EP05 Money Stories: From $30k Debt to "CoastFI" with Diania Merriam
The Jesse Mecham Show
YNAB
4.7 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 22 March 2021
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week's Money Story comes from the vivacious Diania Merriam, founder of the EconoMe Conference which brings together speakers in the FIRE movement (Financial Independence, Retire Early). After finding herself working for a decent salary in NYC but falling deeper into debt, Diania decided to pull her head out of the financial sand and figure out where her finances stood. Around the same time, a friend introduced her to the Mr. Money Mustache blog and the concept of FIRE.
Armed with these tools, she started cutting her expenses and aggressively paying off debt. Eventually, Diania managed to stash away 60% of her income, and pay off $30k of debt. Ever the life of the party, Diania attributes part of her success to realizing that her happiness lies in connecting with friends and shared experiences, not necessarily in spending money in exclusive clubs. After paying off her debt, she was also able to pursue her dream of hiking the Camino de Santiago in Spain.
Today Diania has reached CoastFI, having already saved enough to retire in the future at the standard age of 65 but still working, albeit at a more relaxed pace. Financial independence has allowed her to pursue more fulfilling work (like the EconoMe Conference) and engage in new adventures. This, she explains, is the real American Dream.
Optimal Finance Daily Podcast: https://oldpodcast.com/optimal-finance-daily-podcast/
EconoMe Conference: https://economeconference.com
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello Wine Ebbers, my name is Jesse Meakum and this is podcast number 477 for Wine |
| 0:17.2 | Ab, where we teach you four rules to help you stop them paycheck to paycheck. |
| 0:20.8 | Get out of debt and save more money. |
| 0:23.2 | And if there's one thing that people do, it is if they really take this thing seriously |
| 0:27.3 | and they break the paycheck to paycheck cycle, sometimes they just flip it all on its head. |
| 0:31.5 | And I have with you today or with us today, a money story from Diana. |
| 0:36.0 | She is the founder. |
| 0:37.0 | I'm going to look at my notes for a little bit. |
| 0:38.0 | Make sure I don't miss everything that this woman has amazingly accomplished. |
| 0:41.2 | She's the founder of the economy conference. |
| 0:43.6 | It's an event that is like TEDx, but for financial independence and the talks that they |
| 0:48.6 | generate are absolutely entertaining and quite, quite inspiring. |
| 0:53.4 | She also runs a podcast. |
| 0:54.6 | This is super interesting. |
| 0:55.6 | It's called Optimal Finance Daily. |
| 0:57.8 | And she will read some of the top, well, a top blog of the day. |
| 1:03.8 | And you'll just get to hear her narrate that article and just kind of stay up to date. |
| 1:08.0 | It's one short little article and you get a little daily dose and it keeps you on track. |
| 1:13.1 | I just absolutely love that idea. |
| 1:15.6 | Diana has her own story. |
| 1:16.9 | So she was $30,000 in debt and one day, which we talk about, she decided, whoa, enough is |
| 1:23.6 | enough and she paid it all off in 11 months. |
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