FinCon 2019 and the Future

This year was the fourth straight year I’ve had the plea­sure of attend­ing Fin­Con. For those of you who don’t know what Fin­Con is (like my for­mer cowork­er who asked “WTH is a Fin­Con??”), it’s a con­fer­ence for con­tent cre­ators who talk about mon­ey. The tagline is “where mon­ey and media meet”, if that gives you any idea of the scope of the con­fer­ence. Blog­gers, pod­cast­ers, YouTu­bers were in abun­dance once again. I was blessed with not hav­ing to buy a plane tick­et this year as it was in my new digs of Wash­ing­ton, DC.

Relat­ed post: If you want to see what some of the pre­vi­ous years attend­ing Fin­Con looked like, check out my recaps for Fin­Con 2016, Fin­Con 2017, or Fin­Con 2018.

FinCon Friends

The main attrac­tion of Fin­Con 2019 was to see all my online friends in real life. I have made some rock-sol­id friend­ships in this amaz­ing cor­ner of the inter­net! Chat­ting in a Twit­ter group or tex­ting is all well and good, but noth­ing holds a can­dle to being able to snug­gle on the couch with a friend or give 80 mil­lion hugs to every­one over the course of 4 days.

Fin­Con actu­al­ly start­ed ear­ly for me as friends came into town ear­ly. I took the entire week off work and enjoyed spend­ing time wan­der­ing down­town DC, see­ing the muse­ums and mon­u­ments. I even took my first offi­cial scoot­er ride! (Despite liv­ing in DC prop­er for a few months and see­ing them everywhere).

I did my usu­al MO of stay­ing in an AirBnB close to the hotel. This saved me at least $600 in hous­ing costs! (more on costs lat­er!) I also got to spend more qual­i­ty time with some of my favorites which is hon­est­ly worth more to me than the mon­ey. The place we rent­ed was a super cute row­house that fit 8 peo­ple. It remind­ed me of a big sleep­over from high school, except we could all buy alco­hol legal­ly lol. [Dear fam­i­ly mem­bers, don’t wor­ry, I did­n’t actu­al­ly drink at sleep­overs in high school. That was college.]

I did con­sid­er just dri­ving in every morn­ing and going home each night, but DC area traf­fic is noto­ri­ous­ly awful so I would’ve spent a ton of pre­cious time in the car, paid a lot in tolls and not been able to have as much fun at par­ties. I found a very nice neigh­bor to look after the cat, so I was able to stay in DC guilt-free.

I’m includ­ing a shout out to some of the peo­ple that made Fin­Con 2019 so great! I can’t list every­body, so in no par­tic­u­lar order here is the high­light reel: Mil­i­tary Dol­lar, Reach­ing For FI, Tread Light­ly Retire Ear­ly, Finan­cial Mechan­ic, Young FIRE Knight, Fru­gal­i­ty and Free­dom, Poor­er than You, Miss, Mazu­ma, JD Roth, Chief Mom Offi­cer, Rich & REGULAR, Bitch­es Get Rich­es, Afford Any­thing, Choose­FI, Finan­cial Pan­ther, All She Saves, Wealth Well Done, Doug Nord­man, Chuck Jaffe, and count­less more that are a blur due to social exhaus­tion and drink­ing too much.

Speak­ing of exhaus­tion, I was con­scious­ly mon­i­tor­ing my ener­gy lev­els and took care not to over­load myself. I found qui­et spaces, went for walks to play Har­ry Pot­ter Wiz­ards Unite, and went back to the AirBnB to take naps and reset for the rest of the events ahead in the day. I made self-care the pri­or­i­ty of Fin­Con, not attend­ing sessions.

Honing my blogging skills

For a con­fer­ence that was pri­mar­i­ly about gain­ing blog­ging skills, I did­n’t attend any­thing that would help hone this blog. No ses­sions, no meet­ings with brands.… noth­ing. There were a few rea­sons behind that. One, I’m com­fort­able with my blog­ging skills (it only took 4 years!). I feel no need to mon­e­tize the blog or grow my read­er­ship to mil­lions of views each month. I tried that last year and all it did was make me mis­er­able and stressed out. Two, last year my sched­ule was so packed with cof­fees, lunch­es, and din­ners that I bare­ly got to see my friends which sucked. Sure, I had a lot of meals cov­ered but it was­n’t worth it. I was much more acces­si­ble this year and was able to say yes to invites to lunch­es or have a great con­ver­sa­tion on the lob­by couch­es with some­one on how to delib­er­ate­ly plot a prod­uct launch (which was fas­ci­nat­ing, as he was com­ing from a mar­ket­ing per­spec­tive). Three, a lot of the ses­sions just weren’t inter­est­ing to me if I were inter­est­ed in grow­ing the blog. I did attend one ses­sion, but that was on FIRE and I only went because legit all my friends were going. It was excel­lent though, so I have no regrets.

