Her Every Cent Counts is about one woman’s journey to financial freedom, one cent at a time.

Launched in 2006, shortly after graduating from college with a BFA, “Her Every Cent Counts” began as an experiment to track the ins and outs of learning about saving, investing, and overall financial IQ. With severely limited financial literacy and a mental illness-fueled shopping addiction, she knew that she had to hold herself accountable or horrible no-good very bad things would happen.

Her privilege, substantial as it was, would only carry her so far. Graduating college with no debt (thanks mom and dad) she picked up and moved across the country* to try to kickstart her life (*in one of the most expensive places to live in the world.) By kickstart, she spent the majority of her savings on a used car, found a tiny room in a 4 bedroom apartment for rent, and finagled her way into a PT admin role to support her unpaid PT internship and attempted to make friends. Needless to say, it was a rough year.

Today, although her income has increased, she believes that every cent still counts on the path to financial freedom. Although she keeps this blog anonymous (due to obvious reasons) and rarely talks about her fiscal life with anyone she knows in real life, she is proud of her financial accomplishments to date, and hopes this blog will continue to inspire her to be fiscally responsible and eventually obtain financial independence.

What started out as a bank account with an $8k CD and not much else has grown into multiple accounts worth nearly $400k. Her goal(s) is to (individually) have $250k in networth by 30 (2014), $500k by 35 (2019), $1M by 40 (2024) and $3M by 60 (2044.)

Personal Finance Gets Personal…

Recently she changed her blog’s tagline from “A Quarter-Life Crisis, and Change” to “Personal Finance Gets Personal.” In addition to covering investing and savings goals, trials, and tribulations, this blog gets deep into the mind of a woman who also struggles with a variety of mental health issues — namely bipolar II/depression, anxiety and ADHD. This makes it even harder for her to keep a stable job and grow her networth, so she uses this blog as a place to vent sometimes, but mostly to share these challenges and discuss how she overcomes them.

Unlike life in her 20s, she expects her 30s — which she is in the thick of now — will throw a series of financial curveballs that make those goals far from easy. She expects to marry a man she loves dearly (but who isn’t as interested in personal finance as she is) and hopes to have 2-3 children in the following years. Will she be able to effectively navigate the waters of parenthood while continuing to grow her professional career? Follow this blog to find out.

If you’d like to get in touch or have any questions, please email hereverycentcounts@gmail.com