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Fresh Perspective Interview with J Money

Written by Aaron Pinkston, Mon, Dec 14 2009
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Fresh Perspectives is a new interview series on Mondays to help get your week off to a fresh start. This week, I had the opportunity to ask J. Money questions about marketing, art, personal finance, marriage, and insurance. He is the anonymous blogger behind Bugets Are Sexy, which keeps showing up on MSN Money and the Wall Street Journal online, among other places. If you like his animated style, check out his site too.

AP: Part of your success is because you created a unique and total personality and experience. Your brand is imbued with your unique proposition (you emailed me from the “jPhone”). How did you develop the personality we know as J. Money? And do you consciously incorporate that personality in everything your brand touches?

JM: Well if you really must know, it’s a little secret I like to call “Being Yourself” ;) That, and a lot of coffee. I find that whenever I just say what’s on my mind, people relate to it a lot better than when I censor myself or try to fit in with the other financial blogs. It doesn’t mean I’m always talking intelligently or coming up with the flashiest or grandest ideas all the time, but I think it keeps my stuff fresh.

Plus, I have major ADD so I can easily tell when I’m starting to bore myself. The second that happens I stop what I’m writing and I go back and try to add in a little more spice. If it’s not entertaining or encouraging you to take action at any point, I haven’t done my job for that day. So yeah, I def. do my best to keep my style mixed in with the brand.

AP: Your site features a lot of art made out of money. Some of the pieces you create go way beyond casual doodles. What artistic training do you have? And how do you think your art impacts the way you think and create in general, including your site?

JM: It’s actually a pretty funny story, but I basically started out as an International Business major in college and ended up graduating with a degree in Multimedia and Advertising. I really wanted to get into this intro course on graphic design, but back then you had to actually be a design major to take it. So, being the sneaky person I thought I was, I switched just to get into the class and figured I’d switch right on back once it was over. By the time it was finished though I absolutely loved it! I’m a very visual person, so being able to see your work right there in front of you was extremely motivational and gratifying for me.

Ever since, I’ve been designing/painting/drawing whatever inspires me! Originally I didn’t include much art on the site, but over time it crept in and I found people enjoyed seeing a little eye candy during their daily reads ;) It’s another way I can express myself and push the voice of that day’s post even further.

AP: You say you never got into financial trouble but became a “born again saver” in August of 2007. Tell me about that process. And what sorts of goals and things are you working towards now?

JM: Yeah, it’s true – I never really got in that much trouble financially. I mean, I had credit card debt before and lived paycheck to paycheck during most of my years, but fortunately I was able to avoid any major catastrophes. I could have continued this lifestyle no problem at all, but I realized it wasn’t very forward thinking at all. What if I did have some huge emergency that required a lot of money? Or even worse, I floated up to the heavens and left my wife a $350k mortgage to pay for all by herself?

Once I started asking myself those questions, it was all about creating a game plan based on a life of less stress and more financial freedom. I started tracking my money for a few months, created a budget, and more importantly saved, saved, and saved more than I was spending, spending, spending. You learn how to live your life on a steady amount of money every month, and you build up a hefty nest egg over time! I started doing that back in August of ’07, and my goals for today remain the same as they did then – to join the million dollar club ;)

AP: You talk about your wife and the financial decisions you make together. I know my wife helps with some ideas (like this one about vampires). How does your special lady feel about your blog and does she help come up with or develop ideas?

JM: Hah! I think my wife would be totally cool if she never had to hear the word “blog” again. She’s been extremely supportive and encouraging throughout the past two years, but I do tend to talk about it a lot. That being said, she’s incredibly helpful when we collaborate together – especially because she’d rather be doing anything but work on finances! haha...You’d think this would make things harder, but it doesn’t. She speaks on behalf of all those people I’m trying to reach that couldn’t care less! So if I caught her attention with a certain topic, chances are it would relate to those same people as well. We’re a good team when we’re working together, but it only happens every once in a while.

AP: Now you have to ’fess up. You’ve said before that insurance is one of your least favorite financial products. But of course, Clarifinancial only deals with the insurance side of things. I think a lot of people feel the way you do, and that’s part of the problem I hope to solve. How do you think we can make insurance more interesting and understandable to regular folks?

JM: Ooooh, that’s a tough one. You’ve definitely hit on the important part here – that you do have to make insurance interesting and understandable to us common folk, but how you do that is beyond me. I think the major problem with this stuff is that people don’t understand how important insurance is. Renter’s insurance, car insurance, life insurance, it all helps with peace of mind and financial security, but unfortunately people don’t realize this until they’re already in trouble. Perhaps you can get some hot celebrity or sport star to endorse it? Or even another reptile? That Lizard seems to captivate people’s attention ;)

AP: I’m trying my best with the cartoons until we can hire celebrities. Thanks for the interview. I think lots of people will enjoy it.

JM: No worries. Those were some rockin’ questions.