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Tanja from Our Next Life and Kara from Bravely are the real deal. They’re not only living their FIRE and entrepreneurship dreams, they are doing everything in their power to encourage others along the same paths.
On one hand, they have very different stories to offer…
- Tanja – Retiring early this month (congratssss!)
- Kara – never worked in a full-time salaried job in her life. Now a startup founder.
On the other hand, they BOTH have incredibly huge hearts they are utilizing to teach and help others with a financial education.
Kara has an amazing debt story, and her company Bravely is dedicated to helping women learn about and take control of their money through online resources, as well as in-person events.
Tanja is a widely-respected FI/FIRE blogger at ONL, and has one of the most dedicated online communities in the space. Her and her husband are officially retiring this year to travel, ski, and do charitable work full-time 🙂
Furthermore, they are the cohosts of an AMAZING new podcast, The Fairer Cents, where they ask the difficult questions and provide an additional community for women (and men) to show up and talk about money. Real talk.
AMAZING things happen on this podcast, such as:
- Kara literally changes one person’s life (at least we heard that such a thing happened via text).
- practical tips for dealing with impatience for FI (Ugh it’s real)
- Kara and Tanja’s backstories (super inspiring)
Enjoy the show, and be sure to connect with all of us in the Facebook Group 🙂
Show notes and links from today’s episode
- Kara’s company: Bravely Go
- Tanja’s FI blog: Our Next Life
- Their new podcast: The Fairer Cents
- Mr. Money Mustache – OG FI blog. Duh.
Key takeaways from our chat with Tanja and Kara
1 – “We just worked pretty hard at jobs that paid pretty well.”
We loved the simplicity behind Tanja’s answer about “So how did you reach FI?”
Goodness. This is motivating.
There was no super secret tactic. No Einstein level formulas.
- Earning
- Saving
- Investing
The three tiers of reaching financial independence with the option of retiring early. We also spoke about this here.
Simple (not easy). Tanja and her husband Mark were very fortunate enough to find themselves in great careers that paid well, lucky enough to have discovered the personal finance community, and with enough guts to actually follow-through and act.
They worked hard, and saved hard. If they can do it, why not us?
Speaking of which…
2 – If Kara can do “it” (get in shape financially and be a badass with money), then anyone can.
(To be fair, she used these words on the podcast by the way…lest you think we judged her lol)
A+ student. C students. Black, white, doesn’t matter. Male, female, doesn’t matter.
NOBODY should discount their ability to make a positive change in their life when it comes to money.
Read that again?
Self-doubt is an incredibly powerful foe, and the first step in taking control of your finances is finally admitting that you can…indeed…make things happen. It might take 2 years or 20, but you can.
3 – “It’s important for me to go into any event (or blog post) not trying to serve myself.”
Or even those who already have a “masters-level” understanding of personal finance. These were words from Kara, when asked about reaching people who may be complete newbies with money.
Those people exist too, and we’d wager few personal finance blogs make a concerted effort to provide max value for these people.
WARNING: If you’re a money blogger/teacher, we’re not saying what you’re doing is wrong, or even that you should change. This is food for thought, and inspiration for motivation.
We mainly just cruise along through our blog, highlighting our opinions on popular money topics, diving into advanced strategies, sharing success stories or even struggles, (or worse…regurgitating widespread money advice that has been stated 1,000,000 times ONLY in an effort to get more eyeballs on our website).
The ironic part may be that those who need us the most may not comprehend the personal finance blog content that we put out. Even we use a ton of FIRE jargon that might be over the heads of some of you reading/listening.
This is part of what makes Kara so amazing. Food for thought.
4 – Want to donate to charitable causes….but don’t have the spare cash? Donate time.
This is probably the single lowest barrier to providing massive value to your community. Volunteer.
This could look like…
- Serving food at a shelter/food kitchen
- Offering your professional skills to a local non-profit (everyone needs designers, accountants, marketers, anything)
- Buy cheap stuffed animals in bulk, and go to the hospital on Christmas/Thanksgiving and hand ’em out
- Sit at home in your underwear and volunteer virtually (Yes, it’s a thing.)
Heck. If all else fails, ask all your friends and family to donate to a charity of your choice rather than get you a birthday/Christmas present.
Donating money is only one way to help out…and in recent years, that particular medium has come under scrutiny (w/ high paid non-profit CEOs to supply chain costs).
Your time, however, is valuable, meaningful, and can be easier on your finances.
Questions? Like or dislike? Leave us a comment!
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