Know Your Blogger Series
One Frugal Girl
I started my blog during a very dark period of my life, back in 2005. After multiple emergency room visits and six months of misdiagnosis, I underwent a series of medical procedures and a painful surgery to repair my body. I started the blog while I was at home on short-term disability, recovering and feeling very sorry for myself. The original name of my blog was One Lucky Girl. Despite all that I had been through, after six months of misdiagnosis and two major medical emergencies, I felt lucky to be alive. The blog began as a personal journal, but after a few months of writing, I noticed I kept talking about money. Eventually, I changed the name to One Frugal Girl.My mission is simply to tell my story in the hopes that others can learn from it. In real life, money is still a taboo topic. Personal finance blogs allow us to break those taboos and share our knowledge with others who can benefit from it. I hope that readers stumble across my blog and feel comfortable sharing their questions and concerns.
Check out our Q&A with One Frugal Girl here.
Check out our Q&A with One Frugal Girl here.
Come learn about the established and awesome blog, One Frugal Girl.
Each week at Personal Finance Blogs, we publish interviews from amazing bloggers from the personal finance space. This week, we are featuring the blog, One Frugal Girl.
During these weekly features, we are hoping to provide a way for you to interact and learn more about different blogs in the personal finance space.
Below, you can read more about the story behind One Frugal Girl, learn about the author, and learn personal finance tips from One Frugal Girl to help you improve your financial situation.
A big thanks for One Frugal Girl for this interview! Now, we will turn it over to the author for this interview.
Tell Us About One Frugal Girl
I started my blog during a very dark period of my life, back in 2005. After multiple emergency room visits and six months of misdiagnosis, I underwent a series of medical procedures and a painful surgery to repair my body. I started the blog while I was at home on short-term disability, recovering and feeling very sorry for myself.
The original name of my blog was One Lucky Girl. Despite all that I had been through, after six months of misdiagnosis and two major medical emergencies, I felt lucky to be alive. The blog began as a personal journal, but after a few months of writing, I noticed I kept talking about money. Eventually, I changed the name to One Frugal Girl.
My mission is simply to tell my story in the hopes that others can learn from it. In real life, money is still a taboo topic. Personal finance blogs allow us to break those taboos and share our knowledge with others who can benefit from it. I hope that readers stumble across my blog and feel comfortable sharing their questions and concerns.
What makes you and your blog unique?
My blog is unique because I’ve been writing for so long. Honestly, fifteen years of blogging makes me feel like a grandma in the personal finance space. I’ve gone from a young twenty-seven-year-old with big financial plans to a financially independent forty-three-year-old who achieved the dreams I set for myself.
Many bloggers write about their journey to financial independence, but very few write about it from beginning to end. When I started blogging, I didn’t know about FI and FIRE. I wrote about my experiences with money and my relationship with it. What’s remarkable, though, is the more that I wrote about money, the more I began to pay attention to it. Blogging about personal finance made me a millionaire.
What does “being good with your personal finances” mean to you?
Oh, this is such a good question. Being good with your finances means being intentional with the money you earn. It means finding ways to increase your income, decrease your expenses, and not feel deprived in the process.
If you are good with your money, you look at your life and ask yourself what you want out of it. What goals should you set for yourself? How do you want to live your life, and what is important to you? I think many of us walk through life with blinders on. We go through the motions of life without pausing to ask if we are happy on our current path. Many of us spend money without consciously thinking about it. When you examine your money mindset, you become intentional with your financial decisions.
Some people need a lot of money to be happy, while others don’t. Being good with personal finances isn’t just about money. It’s about using the money you earn to live your best life.
What are some habits you practice to keep your personal finances in order?
My number one habit is talking about money openly and honestly. My husband and I started discussing money right from the start of our relationship, and financial conversations still occur in our household at least once a week, if not more often. We discuss financial matters in front of our children too. We want our kids to listen to our stories and to feel comfortable asking questions on their own.
Once a year, we host a family financial meeting to discuss our financial goals. After all, what is the point of earning money if we don’t set a plan for using, saving, and spending it? This meeting ensures we are moving forward together and staying on the same page. I think everyone could benefit from a money mentor. For me, that’s my husband. I love that we can bounce ideas off one another and keep ourselves accountable to our goals.
My second habit is tracking our expenses. We started writing down our expenses in 2001 and have continued to document every transaction since that time! This is a painful experience, but so worth the time. Tracking our expenses helps us realign our spending patterns to ensure they match our short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals.
What are your three articles people should read to get to know you and your message better on your site?
Here are three for you to check out:
For someone looking to improve their financial situation, what’s your best advice?
I think it helps to alter your money mindset. Everyone’s path will be unique, but these steps will help.
