I’m famous!

Well, I’m internet famous anyway.

Today was supposed to be my day off (I work 9 hour days and get a day off every pay period) but I switched it this week. So I was on my way to the metro this morning with a magazine to read on the ride when I passed the stand for the Express, one of the free local papers. I wasn’t going to get one because I had a magazine, but then turned back and grabbed one. On Friday, the paper has Samurai Sudoku and I save them for my mom.  Yes, I realize I could just buy her a book, but this is free.  Frugal, see?

So I’m flipping through the paper and get to the page of blog quotes. One is about taxes. And then I catch the name of the blog. It’s my blog!  My brief post about tax day was quoted!

And then I realize that I’m an “anonymous” blogger and I can’t share this with anyone.  So DC area bloggers and readers – take note!  Check me out in the Express!

So I guess this is the good thing about working today, even though it means no three day weekend for me.  If I hadn’t gone to work, I wouldn’t have picked up a paper and my fame would have gone unnoticed.

I realize that my anonymity is tenuous at best.  If someone wanted to find out my information, it wouldn’t be too hard.  But I guess I’m not worried about strangers knowing who I am.  I don’t want my coworkers and friends and family to know who I am and what I’m writing about.  Mainly my coworkers, to be honest.  While we do work for the government and thus know exactly what the others make, that’s very different from knowing someone’s financial situation.  For example,  I have one coworker who makes exactly what I make (we received our last promotion on the same day, so we’re on the same track).  But she also has mortgage and major student loan payments.  So while we make the same amount, our situations are very different.

Either way, I’m going to enjoy my fame and clip the quote from the paper and save it somewhere.  Great start to a Friday!

Megan Smith

Megan is a 40-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:

In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance.  It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information.  It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck.  While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.

While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.

Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.

So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan.  I needed to budget.  I needed to know what I was spending my money on.  I needed to prepare for the future.

I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way.  I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.