Hello everyone! I’m at #FinCon14 right now, and I’m really enjoying it.

I love meeting new bloggers, and connecting with bloggers I already know. FinCon is an awesome conference and it always gives me a lot of motivation.

If you see me at FinCon14, please say hello.

I am a shy person so don’t hold that against me. I might also be awkward… There’s a VERY clear reason for why I’m an online freelancer haha!

If you are new to my blog and heard of Making Sense of Cents through FinCon, the insanity that Pinterest seems to be bringing in this week (around 1,000 hits from Pinterest each day this week!), or you found me some other way, below is a roundup of 10 of my favorite articles on Making Sense of Cents.

1. My Student Loans Are Paid Off – I finished paying off my student loans in July of 2013 and I haven’t looked back once. I paid them off right after I turned 24 and it was a pretty amazing feeling. To recap, I have three degrees and worked full-time all throughout college, yet I didn’t use a cent of what I earned to pay off my student loans while I was in college. Instead, I spent that money on junk!
   
2. My Business/Extra Income Reports – My monthly income reports are some of most popular posts, and they are fun to write too.
3. My wedding pictures – I recently got married, and in this post I uploaded some of my favorite pictures. Enjoy!
4. I’m 100% Self-Employed – My Plans For the Future – I left my day job in October of 2013 for full-time self-employment. Life has been awesome since then.
5. Frugality And Ethics – When Is It Stealing? – Is there a difference between being cheap and stealing? Would you ever use an item and then return it? What about complaining about something fake in order to get it for free?
6. Pursuing What I Love or What Brings in the (Stable) Money – When I wrote this post, I still had my day job. It wasn’t a bad job and it paid fairly well. However, I wasn’t happy. What do you do when this happens? Take a leap of faith or feel stuck for the rest of your life?
7. Living In A 200 Square Foot Tiny House – Could You Do It? – Tiny homes definitely interest me. They are affordable, cute, and really embrace minimalism. However, I couldn’t do it. Could you?
8. Why You Should Start a Blog – I love blogging. Blogging has opened up a world of opportunities for me, and I can’t even imagine what life would be like if I wouldn’t have started on.
9. How I Graduated From College In 2.5 Years With 2 Degrees AND Saved $37,500 – Graduating quickly is a big factor as to why I was able to limit the amount of student loans I took out and it also allowed me to jump start my career.
10. How To Make Money Blogging – I receive several emails each week asking about how a person can make money blogging. Read this article if you are interested.

 

I can’t just talk about FinCon all day. Not everyone is here at the conference and I remember the first year I was blogging and how I missed it. It was a sad time and I remember how left out I felt!

Anyway, we’ve been doing a good amount of traveling recently. I haven’t talked about it much on my blog because I keep forgetting. I post a lot about our trips on Instagram, so make sure to follow me on there.

I’m currently in New Orleans.

Okay, okay, I’m only going to talk about FinCon one more time, but it’s just to talk about how I am in New Orleans.

We are currently here and staying in a rental home close to the hotel where FinCon is at. We got a great deal, and we can bring our pups. We also have a kitchen so you can’t beat that!

The main reason we drove was because we were going to go to Florida afterwards. However, something came up at the last second so we had to cancel that. Oh well, New Orleans will still be a blast!

I have a lot planned while we are here. Tons of business-related meetings, fun dinners with other bloggers, helping out with the Plutus Awards, and more. Oh yeah, and there are a TON of great sessions for me to attend as well 🙂

Also, if you are new to New Orleans, I did visit last year as well. Read my New Orleans recap if you are interested in trying any of the things I did last year. We had numerous delicious meals and it was a fun trip.

Memphis.

We weren’t in Memphis long, but we were there on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. We decided to drive to New Orleans and make a stop halfway in Memphis to visit Wes’s family. His family just moved there and we haven’t really visited much, so it was definitely needed.

Not much to say here except that I love family! And I love yummy food.

Colorado.

The picture above is from our latest trip to Colorado 🙂

We’ve been going to Colorado A LOT lately. Wes has been three times this summer and spent a total of four weeks already, and I’ve been twice for a total of three weeks.

If that doesn’t tell you we love the state, I don’t know what will. We did some 14ers (okay, I did one and Wes did two), and they were a lot of fun. We would have done more but it rained nearly the whole time we were there.

We went at the end of August and came back in early September. It was an awesome trip except for the one hour where my being cheap almost ruined the trip.

Luckily, our road trips have not been expensive at all. We have been lucky with finding cheap accommodations, affordable meals, and our new car gets great gas mileage. I see a lot more road trips in our future!

Are you at FinCon14? What are your plans for the weekend?

What trips do you have planned for the rest of the year?