Yakezie.com

Greetings, fellow Yakezies! My name is Andrea and I’m here from So Over Debt. I’m simultaneously excited and terrified to share my Member Post with all of you.

My Blogging Beginnings

When I entered the world of personal finance blogging, I felt I had a worthwhile message. I was a former teenage mother, now a divorced single mother, who was finally making some sense out of money. My son was getting closer to adulthood (he turned 13 on Sunday) and I realized I was in no position to help him with anything if I didn’t make some changes in my life. After years of overspending, dodging collection calls, and begging the bank to reverse overdraft charges, I decided it was time I showed my son that life doesn’t have to be a constant struggle to make ends meet. I also wanted to help others find their own motivations to make better choices.

As I settled into the PF community, it was easy to compare myself to everyone else (and come up short). So many people made better financial decisions than me. Some were younger and already on the road to early retirement. Some never even had credit card debt! It was a little depressing. I began to think no one would read what I wrote, but I continued posting – if nothing else, it was helping me keep track of my resolve to stop spending.

Almost Didn’t Continue Read More

My name is Justin and I’m the creator of Money Is The Root.   You may have noticed that my tagline is “money is the root of all things good”, a play on the old adage that it’s the root of all evil.  As I’ve said many times I don’t believe that money is necessarily the path to happiness, it’s just a means to a happy ending, and the root of everything in between.

I was raised by divorced parents that were polar opposites when it came to personal finance.  Neither of my parents never had much money.  However, my mom was very keen on saving and living well within our means, and I never went without.  In fact, she paid for a large portion of my undergrad degree, and taught me many valuable lessons about spending and saving.  We still had our worries about financial and job stability, but over the years we made it work.

My father was on the other end of the spectrum when it came to finance.  He was a loving father who also paid a good portion of my undergrad degree, and spent as much time with me as he could.  Regardless, he would tend to live beyond his means, flirting with bankruptcy more than once and eventually succumbing to it.

I tell you the story about my parents to show you the roots of my interest in finance.  I love both of my parents very much, but obviously each one showed me a very different perspective of financial responsibility.  Both ingrained in me the importance of a college education, owning my own home, and now in later years they have showed me how important it is to save for retirement.  I always have and always will worry about their prospect for retiring at a healthy age, and if I can help in any way then I will.  I know that retiring at a healthy and relatively young age is personally important to me.

DIDN’T LISTEN Read More