With preachy, unrealistic directives about quitting avocado toast to magically solve all your money problems, the personal finance industry has a well-earned reputation for being dry and irrelevant to people living on all but the biggest budgets. Enter Portland’s Lillian Karabaic. You probably know her as the founder of Pedalpalooza’s now-departed Bowie vs. Prince ride, but Karabaic also hosts a friendly, approachable personal finance podcast, Oh My Dollar! on XRAY.FM, that demystifies money to make it less scary, and comes “with a dash of glitter.” Karabaic’s also dispensing financial wisdom in a forthcoming workbook, Get Your Money Together: Your Purr-fect Finance Workbook, that was successfully funded through Kickstarter at the end of November.
Ahead of the book’s printing, Karabaic shared her best practices on everything from the controversial latté factor, to saving, to combining cats with personal finance.
On why personal finance needs “a dash of glitter”:
“So many people I know are in this situation where they don’t even look at their checking account. They’re just afraid to look at it. The terror of opening it is so big that they put it off and put it off, and it literally never gets better if you’re completely passive with it. So finding a way to make it really accessible—with cats, spandex, and all the things I think are irresistible to a lot of folks in my peer group—is just an attempt to make it a little easier for everyone.”