First, calculate your hourly pay rate. Begin by dividing your after-tax salary by the number of hours you work in a year. Then write that number down and stow it inside of your wallet, in front of your credit card. Each time you plan to buy something new, look at that number and ask yourself how long you have to work to pay for the item you want to buy. By correlating time with money, you begin to make more conscious decisions on how much to spend. You will be less inclined to waste the money you spent so much time and energy earning.
Next, track every expense and write down everything you buy. I know this sounds like an awful, tedious task, but many of us spend money in little ways we don’t even realize. Try to decrease significant expenses like housing, transportation, and food first. Then review the rest of your costs and ask yourself which optional items made you happy. Create a joy based ledger to weed out the things that don’t bring joy to your life.
Third, take a good, hard look at your possessions and calculate how much you spent on them. When I was ill, I spent a lot of time buying things to make myself feel better. Years later, I dragged items out of my closets and dressers to see how much money I spent on stuff I rarely used or wore. After adding up all of the needless expenses, I convinced myself to stop buying stuff. The process turned me into a quasi-minimalist. I love knowing what matters to me and what I want to spend my money on.
Lastly, the best way to improve your financial situation is to earn enough to pay for your expenses and still have enough left over to save. We can talk about all of the other tips and tricks of personal finance, but the number one way to improve your situation is to search for ways to earn more, which of course, is often easier said than done.
What’s an area of your life which has benefited from improving your personal finances? Have there been any areas of your life which have suffered?
Improving my finances has dramatically improved my peace of mind. I felt stressed and anxious about money for most of my life, but my husband and I have now amassed enough to ease my mind. The best part of financial independence is paying bills without worry.
As a result of our financial success, we never argue about money or financial decisions of any kind. We share accounts and don’t feel the stress of being unable to pay for something we need.
IFinancial stability has also allowed me to become more generous. In my youth, I volunteered my time, but not my money. Now, I am free to do both.
What are your favorite personal blogs and bloggers you have been inspired by?
I’ve been reading personal finance blogs for over fifteen years now. Unfortunately, many of my early favorites like Newlyweds on a Budget and Little Miss Money Bags stopped blogging many years ago. I loved reading their stories and conversing with them about financial matters. Men may dominate the PF blogging space, but since the beginning, there have been many strong, smart, successful women chatting about money.
I tend to subscribe to blogs that tell interesting, personal stories, and J.D. Roth and J. Money are two of my long-time favorites. J. Money is one of the most generous individuals in the personal finance space. He is so supportive of other personal finance bloggers. I’m glad that J.D. and Jim Wang started ApexMoney because I miss finding new blogs through Rockstar Finance.
Last but not least, I will always be grateful to Angela (Tread Lightly Retire Early) and Revanche (A Gai Shan Life) for convincing me to return to blogging after a yearlong hiatus. Without them, I wouldn’t be here telling my story. Both are incredible, supportive women.
If you received a $5,000,000 windfall tomorrow, what would you do with the money?
If I received a windfall, I would donate most of my money to pay off medical debts for those in need. When my medical problems emerged, I was blessed with incredible health insurance and a short-term disability policy. For six months, I visited over thirty doctors searching for a diagnosis and underwent $60,000 worth of medical tests and procedures.
When you are ill, the last thing you should have to think about is money. I spent a ridiculous amount of energy and strength, fighting against a broken medical system. I could do that because I wasn’t also fighting hospitals and insurance companies over medical bills. If I inherited a windfall, I would donate the money to help others who were not as lucky as I was.
I lived a healthy lifestyle before my medical problems began. I exercised, ate well, and maintained a healthy weight, but none of those things prevented the problems that occurred or the pain I have experienced since. Sometimes you cannot avoid medical issues. It sucks that many people have to go into debt for them. I would love to help eliminate those financial worries for at least a few families.
What’s a non-money related interest you have, and what do you love about it?
I love to write poetry and children’s stories. I keep this all under wraps and rarely write these days, but I hope to get back to telling stories one day. Having children has amplified my desire to write a children’s book.
I’ve also been searching for ways to increase childhood literacy in our area. Before COVID, I started handing out free books to kids in our area. I purchase $1 books through the Scholastic order forms at my son’s school and hope to continue this effort after COVID ends.
Many children don’t have access to a single book in their home. Every child should be able to hold a book in their hands, flip the pages, and let their imaginations venture into new places and worlds.
Why do you believe learning about money and caring about personal finance is important?
Whether we like it or not, money controls so many different aspects of our lives. If you can learn about money and personal finance, you can free your mind of the worry and stress related to paying your bills.
How You Can Contact One Frugal Girl for More Information
You can learn more about One Frugal Girl at https://onefrugalgirl.com/ and follow them on Twitter at @OneFrugalGirl.
Thank you for reading this interview, and thank you, One Frugal Girl, for providing us with some great personal finance tips!
