Color Me Frugal- Yakezie Member Post

Yakezie Member 2H2014

by in Featured on Dec 29th, 2014

The summer after my freshman year of college, I was one of the most hated people in several towns in Illinois.  Complete strangers would see me and start yelling at me. People I didn’t know from Adam treated me like pond scum. My roommates and I got kicked out of our rental home in Collinsville, IL because we made our landlady’s adult children “nervous,” and we subsequently had to move south to Belleville.  Even when we lived in Belleville, I was working in Shiloh, and the people of that town hated me so much that they called the cops on me and I actually got escorted out of town by the cops.

So what does a relatively sheltered (and usually law-abiding!) small town girl from the frozen plains do to become so infamous and hated in so many St. Louis suburbs?

She sells books door-to-door.  That’s what. Read More

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Yakezie Member Post – Financegirl

Yakezie 2H2014 Member Class

by
71[?]
in Featured on Dec 22nd, 2014

It was the end of October in 2011, right before Halloween, and I just found out that I had passed the bar exam. I was officially going to be a licensed attorney (the only thing left to do was get sworn in by the Supreme Court of Ohio a few weeks later). It felt amazing. I felt accomplished. All of my hard work had paid off.

Fast forward a few weeks, and I had the exact opposite feeling – fear. I learned that I owed $206,000 in student loan debt. My payments would run close to $2,000 per month. Graduating in 2011, with the legal economy not recovered (and arguably still not recovered), this would be roughly half of my paycheck.

I was an attorney. I was supposed to make bank! Read More

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Save and Conquer – Yakezie Member Post

1H2014 Yakezie Member Class

by
92[?]
in Featured on May 5th, 2014

Hi, my name is Bryce. My blog is called Save and Conquer. The “Save” part is pretty obvious for a personal finance blog. The “Conquer” part means winning financial independence regardless of the onslaught of misinformation from the professional financial establishment, who mostly want to profit off investors ignorance.

Day in and day out, we are bombarded with misinformation from the mass media. Just listen to CNBC for a few hours and you’ll know what I mean. Read More

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Eve of Reduction – Yakezie Member Post

1H2014 Class

by in Featured on May 1st, 2014

In my early twenties I had to purchase renter’s insurance after my cat bit the mailman. I had nothing of value in my apartment; seriously, I was a baby-step out of college and borderline transient. I just needed to cover my feline liability. The insurance agent interrogated me on the value of my personal property. I’ll never forget him saying, “Come on, every woman is either into shoes, handbags, or jewelry.”

Not this (insanely cheap) woman. I went to art school; I can make jewelry out of compost.

What Eve Of Reduction Is All About Read More

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Happy Simple Living: 7 Lessons Learned In The Yakezie Bloggers’ Lair

by in Featured on Apr 28th, 2014

If the process to qualify for Yakezie membership hasn’t gone as quickly as you’d hoped, take heart. I’ve got to be one of the slowest Yakezie challengers to reach the elusive Alexa 200,000 mark. I joined Yakezie on January 7, 2011, and my lifestyle blog Happy Simple Living finally crossed the Alexa finish line on December 1, 2013 – two years and eleven months later. For those of you who aren’t there yet, allow my tortoise-like example to encourage you to hang in there and keep plugging away.

Do you fret because you can’t blog as consistently as you’d like? Let’s join hands and commiserate. Some months, like during my blog’s annual January Money Diet, I posted every day for 31 days straight. Other months I could only post a few times because of work deadlines. Sometimes I could interact with other bloggers a lot and I felt like I was really being a good Yakezie community member, and other times it was all I could do to manage my own blogging activities.

Fortunately, Yakezie is more about a spirit of helpfulness and giving back rather than a strict set of rules and regulations. No matter where I was in my roller coaster journey, I always felt supported and welcomed here.  One thing that spurred me on is the community of bloggers on the Yakezie forums. Whenever I needed an answer, a dash of inspiration or simply a moment to be with other like-minded bloggers, the forums provided a welcome respite—and a lot of invaluable help.

Like many of us, I like to hang out in the Bloggers’ Lair. (By the way, the dictionary defines ‘lair’ as “secret retreat or base of operations.” Don’t you think that’s a cool description?) Reading about others’ accomplishments, deciphering technical jargon, getting recommendations and advice, and lurking around reading others’ posts has been so helpful.

Here are some of the tips I’ve learned from the generous lair-folk (should we call ourselves Lair Loungers?) in the forums since I first joined Yakezie wayyyy back in 2011. Read More

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Yakezie Member Post: Monica On Money

1H2014 Class

by in Featured on Apr 25th, 2014

Hi Yakezie!

I’m Monica Iannacone from Monica On Money and I am thankful to have completed the Yakezie Challenge!  It was a lot of work and a lot of fun, but I am grateful to become a Yakezie member today.

I would not be here today without the help and support of the amazing members of the Yakezie community. Monica On Money was my first personal finance blog and actually, my first website ever so I consider myself lucky to have met such amazing bloggers in the Yakezie Network ;-)

Now, a little more about myself.

My First Real Job Read More

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Tortoise Banker – Yakezie Member Post

by
95[?]
in Featured on Apr 23rd, 2014

Aloha Yakezie Ohana! I’m Chuck, the author of Tortoise Banker.  By day I’m a branch manager of a community bank where I have the pleasure of helping all kinds of wonderful people find the peace of mind simple financial advice can bring.  Like many of you, I was initially drawn to personal finance blogging because of a few “ah HAH!” moments, and couldn’t help but share these gems with the anonymous googlers of the internet.

One of the circumstances that led me into this interest in personal finance was a sudden advanced stage cancer diagnosis.

My family sent me off to college with (what we thought) were all the tools to succeed, except for some decent health insurance. The 80% up to $10,000 policy I had dried up quick and I was forced to mull all kinds of nightmarish scenarios in my head, but luckily I got picked up by a “parachute” program for kids under the age of 21 without insurance.  I was 20 years old, and 11 months when I got diagnosed.  Praise the lord.

Needless to say, an obsession with making the right financial decisions grew out of this experience, and HERE I AM! (5 years all clear by the way, without an ounce of debt).  27 years old, married to the most wonderful woman in the world, and introducing myself to some of the most revered personalities on the dubya dubya dubya. Read More

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Brick By Brick Investing – Yakezie Member Post

1H2014 Class

by in Featured on Apr 21st, 2014

Hey Yakezie Network!! Words can’t express how ecstatic I am to officially become a member of this highly exclusive network. My blogging adventure began in the fall of 2012 and after stumbling around the blogosphere for a couple weeks the one thing that became abundantly clear…. every successful blog I came across had the Yakezie member badge.

I’m being serious, EVERY blog I came across had the badge or at the very least the “Yakezie Challenge” badge. I knew right then and there that I needed to get my foot in the door with this network. A year and a half later I’m glad to be considered a member!

The Birth Of Brick By Brick Investing Read More

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