Why I’m Going to FinCon 2016

I’m doing a LOT of trav­el in the next 8 weeks: Maine, San Diego, and London/Europe. Peo­ple are real­ly inter­est­ed when I men­tion my upcom­ing trav­el and ask me what I’m doing.

The looks on their faces when I tell them I’m attend­ing a con­fer­ence and I’m EXCITED about it are price­less. I love watch­ing peo­ple strug­gle to make sense out of it.

“So wait.… you’re going to a con­fer­ence, for fun.”
me: Yes
“And you don’t have to go for work.”
me: nope!
“What is it about again?”
me: mon­ey and media
“And you’re pay­ing for this?”
me: Yep. Iron­ic, hey? I’m pay­ing mon­ey to go talk about money!

Wel­come to the mad­ness that is FinCon!

What is Fin­Con, you ask?

Fin­Con is a peer con­fer­ence for the mon­ey media com­mu­ni­ty. At the annu­al event each Fall,

• atten­dees con­nect with oth­ers in the community,
• learn to cre­ate, pro­mote, and prof­it from com­pelling online con­tent, and
• dis­cov­er new trends in per­son­al finance and investing.

I’m super pumped to do all those things and more, to include but not lim­it­ed to the fol­low­ing reasons:

The People

I love love love LOVE going to FI mee­tups. Whether they’re close to home or far away, being sur­round­ed by peo­ple who not only get what you’re try­ing to do but can also help is huge. So far, I’ve been to quite a few mee­tups: the Chau­tauqua in Ecuador, Camp Mus­tache III, the whole week­end in Oma­ha for the Berk­shire Hath­away Annu­al Meet­ing, the near­by stop for the Phroo­gal road­trip, and a meet­up of Chicagoan Mus­tachi­ans this last week­end. Most of the world seems hell bent on telling my why this crazy FI thing can’t and won’t hap­pen. But when I’m at these events, I’m with peo­ple who encour­age me and build me up. Who think get­ting start­ed at such a young age is awesome.

I now have a net­work of gen­uine friends across the US to vis­it. My trip to Chica­go this week­end was to hang out with friends I met in Ecuador. (It was a ton of fun AND the Car­di­nals beat the Cubs. Ha!) I’m fly­ing to Maine over Labor Day to hang out with anoth­er set of friends from Ecuador. I might even be able to arrange a few mee­tups while I’m over­seas on my trip to London/the rest of Europe com­ing up in October.

Some of these peo­ple I admire very much on a per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al lev­el. They’re where I want to be. I don’t want to emu­late my man­ager’s man­ager’s man­ag­er who has a huge house and plays golf all the time. I want to emu­late these blog­gers and oth­er folk who retired ear­ly. What bet­ter way to get to know them than meet them in person!?

Plus, there’s always the chance I meet a smart, attrac­tive, finan­cial­ly sound, and fun­ny sin­gle guy who’s my age at one of these. Had to be said 🙂

Fin­Con is chock­er block full of smart, tal­ent­ed, moti­vat­ed and inven­tive peo­ple. Even look­ing over the list of speak­ers and oth­er atten­dees has me feel­ing inspired. I’m part of the Fin­Con group on Face­book and I’m real­ly look­ing for­ward to get­ting to meet them in the flesh and putting a name with a face. Plus.…. expand­ing my net­work of peo­ple is always a great idea. Who knows, maybe some­one will want to offer me a job or col­lab­o­rate with me on something!?

The Knowledge

Every time I go to an event, I learn some­thing. Usu­al­ly, I learn many some­things. These tid­bits of knowl­edge have helped alter the course of my life completely.

Are they out there on the inter­net? Mostly.

Would I have to spend a ton of time sift­ing through stuff that does­n’t real­ly apply to me? Absolutely.

Would they be per­son­al­ized and tai­lored to my exact sit­u­a­tion? Not a chance.

So far at these mee­tups, I’ve got­ten more in-depth lessons about real estate, cred­it card churn­ing, hap­pi­ness, tax­es, and long dis­tance relationships.