I did take advan­tage of the wealth of knowl­edge present at Fin­Con though. I had a chat with my sis­ter a few weeks ago, dur­ing which she informed me our step­dad does­n’t have a will. As some­one who’s watched many fam­i­lies go through unnec­es­sary hard­ship and suf­fer­ing due to a lack of will, I was very alarmed. I asked a few dif­fer­ent peo­ple on how to approach my par­ents about this and got an avalanche of advice in return. It sucks that I have to think of this at 28, but my par­ents aren’t get­ting any younger. I know even­tu­al­ly they’ll pass away and I want to make the process as easy as pos­si­ble on every­one. An ounce of pre­ven­tion is worth a pound of cure, as they say. Or, in the case of estate plan­ning, a few hun­dred dol­lars to an attor­ney to draw up a plan will save every­one years of court cas­es and mil­lions of dol­lars (as one friend at Fin­Con had hap­pen to her after her dad died with a will that left a lot open to inter­pre­ta­tion). So even though I don’t care a whole lot about improv­ing my blog­ging skills, I still made use of the conference.

The Costs

Fin­Con 2019 was far cheap­er than the pre­vi­ous years as I did­n’t have to buy a plane tick­et. All I had to do was dri­ve my car 45 min­utes into DC and voila! I was there. Hav­ing it be local did make it lose a bit of lus­ter as peo­ple were excit­ed about see­ing things or going places that I can see any­time. I real­ized part of the mag­ic of Fin­Con is get­ting to explore parts of a new city! In this sea­son of life though, I’ll take all of my inter­net friends com­ing to my town over explor­ing a new city.

¹⁄₈ of an AirBnb: $200
Fin­Con 2019 tick­et: $210.63
A vari­ety of food and drink dur­ing Fin­Con: $115.12
Misc sup­plies pre-Fin­Con: $82.70

Total: $608.45

Ver­dict: WORTH IT!

FinCon 2020

Fin­Con 2020 is in a lit­tle town called Long Beach, CA which is a cozy ham­let of the sprawl­ing LA metro area. That is almost exact­ly all the way across the coun­try from me. My first Fin­Con was in San Diego, but I also lived much clos­er to Cal­i­for­nia at that point. Flights would be a pain and rather expensive.

I’ve start­ed to think a lot on what I want to do with the FIRE com­mu­ni­ty in the next few years. I’ve been ful­ly immersed in the com­mu­ni­ty my entire adult life. I have learned so much and met some amaz­ing peo­ple who have lit­er­al­ly changed the course of my life. I owe so much to the won­der­ful peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty, which is one rea­son I start­ed this blog. I want­ed to help oth­ers like I’ve been helped in the past.

How­ev­er, I’m no longer a young 20 some­thing liv­ing close to fam­i­ly. I have lim­it­ed amounts of mon­ey and time and can’t keep using it all on FIRE events. Some­thing in the future has to give. I want to take real vaca­tions. I want to see my fam­i­ly more often. I want to hang out with friends in real life out­side the demands of a con­fer­ence with 2,000 of my clos­est friends. I want to be more avail­able to do things with peo­ple here in DC.

In light of all that (and my dis­in­ter­est at grow­ing the blog as a side hus­tle), I won’t be attend­ing Fin­Con 2020. I feel very at peace with this deci­sion right now but I might have to go on a social media diet next fall when it actu­al­ly happens.

What’s Next

I have one event left to attend this year: Camp FI South West in Joshua Tree. I am real­ly excit­ed to go hang out with friends in a small­er venue and vis­it anoth­er Nation­al Park. It also hap­pens to fall over my birth­day so I’ll get to spend part of my birth­day with good friends, instead of maybe alone here in my new city.

The first 6 months of 2020 look real­ly busy for me already. Friends in the FIRE blog­ging com­mu­ni­ty are talk­ing about get­ting togeth­er and hang­ing over a long week­end in Feb­ru­ary. I might be tak­ing a vaca­tion to Mex­i­co in March to relax and maybe prac­tice my surf­ing skills. I have ten­ta­tive plans to attend Camp FI Mid-Atlantic over Memo­r­i­al Day weekend.

I am def­i­nite­ly going to the Finan­cial Free­dom Sum­mit at the begin­ning of May in St. Louis. I hope to hit a triple with the event: see a Car­di­nals base­ball game (or two), hang out with the peo­ple in the FIRE com­mu­ni­ty, and see my fam­i­ly since they live close-ish. (Close-ish being close in terms of Mid­west­ern dri­ving and prob­a­bly far by any­one not from the Midwest.)

That is a lot of events planned for the first 6 months of 2020 when my goal is to start say­ing no to more things, even if they sound fun, are afford­able, and are immense­ly enjoy­able. I have been deeply involved in this com­mu­ni­ty my entire adult life, and I don’t think I can keep up with this lev­el of immer­sion in my life going for­ward. My life has been changed for the bet­ter by going to all of the Chau­tauquas, Camp Mus­tach­es, Camp FI’s, Fin­Cons and trav­el­ing to see peo­ple I’ve met from the com­mu­ni­ty but I don’t think it’s sus­tain­able for the future. I’m hap­py with the lev­el of engage­ment I have with peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty and the friends I’ve made. There will always be room for more, but my goal going for­ward will be to deep­en rela­tion­ships, not make more of them.

I’m hap­py Fin­Con 2019 helped me real­ize this!