When I first started blogging, I didn’t even know what a blog was. In fact, my blog started off as a non-blog website. I wanted to teach people about personal finance, something that I have been passionate about since my high school economics class.
Ever since that fateful class, my main focus has been finance: I majored in it in college, all of my jobs have been in the financial services industry, and I have my master’s degree in finance.
Holy smokes, how did it get to be mid November? I don’t know about you, but for me it really doesn’t feel like Thanksgiving just days away. This is the first year in a while that I don’t have any plans at all for Thanksgiving. Maybe that’s why it has really snuck up on me! I did my family vacations off peak this year to save money and avoid travel stress, and my group of international friends that I usually meet for Turkey Day are traveling this year. So, my Thanksgiving is going to be a quiet day of watching the Parade, betting which pooch will win the dog show, ordering some Chinese take-out, and getting some R&R.
But what I have been thinking about a lot in the last few weeks are holiday cards and Christmas shopping. I was quite pleased that I made some good headway on my immediate family’s gifts last week and was almost done with all my holiday shopping until I realized I almost completely forgot I still have to figure out what to get for my nieces, nephews, younger cousins, and the SF Fire Fighters Toy drive. Whoops!
Even though Christmas is still a month away, it already feels like crunch time to me! It always takes me a while to figure out what to get the kids in my extended family. Kids can be so picky and hard to shop for sometimes, and I don’t want to be known as the bad gift giver! Plus since I have to ship their gifts all over the country because I won’t be traveling, I have to make sure I get everything in order plenty early.
Last year I was way behind and had to do a lot of last minute shopping, and the extra shipping costs to get all the presents delivered before Christmas was a big punch in my wallet. I really want to avoid that happening again this year!
Bonjour Yakezie!! I am super happy to be here today, although to be honest it feels a bit weird to be alone in front of you all. I am an introvert, and don’t do very well in big groups, but thankfully this awesome group has been opening up to me so it feels safe and warm here. So thanks for having me!
Back to the point. Hi. My name is Pauline, and I blog at Reach Financial Independence. I am 33 and was born in Paris, France, that is where I graduated from business school over 10 years ago and where it all begins. I have always been the good girl. Good grades, no problems, I had half a dozen gigs in high school teaching the piano or tutoring kids while being top of my class, a girl scout, playing the organ at mass, and so on. College was the natural next step and off I went, living with scholarship money and another myriad of small jobs. But during the last year of business school, I started thinking about what was ahead, and dreaded that my life would be pretty much the same for the next 40 years. Wake up, commute, work, commute, sleep, rinse and repeat for 2,000 weeks. It was frightening before it even began.
It seems like we’ve got a student loan crisis on our hands. Although I generally don’t include student loans as part of the “Bad Debt” category since education is vital to getting ahead, student loans is still debt after all.
One of the best rule of thumb when deciding on how much debt to take is borrowing no more than the likely first year salary amount you expect to receive upon graduation. In other words, if you plan to be a starving artist making $18,000 a year, $18,000 is the max you should borrow. If you plan to work for Google, perhaps borrowing up to $75,000 is reasonable.
I graduated business school in 2006 with about $55,000 in student debt and paid it off in 2009 during the financial crisis. I figure it was better to eradicate debt than watch my money disappear into thin air and get nothing in return! Paying off debt feels so good that sometimes I think I should get into debt just to pay it off! You get the goodies that debt provides and the satisfaction of accomplishment once it disappears.
Here are some tips on how to save money as a student. Read More
I’m sorry to have missed you guys this year at Fincon. I had to support a friend’s wedding up in Napa. We’ll definitely meet up in California or Hawaii next year though!
The one thing I’m most bullish about post Fincon is the uptick in content quality and initiatives by our community. It seems like we all feel a little (or a lot) more emboldened to try just a little bit harder for our reader base. The feeling might only last a month or two before we relax for the holidays, but the surge is still better than nothing.
We started the 5,000+ Words A Week challenge at this time last year, and now for many of us who entered this challenge it seems weird writing anything less than 5,000 words a week. It’s like lifting weights. If you’re curling 30 pound dumbbells to build your pythons or running 5 miles a day, curling 20 pounds or running 2 miles a day just doesn’t seem right anymore. Writing is a muscle that can be developed.
I’m proposing the same 5,000+ Words A Week Challenge this year. By writing longer posts, you’ll increase your chances of publishing a pillar post that will attract recurring traffic and revenue for years. You’ll also find it much easier to weave other posts into your content because it’s just so darn meaty!
Howdy Yakezie! This is John from Frugal Rules and I am thankful to be able to say that I have crossed the finish line in the Yakezie Challenge! As those who know me will say, I don’t do things halfway. It was a lot of work and a lot of fun, but most of all, I am grateful to become a full-fledged Yakezie member today.
One thing I will point out is that I would not have made it to the finish line today without the help and support of other great bloggers within the Yakezie community. Frugal Rules was my first step into the blogging world and I did not know what to expect when I started this journey. After finding out about the community shortly into my blogging career, I knew it was something I wanted to be a part of.
Ok, enough rambling, and on to the good stuff! J
What’s up Yakezie!
This is Grayson from Debt Roundup and I am pretty excited to be writing this. I always love getting to the finish line of any challenge. Challenge accepted, Yakezie, and challenge completed!
I couldn’t have made it to this point without all of the help of the Yakezie members and challengers. It just goes to show that helping others is really powerful and you can’t succeed without proper networking I love the idea of a community that is around to help a specific niche of bloggers. You don’t find that often and it really makes a difference.
Alright, enough chit-chat, let’s get down to business.
Untemplater: Congrats on getting so many consecutive features on Google News! That’s phenomenal! Writing on...Untemplater: You nailed it. I also believe great marketing is very helpful in the beginning but it’s really...
Jamie: Awesome insights thanks! I’ve been a big fan of Sam’s for years. Really exciting that he’s...Untemplater: There are so many overpriced ecourses online it’s crazy. They use very aggressive marketing tactics to...
Andy: Thousand-dollar e-courses are a total scam. You can learn everything online for free. Shame on people who sell...Untemplater: There are a lot of bloggers out there who focus on small stuff like should you or should you not spend...
Derek: It’s fascinating how some bloggers continue to just mindlessly pump out affiliate content. It’s clear they are...Untemplater: Lots of valid points! So true that bloggers are a minority of overall readership, so blogging to much...
Bingo: You are spot on. Most of our bloggers are white people living on the coasts, where half the population of...
Financial Samurai: Hi Jim – Nice to hear from you. It was too much work running Yakezie. Too many people wanted...
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