The full sched­ule has­n’t been released yet, but I can tell from the list of speak­ers I’m going to come away from the con­fer­ence with to-do list of things to do, books to read, and posts to write. I want to be able to attend these meet­ings and walk away with some­thing to share with you, my read­ers. Learn­ing things for my own sake is great, but it’s even bet­ter if I can impart the knowl­edge on to oth­er people!

The Location

It’s in SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA.

I’VE NEVER BEEN TO SAN DIEGO OR CALIFORNIA BEFORE SO I’M SUPER PUMPED.

I’ll stop shout­ing now, sor­ry. I’m just real­ly, REALLY excit­ed. Before this year, the fur­thest west on the con­ti­nen­tal US I’d be was Utah. Camp Mus­tache was in Seat­tle, so I’ve been to the North­west, but I have yet to vis­it the South­west. I’ve want­ed to go to Cal­i­for­nia for for­ev­er, and now I get to go!

My par­ents weren’t exact­ly pro­lif­ic vaca­tion tak­ers when I was grow­ing up; Now that I’m on my own, Fin­Con is the first gen­uine rea­son I’ve had to go to Cal­i­for­nia. I’m not one to take aim­less vaca­tions just to vis­it an area, so I’m very glad San Diego was cho­sen for Fin­Con this year.

Not to men­tion.….. the hotel/conference cen­ter is right on San Diego Bay. I was going to have a room­mate at the hotel, but then her plans changed and I need­ed to make alter­nate arrange­ments. I sent out a few emails about being room­mates and Julie from Mil­len­ni­al Boss was the first one to respond. She jok­ing­ly men­tioned stay­ing in a house­boat, not know­ing that I’ve always want­ed to stay in a house­boat since I read a Box­car Chil­dren book that fea­tured one.

So, long sto­ry short, I’m stay­ing in a house­boat on San Diego Bay for the entire con­fer­ence!! Look at this beauty!

I’m super excit­ed to hang out with Julie and her fiancé (going back to the peo­ple con­nec­tions of the con­fer­ence). So far, we’ve just been blog­ging bud­dies, so it’ll be nice to actu­al­ly get to meet in per­son and hang out for a few days.

San Diego is also home to Sea World, the San Diego Zoo (obvi­ous­ly) and the San Diego Padres. I don’t real­ly care about Sea World since they don’t real­ly treat their ani­mals well, and I’m def­i­nite­ly not a Padres fan so I can skip see­ing them. They will be hav­ing fire­works after the game against the Giants so I should be able to see those from the house­boat. That sounds real­ly nice, actu­al­ly. San­gria, great com­pa­ny, beau­ti­ful weath­er, and fireworks.

No, what I real­ly, real­ly, real­ly want to go do is the Zoo!! I’ve heard it’s amaz­ing and I love spend­ing time look­ing at cute ani­mals. (Do they have otters? Because I think otters are my spir­it animal.)

And, final­ly, I am your very typ­i­cal Mil­len­ni­al and I’m addict­ed to Poke­mon Go. I’m very much look­ing for­ward to catch­ing some new Poke­mon I haven’t seen yet, and what bet­ter place to do that then right on the water? I also want to go to the Zoo because I’m will­ing to bet there are a met­ric crap ton of stops in a small area and it’d be great to stock up on items like I did this week­end in Chicago.

The Food

Name­ly, In-N-Out. Here in the Mid­west, we have to suf­fer with­out the delec­table del­i­ca­cy known as In-N-Out. Instead, we have Steak N Shake which, from my under­stand­ing, is nowhere near as awe­some as In-N-Out. My friends from the West Coast rave about it, and lit­er­al­ly every­one I know that’s had it tells me it’s a must do item when I vis­it. So… I’m going to get it. And I’ll prob­a­bly end up like Seth Rogan from This is the End where he ends his gluten cleanse because it’s so awe­some. Although appar­ent­ly I could get it as a let­tuce wrap.…… deci­sions, decisions.

I’ve also heard San Diego is great for Mex­i­can food being as it’s nar­row­ly not Mex­i­co, so I’m hop­ing I’ll get some authen­tic tasty bur­ri­tos or something.

So there you have it: all the rea­sons I want to go to Fin­Con this year. I can’t wait!

Are you going? Why or why not?