Hello!  I’m Beating Broke.  BB for short.  I’ve been around the personal finance game in this guise for just a hair over two years.  Several years before that, I ran a personal finance site called A Penny Saved.  I’m getting ahead of myself though.  Let me start at the beginning.

A DIFFERENT WORLD

We’ll go so far back as to reach my college days even.  So far back, in fact, that it was a whole different millennium.  Way back to 1997!  Like many college freshmen, I had the world by the horns and there wasn’t anything it could throw at me that I couldn’t handle.  And I handled my finances the same way.  Debt?  Not a problem. When I graduate, I’ll get some big fancy job with a big fancy salary and pay it all off!  Sometimes I wish I could still look at the world through those same rose colored lenses.

During my first two years of college, I accumulated several thousand dollars of credit card debt.  I also amassed thousands in student loans.  After my sophomore year, I got a job to pay the minimum payments and my attendance began slipping.  As did any study habits.  Before the first semester of my junior year was done, I was officially a college drop-out.  And, of course, the second you’re no longer enrolled in school, the clock begins ticking on paying back those student loans.

I spent nearly three years living below the paycheck to paycheck level.  Missed payments were a regular thing.  The concept of a credit score was pretty vague to me, so I didn’t realize the damage I was doing, until I ended up needing a new car.  Even then, it did little to waken me.

At the end of those three years, I met my Wife.  No, it wasn’t some financial epiphany.  Her finances weren’t any better.  But, what it did do was get me back on track with school.  I signed back up and began working to finish my degree.  Upon completing my junior year, I was lucky enough to find a full-time professional position in my field where they would allow me to work while I finished up my senior year.

A NEW DISCOVERY

Shortly after graduating, I discovered the magical world of blogs.  To me, it was incredible that someone stuck deep in the midwest, as I was, could talk about whatever he wanted and people around the world would read and discuss it.  As a tech guy, my first blog was a tech blog.  It’s since transformed into several other things, but at it’s heart it’s always been a crazy mix of tech and my personal stuff.

It was also about this time that we found out we were pregnant and I realized that I was going to have to get my finances under control.  I had a “big-boy job” now and could afford to make my payments and begin paying my debt.  But, I didn’t have the faintest clue about how to go about it.  So, I did what any budding blogger would do.  I read blogs on the subject.  As I was reading up on the subject, my blogger mind turned on the proverbial light bulb and I decided to share what I was learning on a personal finance blog.  Thus, A Penny Saved was born.

After several years of doing that, I decided that I could use the money and there was a market, so I sold A Penny Saved.  Not only did I leave the personal finance realm as a blogger, but as a reader as well.  I’d already learned it all anyways. ;)  Well, not really.  I continue to struggle, today, with my finances.  Hey, nobody is perfect.

So, just a few short years ago, I began reading personal finance blogs gain, and then, in June of 2008,  Beating Broke was born.

Today, our finances have continued to improve greatly.  We still struggle with some things, and we aren’t financially rich.  Or even close.  But, we have a firm grasp on our finances and wrestle regularly with it’s horns to point it in the right direction.  Slowly, but surely, we’re Beating Broke.

A couple Beating Broke articles you might like to read:

Where We Began

Creating a Simple Budget the Beating Broke Way

This post is part of the Yakezie Member Post Series.  See all member posts here.