their personal lives to help others.

For instance, Cullen Roche explained his decision to buy a home. And Ben Carlson explained how his financial plans were going to be hit when him and his wife had twins. Jemila Abdulai shared her experience dealing with work and why she decided to make her own path.

Also I’ve been receiving emails and LinkedIn messages from people who want to know more about me and why/how I started blogging. I believe they deserve to know, especially as they have taken the time to read this blog and reach out to me.

So I’m going to do three things in this post – talk a bit about my blogging, talk about my life and career and then explain what I mean by a new chapter.

I started blogging in 2011 with a politics blog. I was in my third year at UPSA reading accounting. In 2012 I started ceditalk.com (then ceditalk.blogspot.com) originally as a finance news and analysis website. By 2013 it was a bit of a career blog and in late 2014 it had turned more into economic policy. From 2015 to early 2017 the blog was focused a lot on Ghana government’s economic policies as well as my foray into heterodox economics and a lot about personal finance, fund management and investment.

As one can see, the blog has evolved a lot over the years. This evolution mirrors my own development. In 2012 and 2013 I was a young graduate seeking to build a career and therefore career topics featured heavily on this blog. I worked in policy and civil society content management for informGhana (2013-2015) and then for GhanaDecides (2012, 2016) which resulted in my focus on economic policy topics on this blog. Working in digital media for Business & Financial Times (2015-2017) also contributed to my interest in economic policy. Although I now work as an accountant, I have been more interested in finance and economics for quite some time. Even while pursuing my ICAG certification (2013-2015) my blog never focused heavily on accounting or taxation.

This brings me to the new chapter. Since 2015, I have been considering graduate school but I could not find the right programme to fit my time constraints, budget, career development plan and academic interests. Going outside the country was out because I wanted to hold a job while schooling. Accounting was out because a B.Sc. and ICAG certification is sufficient. I strongly considered finance, but then I believe my finance programmes in undergrad and in my professional examinations gave me a good foundation. I finally settled on Economics. This is because it provides a mix of analytical skills as well as being broad enough to cover economic theory, policy, energy and finance. I have therefore enrolled on the M.Sc. Economics programme at the Accra campus of KNUST.

I’m calling this a new chapter for ceditalk.com because I expect that the content of the blog will improve as my knowledge improves. Also, for the next year the regularity of posts would probably decrease. But this would be temporary. I intend to gradually improve the insights into economic policy, public and corporate finance, public accounting, investment and personal finance on this blog for the foreseeable future. Also, I hope to be able to share my experience about work-life-school balance and whether the price tag of postgrads make them a worthy investment. I have learnt a lot from the econs/finance blogosphere, and I plan to give back to the community.

Warning: It gets the most personal below!

I would like to thank Samuel (Sergey!) who is almost done with the econs programme for answering ALL my questions about it. I would also like to thank Kinna, my former boss, for recommending me for the programme (I know it was a hassle!).

Later everyone. Meet you in the next post.