Hi! Welcome! Please introduce yourself, feel free to include as much or as little as you like (and stay anonymous if you like).
I’ll go first!
I’m Lillian, host of the Oh My Dollar! podcast, and currently the only admin around here. I’ve never been super great at earning money (my highest earning year was just shy of $40,000 annual income) but I’ve always been great about saving it and living cheap. I’m really into travel hacking and unconventional budget travel and I’m always looking for a way to leave the country.
I live with my statistically significant other (SSO) in Portland, Oregon, and my adorable kitten.
I’m always up to talk budgeting, particularly with YNAB, and early retirement investing on a low income. My biggest budget busters are travel, clothing, and fancy imported sunscreen. My big financial goal at the moment is getting my income up while full-time self-employed!
Hello! I’m Oro.
I work 32 hours a week by choice and make it work despite the 20% reduction in my income. I live with a queer platonic partner who is the bees knees, a permanent cat, and a rotating cast of foster cats.
I do art on the side, in various quantities and qualities (haha) and am enjoying having that be separate from how I make my living, as it awards me a great deal of freedom.
Howdy, I’m Dollar Slice. I live in NYC and I love pizza (obvs.) and jazz and city life in general. Current financial status: was forced to quit a long-term job due to terrible corporate shenanigans, dealing with health issues, living off my savings for a while until I’m ready to start job hunting.
Hi all! I’m Bracken_Joy. I live in Portland. I have a silly puppy and obscene medical costs. My husband and I are on our third round of IVF, and I’m off work while dealing with all this. So budgeting and credit stuff is a huge part of my life right now. I’m so grateful I found personal finance communities before this all happened, otherwise I don’t know if we’d have ever had the chance to even pursue these treatments. (They’re 100% out of pocket- most insruances don’t cover infertility testing or treatment). On top of that, since my husband works for a small family company, we have a marketplace health insurance plan. Oh My Dollar episodes on health insurance have seriously helped me so, so much! So uh… here I am!
Hi, I’m lhamo (that’s goddess with a small “el” in Tibetan – cuz I don’t want to give the impression I’m full of myself!). I retired early in 2015 after many years of journeying toward financial independence with the support of some great internet friends at places like the Simple Living Network and the MMM forums (using the same username here so friends from those places can find me easily). I never had a huge salary, but was able to save a lot by living in China and only buying some of the cheese at the import store for 15 years. Oh, and we lucked out with buying a condo in Beijing at the bottom of the crash – that was the “lottery ticket in the sky” that allowed us to stop working for pay. Now I am enjoying being back in Seattle where I go to the library weekly to borrow more books than I can finish and print a stack of sudokus. I also enjoy hiking, biking, gardening and cooking. And hanging out with my awesome teens. I also have an alter-ego I call my Inner Bag Lady who pops out with her incessant worries about money whenever I get stressed – even though we have more than Enough.
Looking forward to making more friends here – and so excited Lilian has her own community!
Hi, I’m krmit! I also live in Portland and work in theater. I have a husband. In the last year, I joined a union which significantly changes where I can work (and what I make), we bought our first house, and literally two weeks ago, we adopted our first dog, a 3-year-old greyhound. Now I’m ready to discover our new “normal” level of spending and adjust the budget accordingly.
Gdogg here - retired in July 2015 (wow, that sounds so long ago, but I am still so full of glee to not be a wage slave anymore). LOVE my dogs (currently have 2 senior JRTs.
Got good indoctrination from parents on budgeting, saving and wants vs. needs - but not investing (this wasn’t a real option for blue collar folks of their generation). Invested via work benefits (401k) while never really understanding it.
Sought to learn more in about 2013, eventually tripped into MMM and jlcollinsnh, and a bit of Bogkeheads. Improved my understanding, consolidated things, launched into investing on my own, and pulled the plug. My portfolio has grown while I haven’t been working - I have more now than when I quit.
Hi, I’m Lamby. I just started reading the Billfold and listening to the OMD podcast a couple of weeks ago. Nice to meet you all!
