If you’re someone who’s tired of living from one paycheck to the next, want to build a solid safety net, curb impulse spending and increase your earning power, then Adam Baker at Man Vs. Debt is someone you should be listening to. He and his wife paid off about $18K in consumer debt, sold all their belongings, and were able to travel the world for over a year (with their 22-month-old daughter!). With a little hard work, they have been able to achieve some incredible things, and because he’s done it, Baker has become a huge authority in the online personal finance world who shares credible advice that will help you eliminate financial stress in your life.

I’ve known Baker since early on after he started his blog in 2009. Since then, he’s quickly amassed a loyal following, joined forces with some of the biggest forces on the social web (Leo Babauta at Zen Habits, J.D. Roth at Get Rich Slowly, and the team at WiseBread). He and I partnered together with a great team to start Untemplater, and finally got the chance to meet in person when he visited Thailand in January on his year-long location-independent world tour! I’ve been looking forward to doing a video interview with him for quite a while now, and this week we were finally able to sit down for a great conversation.

Baker just launched his first ebook guide, Unautomate Your Finances: A Simple, Passionate Approach to Money , which lays out his holistic approach to personal finance. I know from interacting with him on a weekly basis that he’s spent the last several months toiling away on this guide, he’s gotten a tremendous amount of positive feedback, and this is something that is sure to transform people’s relationship with money. Watch our video conversation below to see why you should un-automate your finances, how you can build a more conscious, simple, sustainable financial life, and get the scoop about his world travels since freeing himself from debt prison!

• 0:55 – Baker’s college experience, business background & financial history
• 2:15 – White picket fences & opting out of the template life path
  
• 4:54 – Unconventional approaches to eliminating debt
• 6:45 – Deliberate, effective budgeting
• 8:13 – How to plan for income fluctuations & irregular expenses when you’re a freelancer
• 10:20 – Couchsurfing & backpacking through Australia, New Zealand & Thailand
• 13:38 – Traveling the world with young children
• 16:07 – More about Baker’s new ebook Unautomate Your Finances
• 20:36 – Cultivating a conscious mindset about personal finance & money
• 22:12 – South by Southwest Web Awards & where to find Baker
  

UPDATE: For more from Baker: check out his Sell Your Crap guide to learn how his family got rid of all their belongings before they went traveling around the world, and how you can sell all your stuff on eBay, Craigslist, and Amazon to make some extra cash. Also, if you want to add a guaranteed $12,000 to your online business over the next 12 months, you might want to grab a seat in his course with Corbett Barr, The Hustle Project. Corbett and Baker are both Faculty members at Digital Nomad Academy, regular recurring mentors for our students inside the Academy, so I can speak personally to the high quality of their coaching.

I’ll be honest: I’m someone who hates to sit down with spreadsheets and budget out my finances. I don’t even like to look at my bank statements every month! With student loans, a lot of random business stuff going on, and the fact that I’m a lazy excuse for a human, my finances are a damn mess, but Baker has developed a product that has fundamentally changed the way I think about money, and he and his wife Courtney are proof that you really can get conscious about how you spend, escape the debt “game” that the rest of the world is stuck in, and start to build the lifestyle you want now! Forget dreaming about retirement, if he and his family can eliminate their debt and go globetrotting, you can get control of your finances and do whatever you dream of doing too.

Here is what you get if you purchase a copy of Baker’s Unautomate Your Finances:

• A comprehensive 83-page eBook. In “The Unautomation Theory” section, Baker relates his experience climbing out of the debt hole and the way that has transformed his family’s lives. He goes on to explain how to avoid financial burnout and unlock conscious financial awareness by un-automating. In “The Science of Unautomation” he’ll help you take a hard look at your priorities and figure out how to budget for what you really want in life. Lastly, in the “Applying Unautomation” section, he focuses on application, showing you how to actively manage your finances with a simple 2-page minimalist budgeting system and apply his “Debt Tsunami” tactic to rid yourself of debt.
• A 27-minute video interview with Leo Babauta of ZenHabits.net. Baker interviews Leo on how he applied the principles of simplicity and minimalism to dramatically turn around his financial life.  Powerful insights from a leader in simplicity, blogging, and productivity.
• A 29-minute audio interview with J.D. Roth of GetRichSlowly.org, one of the top personal finance blogs on the web. J.D. joins Baker on a call to discuss his own financial recovery story and what it’s like now that he’s in the “third phase of personal finance“.
• A 2-page, custom-designed PDF version (printable) of the minimalist budgeting system discussed in the main guide.
• A simple Excel template for those who want to take the minimalist budgeting system digital.
• Free Extended Updates! Get on the exclusive email list and over the next 6 months, Baker will be releasing sample case studies, FAQ’s, and exclusive interviews… for free!

At just $17, I honestly thought he was nuts for giving away so much hard work, but it just goes to show how dedicated he is to providing real value and helping those who need financial guidance. This is a truly impressive product that would typically go for at least $39 if you look around at other bloggers online, and it comes with Baker’s “as long as I have a pulse” money-back guarantee. So if you need to learn how to get the best of your personal finances, start an emergency fund, successfully get out of debt, and create a realistic budget that will let you achieve your financial and life goals, then Unautomate Your Finances is definitely something you need to check out.

