Elementum Money

Personal Finance | Personal Growth | Books

Womens’ Day Contributors

For me the best part about personal finance blogging has been the number of inspirational ladies I have met, blazing their own path of financial progress and weaving an inspiring web of words on their blogs, to get more people to be financially aware and savvy.

For Women’s day 2018, I have been lucky to have collaborated with 6 of these fantastic ladies. I urge all of you to visit their sites and immerse in their digital worlds. You will love it and come out much enlightened and entertained.

Melanie Lockert is the personality behind the award ­winning blog, Dear Debt, where she chronicled her journey out of $81,000 in student loan debt. Through her blog, she inspires readers to break up with debt by writing their very own breakup letter to debt.

In 2015, Melanie (and her journey out of debt) was named one of the top five most inspiring personal finance stories of the year by Yahoo! Finance. She currently works as a freelance writer and event planner. Melanie and her work have appeared in Business Insider, The Huffington Post, Yahoo! Finance, INC, Oprah and more.

In her debut book Dear Debt, personal finance expert Melanie Lockert combines her endearing and humorous personal narrative with practical tools to help readers overcome the crippling effects of debt.

By breaking down complex financial concepts into clear, manageable tools and step­-by-­step processes, Melanie has provided a venerable guide to overcoming debt fatigue and obtaining financial freedom through her blog and the book – Dear Debt.

Melanie is also the co-founder of Lola Retreat – A Bold Money Event for Bold Women. The annual event is scheduled for 27th – 29th April, 2018 in NYC.

Visit the blog – Dear Debt

Liz @ Chief Mom Officer

Liz is an MBA, woman in tech, the family breadwinner, personal finance nerd, and mother of three boys. She writes all about being the Chief Mom Officer of your life – achieving success and ultimately financial freedom throughout whatever obstacles life might throw at you.

She is a breadwinning mom to three wonderful active boys (14, 10, and 2 1/2), with a stay at home husband. Although she worked her entire career in information technology for large corporations, she has a secret love of finance with an undergraduate degree in accounting, and the MBA mentioned earlier.

Overcoming obstacles and refusing to let them deter her from achieving her dreams is an ongoing theme in her life. She loves helping to be a part of showing other people facing obstacles, that it is indeed possible to overcome them and achieve your dreams.

Her mission with Chief Mom Officer is simple. She wants to help working women manage money (theirs, and their kids if they’re also a mother), find success in their careers, overcome obstacles, and ultimately achieve the financial freedom they deserve.

Visit the blog – Chief Mom Officer

Kristine @ Frugasaurus

Kristine is one half of the Norwegian couple behind the blog – Frugasaurus.

Kristine is a geek with one true passion: the environment which also became the specialization of her M. Sc. degree. Her passion for the environment and the need for action led Kristine to mostly eschew animal products, particularly industrialised agriculture, stop buying new clothes and avoiding plastic and disposables whenever she could.

She also dreams of one day having a large forest garden where she can grow and preserve most of the food needed for the whole year in an awesome carbon neutral or carbon negative off-grid home.

Being currently employed in a temporary, long-term contract, Kristine is trying to become employer independent (love this term!) by the middle of 2021.

The blog Frugasaurus is about their journey to a more frugal, financially independent and environmentally friendly lifestyle, where they are free to be their own boss and can retreat to their dream home of a sustainable cabin in the woods with a large forest garden where they can grow a large proportion of their food and ideally be off-grid.

Visit the blog – Frugasaurus

Penny @ She Picks Up Pennies

Penny is an educator in her early thirties who lives in the suburbs of a big Midwestern city with her husband and baby.

In addition to exploring the world of personal finance, Penny is also looking to live more purposefully – whether it’s decluttering or organizing, traveling or exercising – and to find time to pick up pennies.

At She Picks Up Pennies, she blogs about millennial money, marriage, and motherhood. She and her husband have paid down $85,000 worth of debt in three years on two teachers’ salaries thanks to saving and side hustling with an infant in tow.

The blog is a little slice of cyberspace where, you’ll find details of one person’s journey to live a little more purposefully, a little more deliberately, and a little more frugally one cent at a time.

Visit the blog – She Picks Up Pennies

Ms. Financier @ The Feminist Financier

Ms. Financier is a woman who has always been fascinated by money. At 5, her dad explained that the bank would pay her interest in exchange for her savings. This blew her mind – money without having to work for it!

She is a saver – and has been from the time she was a little girl. Her parents coached her to save at least half of all cash she received – from small jobs like babysitting, washing cars, doing yard work, and from birthdays or holidays.  At thirteen, she received her first W-2 (similar to Form 16 in India) for $354 after working her first summer job. She has been working ever since.

Most importantly, she is a feminist who is passionate about equality and who believes in the amazing power that women have when we help other women.

The Feminist Financier is on a mission to help women build wealth and own their financial independence, by improving financial literacy and taking the mystery out of money. The blog is also the winner of the 8th Annual Plutus Awards for the Best Investing Blog.

Apart from personal finance, Ms. Financier is a shoe addict, travel fanatic, and wine enthusiast.

Visit the blog – Ms. Feminist Financier

Emilie @ Wise Mind Money

Emilie was that girl who took accounting classes in undergrad as electives – and loved them. She and her husband have been working to pay off over $120,000 in student loan and auto debt. While not proud of those numbers she is proud of her car and their educations. She has got big goals of paying off debt and building wealth.

She is hooked to podcasts (just like me) and listens to them all the time in the car. She’s also a wine enthusiast. She has a Master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling and is a licensed therapist – hence the student loan debt.

Wise mind is the state of mind that acknowledges both the logical and the emotional, and is a balance of the two. Wise Mind Money is about her own values, hopes and dreams, and her journey through a hell of a lot of debt. For her, money is about freedom. She values the freedom of her time – choosing how to spend her time – above almost anything else. Wise Mind Money is her reminder to keep it real, because all mindfulness really means is awareness.

Visit the blog – Wise Mind Money