My financial status is: A few years out of college, struggling with student loans, finally back in a “real” salaried job after over a year of being buffeted around. Building up my savings because a small life crisis last fall plus no savings = big chunk of credit card debt that I’m also trying to pay off. It’s slowly dawning on me that I’ll never own that penthouse apartment in Manhattan, the way that I assumed I could when I was a teenager. But it’s not a bad life, and I’m making progress.
Hi all-- formerly TreeTownGirl at the Billfold, now rebranded to (the hopefully more fun) bananatiel. Wasn’t a super frequent commenter due to job demands but I always came back to the Billfold over other communities since it was so welcoming. Many moons ago I stumbled on Dave Ramsey’s show, which whipped me into shape financially but I pretty quickly abandoned any community associated with his principles because I am really not living the life his system prescribes
Currently I’m wrestling with whether or not to buy a condo in this crazy market. I… kind of have enough money? But there are some emotional issues there too, of course. I’ll save that drama for another thread!
Hello there! I’m Propical Storm - a working prop master in theater in the mid atlantic region. I have student loans, hope, and some peculiar eating habits. I use mint and I do my best.
Hi, I’m Clare! I used to comment on the Billfold years ago, but I’m not sure what name I used. I’ve been listening to Oh My Dollar since I learned it was a podcast. I’m a working mom to the world’s cutest and happiest baby; my husband stays at home with him and we’re all very happy with the arrangement. My goal is to someday make a living with fiction writing, but that’s been put on the back burner so I can focus on breadwinning and the baby.
Hi, I’m Rural because I live in the rural Deep South. I’m over here from the MMM forums, and using the same screen name so people can find me either place. I’m a college professor at an extremely low cost, open access public institution. I’m there by choice because it lets me teach students like I used to be. My husband and I are both extremely frugal because we came from poverty, and that frugality has helped us get by and even get ahead on what one makes at those extremely low-cost institutions.
hey rural, i’m also a prof in the deep south, but in a city. I used to live in the middle of nowhere ohio and prior to that toronto. I’ve been reading the 'fold for years. I distinctly remember it buoying my spirits while doing research in grad school 6 or 7 (gasp) years ago. I am pretty tight with my cash, but trying to come to a good balance of savings, donations and living my life.
Hey there, I’m Rondeau. I live in Toronto where I work as a corporate shill. I try to balance the scale by giving a percentage of my income to organizations and causes that matter to me. I like drinking wine and tinkering with financial planning spreadsheets. I used to enjoy reading the news, but these days I prefer science fiction (on some days it seems the less strange option).
Hello! I’ve (mostly) lurked on MMM forums for years and am happy to have a new forum that fits my personality better so I’m going to try to be more active here.
Financially, in the last 5 years my income has gone up dramatically each year and in the last 18 months my spouse has also increased his earnings so we’re living the good life…trying to figure out the right balance of spending vs saving. Trying to figure out if we want to buy a house in a crazy HCOL area (CA). Trying to figure out if I want to quit my job and do something that makes less money but is more satisfying. I’m hoping to start a journal soon to work through some of these questions…maybe next week when life isn’t quite a busy as this week!
Hello! I’m RoboticLlama, and I’m coming over from The Billfold. My financial journey started with Get Rich Slowly, which I started reading at my first job with a significant paycheck. That led me to MMM, which started me on the path to FI. Somewhere on the MMM forums I found a post talking about The Billfold, and I made the jump over. MMM gave me tools to figure out the numbers, but The Billfold was perfect for the rich tapestry of experiences and feelings and challenges that money brings out. It also had one of the best comment sections I’ve ever seen on the internet, and I’m hoping some of that carries over
I am still working towards FI, and hope to hit that in 2028. What comes after is still unknown - right now my plan is to keep working but with a career switch to something less profitable but that I’m more interested in. Since it’s still 9 years away, I can’t say for sure what that will be, but I’m looking forward to it.