And do make sure you follow Baker on Twitter, and join the Man Vs. Debt Militia over on his site MVD to learn more about how he turned his financial life around, took his family vagabonding around the globe, and get good solid money tips.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Get Out of Debt and In Control of Your Personal Finances with Adam Baker of Man Vs Debt

The Heroines of Personal Finance and Entrepreneurship series continues at IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com with Anya Kamenetz, a young author and columnist for the New York Times, Washington Post, Salon, Slate, and Village Voice. Her first book is Generation Debt: How Our Future Was Sold Out for Student Loans, Bad Jobs, No Benefits, and Tax Cuts for Rich Geezers — And How to Fight Back. Here are a few excerpts from my Q & A with Anya:

You were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for the series “Generation Debt: The New Economics of Being Young” in 2004. What were your main findings?

Student loans and student credit cards have multiplied very fast and under the radar so that large amounts of debt are now a rite of passage for a majority of young people. Two thirds of college graduates borrow loans to get through college, up from less than half as recently as 1993, and they graduate with an average of $20,000 in loans and almost $3000 in credit card debt. Combine that with a changing job market that offers fewer benefits, and a higher cost of living, especially housing, in many metropolises and you have a lot of middle-class, educated young people falling behind, to say nothing of the fate of McJob Nation; the two out of three kids with no college degree have seriously fallen behind in income and stability.

Since graduating in 2002 you’ve freelanced as a writer and editor for several publications. What are some recommendations you can make for aspiring professional writers?

Think hard about it. I don’t know many “professional writers” as opposed to people who happen to be lucky enough to occasionally get paid to write. Boyce Rensberger, head of the Knight Science Journalism Fellowships at MIT, told the New York Times on June 10: ”I feel a little queasy encouraging young people into journalism. It’s such a precarious industry right now.”

I think if you want to write for a living you need to be pretty hardcore about your craft and your subject area or field. You can build up knowledge of your field by working a related job (in politics, the law, nonprofits, fashion, etc.) and you can build up your craft by writing, writing, writing, and being in a writers’ group, and taking classes or workshops, and working in media-related fields. I freelanced as a writer’s assistant, fact-checker, and copy editor before I started writing full time. If I were starting out now I would definitely blog too.

Continue reading at IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com: Heroines of Personal Finance and Entrepreneurship #2: Anya Kamenetz. Also be sure to read Anya’s new Yahoo! Finance expert column and grab her book Generation Debt if you’re interested!

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: An Interview with Anya Kamenetz, Author of Generation Debt

Ben (from Startup Spark) is hosting a group writing project at his Instigator Blog, and for each participating blog $5 will be donated to charity. The prompt is “What did you learn in 2006?” So here is my contribution to the project!

Ben’s call for participation in his group writing project offers me a unique opportunity to look back at what lessons I have learned, and what I can take and apply to the rest of my life. 2006 has been a big year for me. I’ve been in an amazing and rewarding relationship with Maria—my sharp, motivated girlfriend—for almost eight months now. A second close friend of mine from high school passed away before his time. I started working a full time job. I met Warren Buffett. Communication lines between my mother and me have been strained—something that I’m not exactly happy about, but that has freed me from unnecessary anguish in my life. I’ve completed my very last course to earn my Bachelor’s degree and graduate from college! And I think I’ve figured out what I want to do with the rest of my life.

Here are some of the most important lessons I think I have absorbed this year:

1. I need a muse. My goals and dreams have expanded far beyond what I would have first imagined since I’ve had a motivated girlfriend pushing me to great heights. Before, I had only modest goals for myself, but she has helped to encourage me to think big and realize that it is my duty to at least strive to reach my full potential. I am so fortunate to have all of my basic needs taken care of, and to be amongst the richest fraction of the human population (even though I only make 5 figures!), I owe it to the world to do as best as I can and give back to the community. It may come across as a weakness to some people to rely on a partner, friend, or community for encouragement, but I don’t believe anyone becomes a success without the help and community of others. Remember: no man is an island! Having someone else who believes in me and offers their positive reinforcement every time I have big dreams has helped me to add two new things to my list of life goals this year: to attend either Stanford or Columbia, and to start my own business within the next 5 years. Here’s an article about how important relationships are, and here’s my interview with the king of lasting relationships, Rajesh Setty.
2. Just DO it! At the same time, if you want things to get done, you cannot rely on others to do them for you. And you can’t just put them in the “to do” pile and ignore them and hope they resolve themselves. Successful people know that they create the quality of their lives, they are not victims of life. You can’t let life be something that just happens to you. Life is full of small, irritating tasks that most of us would rather not do, or things that we are afraid to do because we don’t want to fail, but you just have to buckle down and DO them! For instance: I’ve learned to just call my bank or credit card every time they try to charge me fees, and sometimes they reverse them. To just tell the boss my ideas about how to improve our workplace, and sometimes he thinks they are brilliant! To just contact that popular blogger or company exec, and sometimes they are willing to meet with me and give an interview or talk about business opportunities! Remember: you can’t lose what you don’t already have. Sometimes all there is is something to gain, and the worst that could happen is they say no. But, successful people are the ones that just DO what others don’t want to do or are afraid to do. You must work to create your own success. No one else is going to do it for you! Here’s an article about changing the way you think in order to be more successful.
3. Plan ahead for the unexpected. This is one thing I have learned attending and working for a university. A lot of students do not take an active role in their education–they attend classes, they do the homework, take the tests. But, they assume that all the administrative work–the course advising, transfer courses, the pre-requisites, the degree evaluations, the petitions to graduate, etc.–are on auto-pilot and will take care of themselves. The truth is that you must take an active role. You must know the due dates and get your paperwork in well in advance, know the requirements and whether you meet them, know who to speak to in order to solve your problems and actively seek them out, know what resources your college offers you and utilize them… If you are going to become an efficient adult, you need to learn to ensure these things get done, because again, no one is going to do it for you! And if you leave them on auto-pilot and wait until you recieve notice that something is overdue to take action, there will be consequences. You need to take responsibility. And that can be applied to a whole world of other things besides school. Here’s an example of how you should plan ahead and prepare for the unexpected when it comes to student loans.
4. Budget, budget, budget! Waiting on the lottery is not a retirement plan. I’ve learned that if I want to be wealthy, it takes planning and tracking. It takes being frugal, and allocating. You must make smart purchases. Every time you buy something, there is a real cost and an opportunity cost–the loss of the ability to buy something else. So, you must wiegh your options. Every time I choose not to go to the movies, I tell myself I am $10 closer to that Tesla Roadster I want! As Ramit Sethi of IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com says, you don’t have to be smart, you just have to start (early if possible) and be disciplined over the long-term, and you will become wealthy. Here’s a post I wrote all about the most important financial tips I’ve learned, and here’s my interview with Ramit Sethi.
5. Organize everything in your life. Organizing is something that helps tremendously with all of the above. I find that when I am organized, I know exactly where to find things (which saves me valuable time), I can complete projects much more quickly and efficiently (meaning I am more productive), I pay my bills on time (which saves me money), I get to things on my “to do” list sooner (and thus create better rapport with people who are waiting on me), and much more. Basically, I categorize things and either do them immediately, place them in my “next actions” pile, hand them off to somebody else who can do them better than me, file them for reference, or throw them out. This is a system that is based in part on Getting Things Done by David Allen, but here is a great post about using three all-important folders to keep your email inbox clean–and the same principle can be applied to your physical mail, your projects, and more. Lifehacker and 43 Folders are great sites for tips on staying organized and productive that have immensely helped me get control of my life.

Well, those are my insights from this year. I look forward to another year of learning and growing, and I thank Ben Yoskovitz for instigating this project and giving us a moment to reflect on 2006. Next week, I will try to post my resolutions for 2007!

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Five Things 2006 Has Taught Me

Jim Wang recently served up a great article for college students over at his blog Blueprint For Financial Prosperity: “Student Loan Deferment vs. Forbearance.” If you’ve got student loans, and you’re near graduation or already paying them back, you should take a look and educate yourself.

I recently had a run-in with these terms when the Federal Direct Loan people sent me a letter saying I have payments coming due the 15th of this month! And I was still under the impression that my loans wouldn’t come due until July 2007, because that’s what my paperwork originally said. And I never received notice that the date was moved forward until November 28th. Oh well, it will be a bit of a pain for me to prepare to pay an extra $120 a month in bills on such short notice, but I guess it was my responsibility in the first place. I should have realized that by dropping from half-time units to just one class this semester, I was no longer eligible for the deferment. (I just wish they’d told me earlier on!)

Anyway, after reading Jim Wang’s post, now I understand that if I go into forbearance my loan still starts accumulating interest this month, and at the end of the forbearance period it capitalizes (or becomes part of the total loan, and accrues interest on that interest!). That’s important to know. Unfortunately they didn’t tell me this over the phone when I called to find out what was up with the sudden news that I had to start paying, and found out that I was only eligible for forbearance (not deferment) if I wanted to postpone my payments at all. So, while I may go into forbearance for a month or two to make preparations to accommodate this extra expense in my budget, now I know the best route is to pay that interest that accrues during forbearance up front with my first payment, before it capitalizes. So, read up! And learn from my mistakes.

Most important things to remember about repaying student loans:

• You are only eligible for deferment if you are still enrolled half-time or more.
• KNOW your own eligibility status! And know when you come into repayment. Don’t depend on the loan officer to let you know about changes in your due date!
• If you go into forbearance, do it only for as little amount of time as necessary. And…
• Pay off any interest accrued during forbearance before it capitalizes.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Save Yourself A Headache When Repaying Your Student Loans